We too have lived in Arcadia (K/Mc, NC-17, MU), Part 2
<< Part 1
A week goes by and he doesn’t even see Kirk and his entourage in passing; that’s how much and how quickly his social standing has sunk. Qazi does everything but stick her tongue out at him when he can’t find a project partner in Advanced Tactics and ends up with a dolt of a Viridian who barely speaks Standard.
After eight days, when Leonard’s finally stopped checking his comm every five minutes, he gets a message from Kirk that he’s borrowing a yacht for an all-day sail, with a wharf number and a departure time. McCoy thinks that drowning would be a charmingly old-fashioned way to get offed, but when the day comes there are a dozen guests, half of whom are new to Kirk’s circle, and Kirk playing the good host as they slice through the waters of San Francisco Bay under an iron-gray sky. To McCoy’s amazement it seems that he’s still hypothetical future CMO of the Enterprise, maybe even Kirk’s friend-of-record. But there are no more strange half-naked nights, no more glimpses into Kirk’s soul.
Two weeks later, Kirk shows up at the Emperor’s Birthday party with Carol Marcus on his arm, and McCoy is neither surprised nor jealous. Carol is an Imperial political spouse cut from whole cloth; canny, beautiful, ruthless, and no doubt wholly unconcerned with what Jim Kirk can give her emotionally or physically.
A few months later, when her pregnancy begins to show and rumors fly around campus that the Kirk is the father, McCoy even admires her tactics. It’s no doubt worth a few thousand credits in child support for Kirk to have this visible proof of his potency, even though McCoy is sure that if the baby is his, it’s only thanks to lab equipment.
In three full years at the Imperial Academy, McCoy sees Captain Pike exactly once, laying a wreath for the Imperial dead at a Commemoration Day ceremony. He could easily be Kirk’s father; he’s tall and handsome and blue eyed, and like Kirk’s father he’s fucked the boy up thoroughly while trying to save him. McCoy can’t hate him; he saves the hatred for himself, because after all, he hasn’t been able to do either for Jim, not fucking or saving, though it could be that by this point, Jim doesn’t need either one.
+++++
“You were in love with him,” Pike says, “and you couldn’t stand having less than all of him.”
It’s been years since McCoy has heard the word love said with anything other than contempt. It’s a weakness that the Empire has purged over ruthless centuries, and so McCoy, being prudent for once, says, “I wouldn’t know what that is.”
Pike laughs. “Jocelyn Treadway would say differently. Actually, she did say differently.”
McCoy raises his head. “You talked to her?”
“Oh, yes. We had a nice chat. It didn’t take much to get her to open up; you’re a favorite subject of hers still, it seems. Not everything she said was unflattering,” Pike adds with a sly smile.
“Really, sir.”
“She said you stuck with her, even when she made it clear she wanted you far away. Clay Treadway hadn’t just been biding his time; he’d been building up his power base, while you sat there all fat and happy in your little house with your little wife and waited for him to come and take everything. And eventually, he did.” Pike leans back, waiting to see if McCoy’s going to offer a rebuttal, but he doesn’t; how can he? It’s all factually correct, just missing the part where Jocelyn cried in his lap before packing his suitcase and sending him out into the night into the arms of an Imperial “recruiter.”
“I’m not one of those people who believes trust is a bad word,” Pike continues. “But the key is to trust the right people.”
+++++
The ship bucks and groans, the lights flicker, and there are answering cries of fear and pain from the injured, most of whom are convinced they’re going to die, either in the next five minutes when Nero finishes them off or more slowly under the harried incompetence of the medical staff. McCoy knows that Kirk won’t let the first thing happen and he’s planning to do something about the second, so he wishes they’d just shut up and let him concentrate on the man lying on his table.
Captain Pike is pale, bruised, dehydrated, and showing signs of torture, none of which would be a problem if it weren’t for that horrific thing wrapped around his spinal column. McCoy has no idea what it is, much less how to get rid of it, but he’s knows it’s not going to be pleasant for either one of them.
“Fifteen cc’s of anetrizine,” McCoy says to Ensign Avila, who’s standing a meter away with his arms folded, managing to look both surly and scared shitless.
“No anesthetic,” Pike rasps, not opening his eyes. “I need to stay awake.”
“Not while I operate on your spinal column, sir. That thing’s going to have to come out, and the longer we wait the more damage it’s going to do.”
“I said no.” Even half-conscious, Pike is a scary son of a bitch. It takes some courage for McCoy to grab a hypo and open the meds cabinet. Still, the captain must be semi-delirious if he thinks anyone’s going to try an assassination attempt in the middle of a battle-to-the-death with Romulans.
“I’ll get it, doctor,” says Chapel, one of the other medics, taking the hypo out of his hands. That one’s a keeper, McCoy thinks, as if it’s a sure thing that the ship and the galaxy and his newly minted job as CMO are all going to be here in another few hours.
McCoy’s killed the little bugger with a laser and is planning the first incision when Kirk comes striding into the Medical Bay with more swagger than 36 sleepless hours of hell should really allow.
“Well?” Kirk asks without preamble.
“He’s stable, but I’ve got to that parasite out of him. That is, if you’re completely done shaking this tin can around.”
“Sorry,” Kirk says, as if he’s barely listening. He bends over Pike, frowning as he studies his face. “If you don’t get that thing out, will he die?” It occurs to McCoy that it’s the first time he’s seen Kirk and Pike together.
“No, but he’ll be paralyzed from the waist down.” Kirk gives him a sharp glance, and McCoy knows he doesn’t have to say more. A paralyzed captain will be worse than useless in the eyes of the Empire; he’ll be an embarrassment to be disposed of quickly.
“And the surgery?”
“Risky, but I think I can do it.” He looks down at Pike’s dreaming face, scarcely softer in repose, and gives a wry laugh. “Do you know, he wanted to stay awake for the whole thing? The last thing I need now is him to move, or an audience.”
“He thought you were going to kill him,” Kirk says be way of explanation, and all McCoy can do is stare, because that’s how stupid he is--until that moment, the possibility hasn’t even occurred to him.
“Jim,” he says, voice almost a whisper, as if Pike could still hear him. “It would solve all our problems.”
“No,” Kirk says, hard and angry.
“You’re already captain, Jim,” McCoy says, a voice of temptation to himself as much as Kirk, feeling the awakening of a possessive impulse he’d thought dead since he walked out of Kirk’s dorm room. “You don’t need him; you’ve proved that.”
Kirk’s handsome face twists, and he grabs McCoy hard by the shoulder, dragging him away from the biobed. He whispers, low and harsh, eyes burning into McCoy’s. “Don’t you dare say that to me. You don’t know. You have no idea what it was like at that mining colony, not for the 14-year-old son of two of the most hated people in the Empire. The average lifespan there was less than a year. Twenty straight hours of labor and then you had to fight for everything--your food, your bed, your safety. Fight or pay. Guess which one a skinny, pretty teenager ended up doing? Especially when there were plenty of family members of the Kelvin willing to visit a distant mining colony in search of a little revenge.”
The images that bloom in McCoy’s mind while he’s speaking cause his fists to clench. Kirk’s never said a word about his life before Pike, and very little about his life with him, but McCoy thinks he finally understands. In Jim Kirk, Pike’s found the exception to the laws of human nature and the universe. He’s found loyalty, and nothing, maybe not even death, will break it.
“All right,” McCoy says, defeated. “Let me go. I’ll do what you want.”
And McCoy does for 10 grueling hours as the Enterprise limps home. Kirk doesn’t leave; he stays beside the biobed, watching McCoy work through red-rimmed eyes.
McCoy saves Pike’s life and legs, but there’s nothing much he can do to speed the natural healing process, which means a few months of rest where Pike has to hide himself away from the Court for all but the most significant occasions. It may be for this reason that Pike orders McCoy punished for disobeying orders while he’s still on the ship, barely ambulatory.
Ten minutes in the Agony Booth is nothing by Fleet standards but it’s more than McCoy’s ever had to bear, and he’s scared and humiliated by the prospect of Pike witnessing it. It figures that this is the first time they should stand eye-to-eye, Pike wobbling defiantly on crutches, over his doctor’s objection.
“Nobody’s above the rules, McCoy,” Pike says. “By the way, the Acting Captain agrees with me.”
There’s enough of a personalized fuck you in that last sentence that McCoy thinks Pike has tipped his hand. Making an example of McCoy helps no one; half the Fleet is dead and the other half likely jockeying for their positions already, so that the punishment of an uppity doctor is the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Except Pike’s, apparently.
It’s foolish to prod Pike, who may be injured and brittle but is still insanely powerful and, for all McCoy knows, as prone to indulging in petty revenge as anyone who makes it to high command in the Fleet. Still, if he’s going in the Booth anyway, he’d like to have something to show for it.
On impulse, he pulls from his pocket the silver Eagle that Jim gave him years go, which he’s been carrying as some sort of talisman.
He hands it to Pike, who rolls it in his palm. He gives McCoy a discerning look, as if reevaluating an enemy.
Then he gives a curt laugh and nods to the guards to let McCoy go.
“Hope you don’t wish you’d saved this for something bigger, McCoy,” he says, before turning his back on him and walking out. McCoy doesn’t bother to salute, but listens to the sound of the crutches as Pike makes his way painfully down the corridor.
+++++
Penkala is an unlikely place to die: a piss-ant little quasi-desert planet where dull, buff-colored Humanoids scratch out a miserable existence between raging solar storms. The storms produce spectacular auroras but make wave-based communications, not to mention transporter usage, difficult if not impossible.
This is exactly why the Imperial delegation has arrived in a couple of shuttles for a routine shakedown for tribute, and why, when an unexpectedly large and well-armed Penkalan delegation arrives to meet them, in turns into a problem that can’t be solved with hand phasers. The unofficial Fleet motto Everyone for themselves is definitely in effect; Kirk grabs a fistful of McCoy’s shirt and and drags McCoy down a side alley, darting into a small, hut-like house to terrorize its residents out of a couple of sets of robes to conceal their uniforms.
Now there’s less than an hour left before the Enterprise is supposed to unleash death from above on the Penkalan capital, and Kirk and McCoy have fled to a farm a few kilometers beyond the outskirts of the city, as far as they dare to go into the burning, killing desert and maybe, maybe beyond the reach of a 15-kiloton photon torpedo.
The farm has a deep root cellar, as they find out when Kirk ejects the terrified family hiding inside. It’s lit by the cool, blue bioluminescence of the fern-like plants that grow on its walls. The shade and dark feel good after the heat and noise and fear of the city, and if it’s a false sense of safety that eases McCoy’s heartbeat and dries the sweat on his brow, he doesn’t mind.
“You couldn’t have left Spock on the Bridge and had Sulu join the landing party?” McCoy asks as soon as they catch their breath.
“Oh, great, now I get to spend the last hour of my life listening to you nag.” Kirk aims a desultory kick at the cellar’s dirt walls. “I told you, Sulu had standing orders to fire whether we made it back or not. The Grand Admiral hates hostage situations.”
“Even though she has no intention of negotiating for anyone’s release.”
“Why, McCoy--keep talking like that and I’m going to start to question your commitment to the Empire’s military objectives.” It’s an old routine of theirs; McCoy doesn’t hide his disinterest in galactic conquest and Kirk pretends to be on the verge of denouncing him to the Secret Police. In point of fact, he’s left McCoy and his Sickbay in peace as promised and in exchange, McCoy keeps the seditious talk for when they’re alone.
“So,” McCoy says, with the same light sarcasm. “Do you think you’ll get a posthumous medal for this one? Because at the rate we’re going I don’t think you’ll be collecting it in person.”
“Fuck if I know,” Kirk says, scanning the electrified air with his communicator for the fiftieth time and getting static. “Only if Sulu’s doing his job, which means we’ll probably be fine.” Kirk locks the communicator into beacon mode and sets it on a little stump of a table. But McCoy knows that it’s a golden opportunity for Sulu to eliminate most of the Bridge crew in one shot, and it’s not one that the ambitious helmsman is likely to miss. Kirk’s slumped shoulders tell McCoy that he knows it, too.
“Oh, well,” McCoy says, “I’ve got not regrets, I guess.”
“Really?” Kirk asks, and steps closer. “You sure about that?” McCoy can feel the heat from his body in the slight chill, and Kirk’s eyes are a ghostly blue. He places a hand on the back of McCoy’s neck to steady him and a moment later Kirk’s lips are on his. McCoy’s imagined it so often before, more than he’s even imagined fucking, and it’s still better: full lips and a combative tongue and a slippery heat that’s so purely sexual McCoy is hard within seconds.
Kiss of death, McCoy thinks, and doesn’t care.
He kisses back with a ferocity that surprises them both. He wants to touch Kirk’s skin, all of it, to kiss him until he can’t talk. He opens Kirk’s robe and pushes it off his shoulders and it’s like a rocket’s ascent into the blue.
They get naked as fast as the tight space and wildly firing neurons will allow, and McCoy fills his hands with Kirk’s firm, pale flesh. He massages the tender curves of his ass, pinches the soft flesh of his inner flights, sucks and bites at his nipples until Kirk is growling and tugging at his hair, pressing down on his shoulders until McCoy kneels, more than willing, in front of his spectacular cock.
McCoy is a human being but he’s also a doctor, and a cock should hold no special mystery, but Pike made Kirk’s into one, locked it away like a hidden treasure in Bluebeard’s Castle. When McCoy strokes his hand along it, once, twice, in pure anticipatory pleasure and then wraps his lips around it, it’s the purest victory he’s ever known. Even victory in combat can’t taste this sweet to Kirk because it doesn’t have the feel of swollen, velvet flesh in his mouth, the musky smell of intimate places, the way Kirk’s knees buckle, ever so slightly, as he leans into McCoy and strokes his hair.
McCoy reaches down with his free hand to grasp his own cock and it’s like closing a circuit, no different than if it was Kirk’s hand on him, cock in his mouth, no different than if it were Kirk’s lips on his. They were made for this, it’s undeniable; in this little bubble universe where Pike doesn’t exist, McCoy can finally be sure. If only; if only Nero hadn’t come back in time, if only McCoy had finished the job with Pike, if only Kirk had more ordinary deceit in him. But then, that would be another universe, and they’d be different people, and while McCoy’s sure the attraction would still be there he can’t imagine it could ever be as good as it is in this moment.
Kirk comes in McCoy’s mouth with a shout, arching his back and and leaning on McCoy’s shoulders to stop himself from collapsing. McCoy sucks it all down greedily, wishing there were more. Kirk pulls McCoy to his feet and they cling to each other, trembling. He kisses McCoy deeply and without hesitation and finishes him with one hand while he massages his neck with the other, blunt, sure fingers imprinting onto every inch of McCoy’s skin.
When Spock finds them, a little more than an hour later, they’re fully clothed, but it wouldn’t take an inquisitor, much less a telepath, to figure out what’s been going on. Spock informs his captain that the shuttle Vlad is a hundred meters away and withdraws, his discretion more insinuating than anything he could have said.
“Are you going to tell him?” McCoy asks, unable to say the name but knowing Kirk will understand that he means Pike.
Kirk is standing in the shaft of sun and heat from the open trapdoor, lit up gold and green.
“Of course.”
“And what do you think he’ll do to us?”
Kirk claps him on the shoulder, familiar but not intimate, like he did back in the Academy before a drill he knew was likely to make McCoy puke.
“I don’t know.” He presses his lips together as a line appears on his usually untroubled forehead.
+++++
Pike tops off McCoy’s glass with fizzy water from an old-fashioned, silver-topped soda siphon. McCoy watches the bubbles rise, joyful, from the depths. He knows now, from experience, that proximity to death can make everything clearer. Even without Pike’s invasive coaching he could see it now, a steady trajectory toward personal destruction marked by moments of flaming happiness that never lasted long enough. According to what little personal philosophy McCoy possesses, that’s enough, but it doesn’t seem that way, not now, at the bitter end.
“I expected this day would come,” Pike says. “I just didn’t think it would be someone like you.” He’s amused and rueful, like a parent confronted with their kid’s first lover.
“Who, then?”
“The next captain of the Enterprise. That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Children kill their parents, unless the parents kill them first.”
“Jim’s father didn’t,” McCoy hears himself saying.
“No, he didn’t,” Pike says. “And I’m not going to, either. Still, he’ll have to be punished. That’s the way things work.” McCoy goes cold at the word.
“Punished?” he repeats. Pike ignores him and rises to his feet, staring down at McCoy like a judge handing down a sentence.
“We’re done here for now, McCoy.” He takes McCoy’s glass from his unresisting hand. “I’ll see you at 2400, in the captain’s quarters. In the meantime, I’d like you stay in your own cabin and not communicate with anyone. My own guards will help you with that,” he says, as if he’s doing McCoy a favor. “Understood?”
“Yes, admiral,” McCoy acutely aware that his hour of doom hasn’t passed, just been postponed.
+++++
The smirking guards accompany McCoy to Kirk’s quarters at what, on Earth, would be the stroke of midnight. He’s still in his stiff dress uniform and the worse for six hours of gut-churning anticipation.
The captain’s quarters on the Enterprise are both majestic and secure. McCoy’s surprised when the guards nod for him to proceed, alone, down the thick, blood-red carpet to the inner door.
It slides open with a whisper, and the first thing McCoy sees is Kirk, naked, his hands bound to a crossbar over his head, mouth gagged with a bronze admiral’s sash.
“Right on time, doctor.”
McCoy tears his eyes away to look at Pike, who’s standing beside Kirk fully dressed except for his missing sash, posture as easy as before, but eyes bright and alert, demanding attention.
McCoy’s shift in attention back to Kirk is an act of defiance, but he can stop himself from making a visual inventory: there are no marks on Kirk’s body and Pike’s agonizer is still clipped to his belt, though that doesn’t begin to cover the ways Kirk could have been damaged. When McCoy’s gaze finally settles on Kirk’s eyes, he finds them bulging and red-rimmed. He’s making muffled, desperate noises that are swallowed by the glittering fabric.
“What have you done to him?” McCoy whispers.
“In good time,” Pike says. He looks Kirk’s body up and down with proprietary interest, as if he’s an artwork that Pike is considering selling. Kirk is clearly making an effort to calm his breathing, and he’s succeeding until he meets Pike’s blue eyes, and whatever he sees there makes him struggle again.
“McCoy.” Pike places a hand on McCoy’s shoulder and bends toward him with friendly confidentiality, as if they aren’t inches from Kirk’s naked, sweating body. “Do you play cards?”
“Uh, yes, sir,” McCoy says, for a moment baffled beyond terror.
“Good. Because I’m going to give you a chance to get what you want--namely, me out of the picture.” He gives them both an encouraging smile, which is disconcerting to the point of nausea.
“Why in the world would you do that, sir?”
“Because you’ve ruined him, more or less. You taught him to want something new, something I can’t give him. He won’t disobey me, but he won’t give you up, either. Wanting you and abstaining isn’t a matter of discipline any more; it’s putting him at risk. Penkala proved that. If Spock hadn’t found you, you’d be buried under a meter of rubble with smiles on your faces.” He turns to Kirk, as if he’s part of the conversation. “Really, Jim? Is he really that good?”
“So what are you suggesting? That we settle this with a card game?” It has to be a setup, but he can’t think for what.
Pike gives an affable shrug. “Pistols at dawn would be more dramatic, but aren’t really an option. So here’s the proposal: we play a game of your choice. If you win, I turn Kirk over to you, with all the rights and privileges etcetera.”
“And if I lose?” McCoy asks, because Pike’s waiting for him to ask.
“You tell me,” Pike says, running a prideful hand down one of Kirk’s flanks. “What is this worth to you?”
“My life,” McCoy says without hesitation.
“No, too easy. Besides, I could have had that years ago. No, McCoy, you’re going to have to put something on the table that shows you understand the value of what I’m offering.” His touch on Kirk’s skin gentles to the slightest brush of fingertips. “That you’re worthy.”
The picture that forms with quick certainty in McCoy’s mind and makes his insides curl with fear. That’s how he knows it’s the right answer.
“If I lose,” McCoy says, “I’ll voluntarily consign myself to the beryllium mine on Argalon Seven.”
Pike nods in approval. “Very good. For how long?”
“Five years.” It’s the number of years he’s known Kirk. It’s also unsurvivable, and his only chance of escape would be if Pike died at someone other than Kirk’s hands.
“That work for you, Jim?” Pike asks. “You agree to the terms?”
Kirk’s eyes are shadowed and unfocused, but he bows his head in assent. Whatever hope McCoy had that Kirk might still, somehow, pull them out of this vanishes.
“Good,” Pike says, clasping his hands together so the joints pop. “Name your game, McCoy. I’m ready when you are.”
Pike drags out Jim’s folding card table and sets it courtside, underneath Kirk’s silent form and at eye level with his flaccid cock. McCoy has no idea how he’s going to be able to even sit still, let alone concentrate on a card game. When Pike produces a fresh deck and shoots his cuffs like a Vegas sharp, McCoy thinks of old stories about the Devil letting you play for your soul when you were already damned. His Aunt Lida told those stories because she believed in the Devil, and she believed in damnation; just two of many eccentricities that would have made her unsuitable for raising a child anywhere the rule of Empire held more influence.
“Name your game,” Pike says, tapping the deck on the table.
“Gin Rummy.”
Pike barks out a laugh. “You’re a hell of an entertaining guy, McCoy. They teach you that down South, along with cotillion and how to hunt raccoons? Well, I think I remember enough to muddle through. What do you say--standard rules, 25-point bonus for a knock or undercut, play to 100 points?”
“Whatever you say, admiral.” Lida had taught him to play Gin, on long summer evenings, out on the porch when the flies weren’t too bad. Wherever else he’s going tonight--Argalon Seven or Hell--he’ll never be going back to Georgia.
Pike directs McCoy to shuffle and cut the deck. McCoy watches Pike’s nimble hands to keep him honest and because the rest of the room is a bubbling cauldron of things that scare him shitless, from Pike eyes to Kirk’s bed to Kirk’s naked body to the black of space itself.
As he reaches for his cards, there’s a buzzing in his ears and a thudding anvil weight in his chest, and then McCoy’s overtaxed brain gives up and detaches. It’s a wonderful feeling, a weightless clarity, like the battle calm he’s heard Kirk describe.
He studies his cards for a moment and takes the upcard as a matter of course. It’s not a bad hand, with a run of three right off the bat.
“I spent a lot of time today asking you questions, McCoy,” Pike says, discarding a King. “Anything you want to ask me? Or say to me?”
What McCoy would like to say is that he hates people who talk while they’re trying to play cards, but he’s knows it’s a distraction tactic. It won’t work, because McCoy is a reasonable card counter, and because he’s riding his weird danger high. He feels like he can see through the backs of Pike’s cards, hear sounds on the other side of the ship. The only thing he can’t figure out is what’s going through Kirk’s brain, if there’s something he should be doing--arguing or fighting or knocking out Pike and heading for the nearest escape pod--anything other than let the fate of two human beings be decided by 52 beat-up pieces of cardboard.
“Since you mention it, sir,” McCoy says, picking up a well-timed 3 of Clubs from the discard pile, “Why did you pick Kirk in the first place?”
“Knew his parents. Fucked his mother, actually, if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s accurate, though; she never had any genuine interest in anyone besides George.” The game is moving fast; Pike keeps his eyes on his hand and picks up and discards with fluid confidence.
“And why was that?” McCoy figures that Kirk being pissed about his nosiness will be a manageable problem if and when they get themselves out of this.
“They were pretty much of a pair--brilliant, ambitious, passionate. And charismatic, oh boy.” Pike flicks a look at Kirk as if to say, chip off the old blocks.
“I guess none of that helped when it came to the Narada.” McCoy doesn’t know anything beyond what’s in the official histories, but he’s anxious to keep the conversation flowing.
“No, nothing would have. Maybe if they’d started the evacuation sooner...but that isn’t Imperial policy. Go down with the ship, or if that’s not an option, save the senior officers first.”
“So what was George Kirk supposed to do?” McCoy picks a card from the stock pile and realizes he’s close to Gin. “Let his wife and child die for the greater glory of the Empire?”
“Who gives a rat’s ass about the Empire?” Pike asks, shocking McCoy when he’d been feeling pretty unshockable. “No, he was supposed to save himself. That’s what normal, rational people do. Altruism has no place in an efficient society, McCoy. Anybody who doesn’t understand that deserves what they get.”
And with that he raps once on the table, signifying he’s finished with his hand.
The light knock reverberates down McCoy’s spine. He’d been so focused on building his own hand that he lost track of Pike’s. In the final tally he’s able to limit the damage, but the computer notes all the same that Admiral Pike leads by 20 points, though not that Dr. McCoy is one-fifth of the way toward a very short career in mineral extraction.
McCoy and Pike split the next two games, McCoy keeping his mouth shut and his head in play, with the result that Pike still leads, but McCoy’s feeling more confident.
“But was it really altruism?” McCoy asks, as the next game begins. “What about the whole conspiracy theory about the Kirks planning to escape together with a fortune in dilithium, but George not getting out in time?”
Pike sniffs. “Cover story. The truth would have been impossible to explain.”
“The truth? You mean that he sacrificed himself for his wife and child?”
“Yes.” Pike meets his eyes over his cards. “That kind of weakness has no place in the Fleet, even among traitors.”
McCoy nods, but keeps his real opinion to himself.
The game stretches on and McCoy, lulled by the homely sociability of the back-and-forth, begins to wish he’d picked poker, especially when he knocks out and Pike undercuts him. Just that quickly, Pike’s got 68 points and McCoy’s got sweat breaking out on his upper lip. Consignment to Hell is seeming like a real possibility.
So he just deals again, and figures he might as well make the most of his remaining moments and Pike’s expansive mood.
“But you didn’t really answer--why Kirk, sir?”
“Good genes,” Pike says, with a smile and a sidewards glance. “A fine education in the quadrant’s best juvenile prisons and work houses. But mostly, it was him. Seeing him. Talking to him. I took him for a test flight, you might say.”
“Ah.” Now McCoy’s doing everything in his power not to listen.
“Not the kind you’re thinking of, McCoy, though I won’t deny he was a very pretty boy. No, I took him up in a shuttle and showed him the stars. He’d only ever been in the secure hold of a cargo ship. When I showed him what it could be like, I knew he’d do anything, anything to taste that wonder again. That kind of desire’s different from the garden variety greed that drives the galaxy, McCoy. It’s rare, and you can do great things with it.”
With that, Pike lays down a 10 of Diamonds, and McCoy realizes that, out of all the cards in the deck, it’s the one that he needs. He picks it up with a trembling hand, check and rechecks, and then says, “Gin.”
Just like that, he’s back in the game. He ventures what he hopes is a reassuring glance in Kirk’s direction, but Kirk isn’t watching him.
“Very good, McCoy,” Pike says dryly. “Serves me right for indulging in nostalgia.”
McCoy gets up to pour himself a drink of water, feeling weird about making himself at home in the Captain’s quarters, but it’s a small indignity for Kirk compared to the larger ones he’s suffering.
Pike battles back, of course, and after another few games of less consequence it’s Pike with 82 points to McCoy’s 75. Gin or an undercut will put either of them over, and McCoy, who’s been getting steadily more stressed and brain-fogged, wishes the racing night would slow down.
“So you showed Jim the stars, and you figured he’d do anything to get them,” he says, before Pike deals again. “That kind of devotion, that...” He doesn’t say the word. “How was it any different from what brought down his father?”
“I didn’t say that it was.” Pike pauses for a moment, catches McCoy’s gaze and holds it, before he puts the deck down with light thump, such a soft sound for a death knell.
McCoy gulps, and nods. He understands it all now. It’s love that Pike’s talking about, the weakness of slaves and subject planets, the cant of ancient stories. Pike’s figured out a way to exploit it, to make it the engine of his ambition, and Kirk its fuel. It’s one thing when that love is directed at the starry night, at the great ship that carries him through it, but quite another if its object is a doctor with a love of Earth and quiet and a propensity to self-sacrifice.
If Pike kills McCoy now, Kirk will hate him. Since McCoy’s shown that he’d rather die than abandon Kirk, the remaining choice is to turn McCoy into something Kirk will have no use for. Argalon Seven will do that efficiently. A few weeks underground and he’ll be a hollow-eyed, shambling creature unworthy of love or even pity.
It changes nothing. He wasn’t lying when he told Kirk he had no regrets. Kirk would probably never have told him his particular truth; Pike didn’t want to, but here they are.
“Deal,” McCoy says, looking Pike hard and sharp in the eyes.
The game proceeds at an easy pace, neither fast nor slow. When Pike raps on the table, McCoy only jumps a little.
They lay their cards down and McCoy doesn’t bother to count, just stares into the middle distance and hopes the whole game is over, so that he can go right to bed or the brig or wherever Pike wants to send him and Kirk can be released. The night has already gone on much too long
“McCoy.” Pike snaps his fingers in McCoy’s face. “Hello, McCoy?”
“Sorry, sir.” He turns his focus back to the cards.
“McCoy, you have Gin.”
“What?” Now McCoy seems to be having trouble hearing.
“I was counting your deadwood for you, but--you don’t have any. You’ve been sitting on Gin for who knows how many rounds. Do you know what that means?”
McCoy just stares at him, not understanding.
“It means you win.” Pike throws his remaining cards on the table and flops back in his chair like a gambler who’s just gone bust.
“I win?” McCoy can hardly focus for the spots dancing in front of his eyes.
“Yes, McCoy.” Pike turns to look fully at Kirk, whose eyes are wide and alert, looking back at him. “I’ll miss you, Jim, but at least I know now that I’m leaving you in good hands.
Pike gets slowly to his feet, stretches, and points at Kirk’s gagged mouth but doesn’t touch him. “Can I have my sash back?”
“Oh, uh, sure.” McCoy, feeling like the Earth and stars have fallen on his head, stumbles to his feet and fumbles with the knot under two pairs of bright eyes. It yields, and Kirk spits and coughs. McCoy hands the sash to Pike with a sense of having completed some perverse ceremony, and watches in sick fascination as he wraps the saliva-dampened fabric around his waist.
PIke leans in to lay a hand against Kirk’s face.
“This isn’t goodbye, Jim, but it is farewell. I hope your new owner gets as much value out of you as I have.” He withdraws his hand with the ghost of a caress. “Don’t stay up too late, boys. There’s a senior staff meeting at 0800 and you know how I feel about lateness.”
And with that, he turns his back on them both and walks out. McCoy’s eyes follow him until the door closes behind him with a whisper.
“Release cuffs and retract,” Kirk’s hoarse voice says behind him. McCoy turns around in time to see the crossbar vanish into the ceiling and Kirk’s arms fall to his sides. McCoy barely has time to register that little point of information when Kirk says “Ahh” and hunches over, wincing with the pain of circulation returning to his shoulders.
“This part sucks,” he whispers, flexing his arms. When McCoy whips out his tricorder, Kirk bats it away. “Oh, just fucking don’t. Get me some water, okay?”
McCoy does, and Kirk takes the glass in a wobbly hand and drains it. “Can I get you anything else?”
Kirk holds out the glass again. “Maybe something stronger?” When McCoy doesn’t take the glass, or move, he says,with exasperation, “What?”
“After all that, you have nothing to say?” McCoy is starting to vibrate in reaction to everything that’s happened, and anger is as good an emotion as any to attach to it.
“Like what?” Kirk rasps. “I’ve got no more shocking revelations, if that’s what you want.”
“I thought maybe you’d like to say something about the fact that I won your freedom from at the possible cost of sending myself to that--place.”
Kirk gives him an oh, please look that’s no less effective for the fact that he’s naked.
“Don’t flatter yourself. He was cheating the whole time.”
“Cheating? And I beat him anyway?”
“Cheating so that you would win. I could see his cards. That last hand, he fed you every card you needed and when you were too spaced to call Gin, he knocked out.” He sits down heavily on the edge of his bed. “Don’t tell him I told you, okay? I’m sure he had his reasons, but the last thing I want is for you to think you’re good at cards. In fact, you should never play again.”
McCoy sits down next to him, taking the load off his shaky legs. “I swear, the mind games you two play are way above my pay grade. For all I know this whole thing was contrived between you as some form of sick-ass entertainment. You know, make the funny little doctor’s life flash before his eyes--was that it?”
“Nope. I’ve never lied to you, you know. Well,” Kirk amends, cocking his head, “not about anything important. Here, I’ll show you how real it is.”
He turns his head, and McCoy is so conditioned to think of their mouths as mutually repellent objects that he almost jerks away. But Kirk’s lips are warm, maybe a little chafed from the rough treatment of the gag, and McCoy nips at them softly with his own, relying mostly on his tongue to say You son of a bitch and You’re going to drive me to an early grave and Yes.
“You never asked him if he fucked me,” Kirk says somewhere between his chin and his ear.
“It wasn’t important.”
Kirk gives a gravelly chuckle that does weird things to McCoy’s nervous system. “You and your fucked-up priorities. Next thing you’ll be telling me you don’t care if I screw around or not.”
“I don’t, I really don’t. And this whole ‘ownership’ thing--” he puts a hand on Kirk’s neck to push him away, just far enough to look in his eyes, and when he strokes the tight tendon with his thumb, Kirk winces. “Hey,” he says, remembering. “Pike said he punished you. What did he do, Jim? You looked like death warmed over when I got here.”
“Oh, that.” Kirk gives a twisted half smile. “He told me that he’d killed you.”
McCoy feels something hard and tight in his throat. “And you believed him?”
“Yeah,” Kirk says. “I guess he had us both fooled.” He frowns, kicks the bed with the back of his heel, and then grabs McCoy’s hand, fast and tight. “I don’t understand a lot of this, McCoy. You’re going to have to explain.”
“Well, for one thing, sometimes it makes you stupid.” McCoy grips Kirk’s hand like it’s the only thing he’s got in the world.
“Yeah, I got that part,” Kirk says, nodding and squeezing back. “That’s why I said no cards.”
A week goes by and he doesn’t even see Kirk and his entourage in passing; that’s how much and how quickly his social standing has sunk. Qazi does everything but stick her tongue out at him when he can’t find a project partner in Advanced Tactics and ends up with a dolt of a Viridian who barely speaks Standard.
After eight days, when Leonard’s finally stopped checking his comm every five minutes, he gets a message from Kirk that he’s borrowing a yacht for an all-day sail, with a wharf number and a departure time. McCoy thinks that drowning would be a charmingly old-fashioned way to get offed, but when the day comes there are a dozen guests, half of whom are new to Kirk’s circle, and Kirk playing the good host as they slice through the waters of San Francisco Bay under an iron-gray sky. To McCoy’s amazement it seems that he’s still hypothetical future CMO of the Enterprise, maybe even Kirk’s friend-of-record. But there are no more strange half-naked nights, no more glimpses into Kirk’s soul.
Two weeks later, Kirk shows up at the Emperor’s Birthday party with Carol Marcus on his arm, and McCoy is neither surprised nor jealous. Carol is an Imperial political spouse cut from whole cloth; canny, beautiful, ruthless, and no doubt wholly unconcerned with what Jim Kirk can give her emotionally or physically.
A few months later, when her pregnancy begins to show and rumors fly around campus that the Kirk is the father, McCoy even admires her tactics. It’s no doubt worth a few thousand credits in child support for Kirk to have this visible proof of his potency, even though McCoy is sure that if the baby is his, it’s only thanks to lab equipment.
In three full years at the Imperial Academy, McCoy sees Captain Pike exactly once, laying a wreath for the Imperial dead at a Commemoration Day ceremony. He could easily be Kirk’s father; he’s tall and handsome and blue eyed, and like Kirk’s father he’s fucked the boy up thoroughly while trying to save him. McCoy can’t hate him; he saves the hatred for himself, because after all, he hasn’t been able to do either for Jim, not fucking or saving, though it could be that by this point, Jim doesn’t need either one.
+++++
“You were in love with him,” Pike says, “and you couldn’t stand having less than all of him.”
It’s been years since McCoy has heard the word love said with anything other than contempt. It’s a weakness that the Empire has purged over ruthless centuries, and so McCoy, being prudent for once, says, “I wouldn’t know what that is.”
Pike laughs. “Jocelyn Treadway would say differently. Actually, she did say differently.”
McCoy raises his head. “You talked to her?”
“Oh, yes. We had a nice chat. It didn’t take much to get her to open up; you’re a favorite subject of hers still, it seems. Not everything she said was unflattering,” Pike adds with a sly smile.
“Really, sir.”
“She said you stuck with her, even when she made it clear she wanted you far away. Clay Treadway hadn’t just been biding his time; he’d been building up his power base, while you sat there all fat and happy in your little house with your little wife and waited for him to come and take everything. And eventually, he did.” Pike leans back, waiting to see if McCoy’s going to offer a rebuttal, but he doesn’t; how can he? It’s all factually correct, just missing the part where Jocelyn cried in his lap before packing his suitcase and sending him out into the night into the arms of an Imperial “recruiter.”
“I’m not one of those people who believes trust is a bad word,” Pike continues. “But the key is to trust the right people.”
+++++
The ship bucks and groans, the lights flicker, and there are answering cries of fear and pain from the injured, most of whom are convinced they’re going to die, either in the next five minutes when Nero finishes them off or more slowly under the harried incompetence of the medical staff. McCoy knows that Kirk won’t let the first thing happen and he’s planning to do something about the second, so he wishes they’d just shut up and let him concentrate on the man lying on his table.
Captain Pike is pale, bruised, dehydrated, and showing signs of torture, none of which would be a problem if it weren’t for that horrific thing wrapped around his spinal column. McCoy has no idea what it is, much less how to get rid of it, but he’s knows it’s not going to be pleasant for either one of them.
“Fifteen cc’s of anetrizine,” McCoy says to Ensign Avila, who’s standing a meter away with his arms folded, managing to look both surly and scared shitless.
“No anesthetic,” Pike rasps, not opening his eyes. “I need to stay awake.”
“Not while I operate on your spinal column, sir. That thing’s going to have to come out, and the longer we wait the more damage it’s going to do.”
“I said no.” Even half-conscious, Pike is a scary son of a bitch. It takes some courage for McCoy to grab a hypo and open the meds cabinet. Still, the captain must be semi-delirious if he thinks anyone’s going to try an assassination attempt in the middle of a battle-to-the-death with Romulans.
“I’ll get it, doctor,” says Chapel, one of the other medics, taking the hypo out of his hands. That one’s a keeper, McCoy thinks, as if it’s a sure thing that the ship and the galaxy and his newly minted job as CMO are all going to be here in another few hours.
McCoy’s killed the little bugger with a laser and is planning the first incision when Kirk comes striding into the Medical Bay with more swagger than 36 sleepless hours of hell should really allow.
“Well?” Kirk asks without preamble.
“He’s stable, but I’ve got to that parasite out of him. That is, if you’re completely done shaking this tin can around.”
“Sorry,” Kirk says, as if he’s barely listening. He bends over Pike, frowning as he studies his face. “If you don’t get that thing out, will he die?” It occurs to McCoy that it’s the first time he’s seen Kirk and Pike together.
“No, but he’ll be paralyzed from the waist down.” Kirk gives him a sharp glance, and McCoy knows he doesn’t have to say more. A paralyzed captain will be worse than useless in the eyes of the Empire; he’ll be an embarrassment to be disposed of quickly.
“And the surgery?”
“Risky, but I think I can do it.” He looks down at Pike’s dreaming face, scarcely softer in repose, and gives a wry laugh. “Do you know, he wanted to stay awake for the whole thing? The last thing I need now is him to move, or an audience.”
“He thought you were going to kill him,” Kirk says be way of explanation, and all McCoy can do is stare, because that’s how stupid he is--until that moment, the possibility hasn’t even occurred to him.
“Jim,” he says, voice almost a whisper, as if Pike could still hear him. “It would solve all our problems.”
“No,” Kirk says, hard and angry.
“You’re already captain, Jim,” McCoy says, a voice of temptation to himself as much as Kirk, feeling the awakening of a possessive impulse he’d thought dead since he walked out of Kirk’s dorm room. “You don’t need him; you’ve proved that.”
Kirk’s handsome face twists, and he grabs McCoy hard by the shoulder, dragging him away from the biobed. He whispers, low and harsh, eyes burning into McCoy’s. “Don’t you dare say that to me. You don’t know. You have no idea what it was like at that mining colony, not for the 14-year-old son of two of the most hated people in the Empire. The average lifespan there was less than a year. Twenty straight hours of labor and then you had to fight for everything--your food, your bed, your safety. Fight or pay. Guess which one a skinny, pretty teenager ended up doing? Especially when there were plenty of family members of the Kelvin willing to visit a distant mining colony in search of a little revenge.”
The images that bloom in McCoy’s mind while he’s speaking cause his fists to clench. Kirk’s never said a word about his life before Pike, and very little about his life with him, but McCoy thinks he finally understands. In Jim Kirk, Pike’s found the exception to the laws of human nature and the universe. He’s found loyalty, and nothing, maybe not even death, will break it.
“All right,” McCoy says, defeated. “Let me go. I’ll do what you want.”
And McCoy does for 10 grueling hours as the Enterprise limps home. Kirk doesn’t leave; he stays beside the biobed, watching McCoy work through red-rimmed eyes.
McCoy saves Pike’s life and legs, but there’s nothing much he can do to speed the natural healing process, which means a few months of rest where Pike has to hide himself away from the Court for all but the most significant occasions. It may be for this reason that Pike orders McCoy punished for disobeying orders while he’s still on the ship, barely ambulatory.
Ten minutes in the Agony Booth is nothing by Fleet standards but it’s more than McCoy’s ever had to bear, and he’s scared and humiliated by the prospect of Pike witnessing it. It figures that this is the first time they should stand eye-to-eye, Pike wobbling defiantly on crutches, over his doctor’s objection.
“Nobody’s above the rules, McCoy,” Pike says. “By the way, the Acting Captain agrees with me.”
There’s enough of a personalized fuck you in that last sentence that McCoy thinks Pike has tipped his hand. Making an example of McCoy helps no one; half the Fleet is dead and the other half likely jockeying for their positions already, so that the punishment of an uppity doctor is the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Except Pike’s, apparently.
It’s foolish to prod Pike, who may be injured and brittle but is still insanely powerful and, for all McCoy knows, as prone to indulging in petty revenge as anyone who makes it to high command in the Fleet. Still, if he’s going in the Booth anyway, he’d like to have something to show for it.
On impulse, he pulls from his pocket the silver Eagle that Jim gave him years go, which he’s been carrying as some sort of talisman.
He hands it to Pike, who rolls it in his palm. He gives McCoy a discerning look, as if reevaluating an enemy.
Then he gives a curt laugh and nods to the guards to let McCoy go.
“Hope you don’t wish you’d saved this for something bigger, McCoy,” he says, before turning his back on him and walking out. McCoy doesn’t bother to salute, but listens to the sound of the crutches as Pike makes his way painfully down the corridor.
+++++
Penkala is an unlikely place to die: a piss-ant little quasi-desert planet where dull, buff-colored Humanoids scratch out a miserable existence between raging solar storms. The storms produce spectacular auroras but make wave-based communications, not to mention transporter usage, difficult if not impossible.
This is exactly why the Imperial delegation has arrived in a couple of shuttles for a routine shakedown for tribute, and why, when an unexpectedly large and well-armed Penkalan delegation arrives to meet them, in turns into a problem that can’t be solved with hand phasers. The unofficial Fleet motto Everyone for themselves is definitely in effect; Kirk grabs a fistful of McCoy’s shirt and and drags McCoy down a side alley, darting into a small, hut-like house to terrorize its residents out of a couple of sets of robes to conceal their uniforms.
Now there’s less than an hour left before the Enterprise is supposed to unleash death from above on the Penkalan capital, and Kirk and McCoy have fled to a farm a few kilometers beyond the outskirts of the city, as far as they dare to go into the burning, killing desert and maybe, maybe beyond the reach of a 15-kiloton photon torpedo.
The farm has a deep root cellar, as they find out when Kirk ejects the terrified family hiding inside. It’s lit by the cool, blue bioluminescence of the fern-like plants that grow on its walls. The shade and dark feel good after the heat and noise and fear of the city, and if it’s a false sense of safety that eases McCoy’s heartbeat and dries the sweat on his brow, he doesn’t mind.
“You couldn’t have left Spock on the Bridge and had Sulu join the landing party?” McCoy asks as soon as they catch their breath.
“Oh, great, now I get to spend the last hour of my life listening to you nag.” Kirk aims a desultory kick at the cellar’s dirt walls. “I told you, Sulu had standing orders to fire whether we made it back or not. The Grand Admiral hates hostage situations.”
“Even though she has no intention of negotiating for anyone’s release.”
“Why, McCoy--keep talking like that and I’m going to start to question your commitment to the Empire’s military objectives.” It’s an old routine of theirs; McCoy doesn’t hide his disinterest in galactic conquest and Kirk pretends to be on the verge of denouncing him to the Secret Police. In point of fact, he’s left McCoy and his Sickbay in peace as promised and in exchange, McCoy keeps the seditious talk for when they’re alone.
“So,” McCoy says, with the same light sarcasm. “Do you think you’ll get a posthumous medal for this one? Because at the rate we’re going I don’t think you’ll be collecting it in person.”
“Fuck if I know,” Kirk says, scanning the electrified air with his communicator for the fiftieth time and getting static. “Only if Sulu’s doing his job, which means we’ll probably be fine.” Kirk locks the communicator into beacon mode and sets it on a little stump of a table. But McCoy knows that it’s a golden opportunity for Sulu to eliminate most of the Bridge crew in one shot, and it’s not one that the ambitious helmsman is likely to miss. Kirk’s slumped shoulders tell McCoy that he knows it, too.
“Oh, well,” McCoy says, “I’ve got not regrets, I guess.”
“Really?” Kirk asks, and steps closer. “You sure about that?” McCoy can feel the heat from his body in the slight chill, and Kirk’s eyes are a ghostly blue. He places a hand on the back of McCoy’s neck to steady him and a moment later Kirk’s lips are on his. McCoy’s imagined it so often before, more than he’s even imagined fucking, and it’s still better: full lips and a combative tongue and a slippery heat that’s so purely sexual McCoy is hard within seconds.
Kiss of death, McCoy thinks, and doesn’t care.
He kisses back with a ferocity that surprises them both. He wants to touch Kirk’s skin, all of it, to kiss him until he can’t talk. He opens Kirk’s robe and pushes it off his shoulders and it’s like a rocket’s ascent into the blue.
They get naked as fast as the tight space and wildly firing neurons will allow, and McCoy fills his hands with Kirk’s firm, pale flesh. He massages the tender curves of his ass, pinches the soft flesh of his inner flights, sucks and bites at his nipples until Kirk is growling and tugging at his hair, pressing down on his shoulders until McCoy kneels, more than willing, in front of his spectacular cock.
McCoy is a human being but he’s also a doctor, and a cock should hold no special mystery, but Pike made Kirk’s into one, locked it away like a hidden treasure in Bluebeard’s Castle. When McCoy strokes his hand along it, once, twice, in pure anticipatory pleasure and then wraps his lips around it, it’s the purest victory he’s ever known. Even victory in combat can’t taste this sweet to Kirk because it doesn’t have the feel of swollen, velvet flesh in his mouth, the musky smell of intimate places, the way Kirk’s knees buckle, ever so slightly, as he leans into McCoy and strokes his hair.
McCoy reaches down with his free hand to grasp his own cock and it’s like closing a circuit, no different than if it was Kirk’s hand on him, cock in his mouth, no different than if it were Kirk’s lips on his. They were made for this, it’s undeniable; in this little bubble universe where Pike doesn’t exist, McCoy can finally be sure. If only; if only Nero hadn’t come back in time, if only McCoy had finished the job with Pike, if only Kirk had more ordinary deceit in him. But then, that would be another universe, and they’d be different people, and while McCoy’s sure the attraction would still be there he can’t imagine it could ever be as good as it is in this moment.
Kirk comes in McCoy’s mouth with a shout, arching his back and and leaning on McCoy’s shoulders to stop himself from collapsing. McCoy sucks it all down greedily, wishing there were more. Kirk pulls McCoy to his feet and they cling to each other, trembling. He kisses McCoy deeply and without hesitation and finishes him with one hand while he massages his neck with the other, blunt, sure fingers imprinting onto every inch of McCoy’s skin.
When Spock finds them, a little more than an hour later, they’re fully clothed, but it wouldn’t take an inquisitor, much less a telepath, to figure out what’s been going on. Spock informs his captain that the shuttle Vlad is a hundred meters away and withdraws, his discretion more insinuating than anything he could have said.
“Are you going to tell him?” McCoy asks, unable to say the name but knowing Kirk will understand that he means Pike.
Kirk is standing in the shaft of sun and heat from the open trapdoor, lit up gold and green.
“Of course.”
“And what do you think he’ll do to us?”
Kirk claps him on the shoulder, familiar but not intimate, like he did back in the Academy before a drill he knew was likely to make McCoy puke.
“I don’t know.” He presses his lips together as a line appears on his usually untroubled forehead.
+++++
Pike tops off McCoy’s glass with fizzy water from an old-fashioned, silver-topped soda siphon. McCoy watches the bubbles rise, joyful, from the depths. He knows now, from experience, that proximity to death can make everything clearer. Even without Pike’s invasive coaching he could see it now, a steady trajectory toward personal destruction marked by moments of flaming happiness that never lasted long enough. According to what little personal philosophy McCoy possesses, that’s enough, but it doesn’t seem that way, not now, at the bitter end.
“I expected this day would come,” Pike says. “I just didn’t think it would be someone like you.” He’s amused and rueful, like a parent confronted with their kid’s first lover.
“Who, then?”
“The next captain of the Enterprise. That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Children kill their parents, unless the parents kill them first.”
“Jim’s father didn’t,” McCoy hears himself saying.
“No, he didn’t,” Pike says. “And I’m not going to, either. Still, he’ll have to be punished. That’s the way things work.” McCoy goes cold at the word.
“Punished?” he repeats. Pike ignores him and rises to his feet, staring down at McCoy like a judge handing down a sentence.
“We’re done here for now, McCoy.” He takes McCoy’s glass from his unresisting hand. “I’ll see you at 2400, in the captain’s quarters. In the meantime, I’d like you stay in your own cabin and not communicate with anyone. My own guards will help you with that,” he says, as if he’s doing McCoy a favor. “Understood?”
“Yes, admiral,” McCoy acutely aware that his hour of doom hasn’t passed, just been postponed.
+++++
The smirking guards accompany McCoy to Kirk’s quarters at what, on Earth, would be the stroke of midnight. He’s still in his stiff dress uniform and the worse for six hours of gut-churning anticipation.
The captain’s quarters on the Enterprise are both majestic and secure. McCoy’s surprised when the guards nod for him to proceed, alone, down the thick, blood-red carpet to the inner door.
It slides open with a whisper, and the first thing McCoy sees is Kirk, naked, his hands bound to a crossbar over his head, mouth gagged with a bronze admiral’s sash.
“Right on time, doctor.”
McCoy tears his eyes away to look at Pike, who’s standing beside Kirk fully dressed except for his missing sash, posture as easy as before, but eyes bright and alert, demanding attention.
McCoy’s shift in attention back to Kirk is an act of defiance, but he can stop himself from making a visual inventory: there are no marks on Kirk’s body and Pike’s agonizer is still clipped to his belt, though that doesn’t begin to cover the ways Kirk could have been damaged. When McCoy’s gaze finally settles on Kirk’s eyes, he finds them bulging and red-rimmed. He’s making muffled, desperate noises that are swallowed by the glittering fabric.
“What have you done to him?” McCoy whispers.
“In good time,” Pike says. He looks Kirk’s body up and down with proprietary interest, as if he’s an artwork that Pike is considering selling. Kirk is clearly making an effort to calm his breathing, and he’s succeeding until he meets Pike’s blue eyes, and whatever he sees there makes him struggle again.
“McCoy.” Pike places a hand on McCoy’s shoulder and bends toward him with friendly confidentiality, as if they aren’t inches from Kirk’s naked, sweating body. “Do you play cards?”
“Uh, yes, sir,” McCoy says, for a moment baffled beyond terror.
“Good. Because I’m going to give you a chance to get what you want--namely, me out of the picture.” He gives them both an encouraging smile, which is disconcerting to the point of nausea.
“Why in the world would you do that, sir?”
“Because you’ve ruined him, more or less. You taught him to want something new, something I can’t give him. He won’t disobey me, but he won’t give you up, either. Wanting you and abstaining isn’t a matter of discipline any more; it’s putting him at risk. Penkala proved that. If Spock hadn’t found you, you’d be buried under a meter of rubble with smiles on your faces.” He turns to Kirk, as if he’s part of the conversation. “Really, Jim? Is he really that good?”
“So what are you suggesting? That we settle this with a card game?” It has to be a setup, but he can’t think for what.
Pike gives an affable shrug. “Pistols at dawn would be more dramatic, but aren’t really an option. So here’s the proposal: we play a game of your choice. If you win, I turn Kirk over to you, with all the rights and privileges etcetera.”
“And if I lose?” McCoy asks, because Pike’s waiting for him to ask.
“You tell me,” Pike says, running a prideful hand down one of Kirk’s flanks. “What is this worth to you?”
“My life,” McCoy says without hesitation.
“No, too easy. Besides, I could have had that years ago. No, McCoy, you’re going to have to put something on the table that shows you understand the value of what I’m offering.” His touch on Kirk’s skin gentles to the slightest brush of fingertips. “That you’re worthy.”
The picture that forms with quick certainty in McCoy’s mind and makes his insides curl with fear. That’s how he knows it’s the right answer.
“If I lose,” McCoy says, “I’ll voluntarily consign myself to the beryllium mine on Argalon Seven.”
Pike nods in approval. “Very good. For how long?”
“Five years.” It’s the number of years he’s known Kirk. It’s also unsurvivable, and his only chance of escape would be if Pike died at someone other than Kirk’s hands.
“That work for you, Jim?” Pike asks. “You agree to the terms?”
Kirk’s eyes are shadowed and unfocused, but he bows his head in assent. Whatever hope McCoy had that Kirk might still, somehow, pull them out of this vanishes.
“Good,” Pike says, clasping his hands together so the joints pop. “Name your game, McCoy. I’m ready when you are.”
Pike drags out Jim’s folding card table and sets it courtside, underneath Kirk’s silent form and at eye level with his flaccid cock. McCoy has no idea how he’s going to be able to even sit still, let alone concentrate on a card game. When Pike produces a fresh deck and shoots his cuffs like a Vegas sharp, McCoy thinks of old stories about the Devil letting you play for your soul when you were already damned. His Aunt Lida told those stories because she believed in the Devil, and she believed in damnation; just two of many eccentricities that would have made her unsuitable for raising a child anywhere the rule of Empire held more influence.
“Name your game,” Pike says, tapping the deck on the table.
“Gin Rummy.”
Pike barks out a laugh. “You’re a hell of an entertaining guy, McCoy. They teach you that down South, along with cotillion and how to hunt raccoons? Well, I think I remember enough to muddle through. What do you say--standard rules, 25-point bonus for a knock or undercut, play to 100 points?”
“Whatever you say, admiral.” Lida had taught him to play Gin, on long summer evenings, out on the porch when the flies weren’t too bad. Wherever else he’s going tonight--Argalon Seven or Hell--he’ll never be going back to Georgia.
Pike directs McCoy to shuffle and cut the deck. McCoy watches Pike’s nimble hands to keep him honest and because the rest of the room is a bubbling cauldron of things that scare him shitless, from Pike eyes to Kirk’s bed to Kirk’s naked body to the black of space itself.
As he reaches for his cards, there’s a buzzing in his ears and a thudding anvil weight in his chest, and then McCoy’s overtaxed brain gives up and detaches. It’s a wonderful feeling, a weightless clarity, like the battle calm he’s heard Kirk describe.
He studies his cards for a moment and takes the upcard as a matter of course. It’s not a bad hand, with a run of three right off the bat.
“I spent a lot of time today asking you questions, McCoy,” Pike says, discarding a King. “Anything you want to ask me? Or say to me?”
What McCoy would like to say is that he hates people who talk while they’re trying to play cards, but he’s knows it’s a distraction tactic. It won’t work, because McCoy is a reasonable card counter, and because he’s riding his weird danger high. He feels like he can see through the backs of Pike’s cards, hear sounds on the other side of the ship. The only thing he can’t figure out is what’s going through Kirk’s brain, if there’s something he should be doing--arguing or fighting or knocking out Pike and heading for the nearest escape pod--anything other than let the fate of two human beings be decided by 52 beat-up pieces of cardboard.
“Since you mention it, sir,” McCoy says, picking up a well-timed 3 of Clubs from the discard pile, “Why did you pick Kirk in the first place?”
“Knew his parents. Fucked his mother, actually, if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s accurate, though; she never had any genuine interest in anyone besides George.” The game is moving fast; Pike keeps his eyes on his hand and picks up and discards with fluid confidence.
“And why was that?” McCoy figures that Kirk being pissed about his nosiness will be a manageable problem if and when they get themselves out of this.
“They were pretty much of a pair--brilliant, ambitious, passionate. And charismatic, oh boy.” Pike flicks a look at Kirk as if to say, chip off the old blocks.
“I guess none of that helped when it came to the Narada.” McCoy doesn’t know anything beyond what’s in the official histories, but he’s anxious to keep the conversation flowing.
“No, nothing would have. Maybe if they’d started the evacuation sooner...but that isn’t Imperial policy. Go down with the ship, or if that’s not an option, save the senior officers first.”
“So what was George Kirk supposed to do?” McCoy picks a card from the stock pile and realizes he’s close to Gin. “Let his wife and child die for the greater glory of the Empire?”
“Who gives a rat’s ass about the Empire?” Pike asks, shocking McCoy when he’d been feeling pretty unshockable. “No, he was supposed to save himself. That’s what normal, rational people do. Altruism has no place in an efficient society, McCoy. Anybody who doesn’t understand that deserves what they get.”
And with that he raps once on the table, signifying he’s finished with his hand.
The light knock reverberates down McCoy’s spine. He’d been so focused on building his own hand that he lost track of Pike’s. In the final tally he’s able to limit the damage, but the computer notes all the same that Admiral Pike leads by 20 points, though not that Dr. McCoy is one-fifth of the way toward a very short career in mineral extraction.
McCoy and Pike split the next two games, McCoy keeping his mouth shut and his head in play, with the result that Pike still leads, but McCoy’s feeling more confident.
“But was it really altruism?” McCoy asks, as the next game begins. “What about the whole conspiracy theory about the Kirks planning to escape together with a fortune in dilithium, but George not getting out in time?”
Pike sniffs. “Cover story. The truth would have been impossible to explain.”
“The truth? You mean that he sacrificed himself for his wife and child?”
“Yes.” Pike meets his eyes over his cards. “That kind of weakness has no place in the Fleet, even among traitors.”
McCoy nods, but keeps his real opinion to himself.
The game stretches on and McCoy, lulled by the homely sociability of the back-and-forth, begins to wish he’d picked poker, especially when he knocks out and Pike undercuts him. Just that quickly, Pike’s got 68 points and McCoy’s got sweat breaking out on his upper lip. Consignment to Hell is seeming like a real possibility.
So he just deals again, and figures he might as well make the most of his remaining moments and Pike’s expansive mood.
“But you didn’t really answer--why Kirk, sir?”
“Good genes,” Pike says, with a smile and a sidewards glance. “A fine education in the quadrant’s best juvenile prisons and work houses. But mostly, it was him. Seeing him. Talking to him. I took him for a test flight, you might say.”
“Ah.” Now McCoy’s doing everything in his power not to listen.
“Not the kind you’re thinking of, McCoy, though I won’t deny he was a very pretty boy. No, I took him up in a shuttle and showed him the stars. He’d only ever been in the secure hold of a cargo ship. When I showed him what it could be like, I knew he’d do anything, anything to taste that wonder again. That kind of desire’s different from the garden variety greed that drives the galaxy, McCoy. It’s rare, and you can do great things with it.”
With that, Pike lays down a 10 of Diamonds, and McCoy realizes that, out of all the cards in the deck, it’s the one that he needs. He picks it up with a trembling hand, check and rechecks, and then says, “Gin.”
Just like that, he’s back in the game. He ventures what he hopes is a reassuring glance in Kirk’s direction, but Kirk isn’t watching him.
“Very good, McCoy,” Pike says dryly. “Serves me right for indulging in nostalgia.”
McCoy gets up to pour himself a drink of water, feeling weird about making himself at home in the Captain’s quarters, but it’s a small indignity for Kirk compared to the larger ones he’s suffering.
Pike battles back, of course, and after another few games of less consequence it’s Pike with 82 points to McCoy’s 75. Gin or an undercut will put either of them over, and McCoy, who’s been getting steadily more stressed and brain-fogged, wishes the racing night would slow down.
“So you showed Jim the stars, and you figured he’d do anything to get them,” he says, before Pike deals again. “That kind of devotion, that...” He doesn’t say the word. “How was it any different from what brought down his father?”
“I didn’t say that it was.” Pike pauses for a moment, catches McCoy’s gaze and holds it, before he puts the deck down with light thump, such a soft sound for a death knell.
McCoy gulps, and nods. He understands it all now. It’s love that Pike’s talking about, the weakness of slaves and subject planets, the cant of ancient stories. Pike’s figured out a way to exploit it, to make it the engine of his ambition, and Kirk its fuel. It’s one thing when that love is directed at the starry night, at the great ship that carries him through it, but quite another if its object is a doctor with a love of Earth and quiet and a propensity to self-sacrifice.
If Pike kills McCoy now, Kirk will hate him. Since McCoy’s shown that he’d rather die than abandon Kirk, the remaining choice is to turn McCoy into something Kirk will have no use for. Argalon Seven will do that efficiently. A few weeks underground and he’ll be a hollow-eyed, shambling creature unworthy of love or even pity.
It changes nothing. He wasn’t lying when he told Kirk he had no regrets. Kirk would probably never have told him his particular truth; Pike didn’t want to, but here they are.
“Deal,” McCoy says, looking Pike hard and sharp in the eyes.
The game proceeds at an easy pace, neither fast nor slow. When Pike raps on the table, McCoy only jumps a little.
They lay their cards down and McCoy doesn’t bother to count, just stares into the middle distance and hopes the whole game is over, so that he can go right to bed or the brig or wherever Pike wants to send him and Kirk can be released. The night has already gone on much too long
“McCoy.” Pike snaps his fingers in McCoy’s face. “Hello, McCoy?”
“Sorry, sir.” He turns his focus back to the cards.
“McCoy, you have Gin.”
“What?” Now McCoy seems to be having trouble hearing.
“I was counting your deadwood for you, but--you don’t have any. You’ve been sitting on Gin for who knows how many rounds. Do you know what that means?”
McCoy just stares at him, not understanding.
“It means you win.” Pike throws his remaining cards on the table and flops back in his chair like a gambler who’s just gone bust.
“I win?” McCoy can hardly focus for the spots dancing in front of his eyes.
“Yes, McCoy.” Pike turns to look fully at Kirk, whose eyes are wide and alert, looking back at him. “I’ll miss you, Jim, but at least I know now that I’m leaving you in good hands.
Pike gets slowly to his feet, stretches, and points at Kirk’s gagged mouth but doesn’t touch him. “Can I have my sash back?”
“Oh, uh, sure.” McCoy, feeling like the Earth and stars have fallen on his head, stumbles to his feet and fumbles with the knot under two pairs of bright eyes. It yields, and Kirk spits and coughs. McCoy hands the sash to Pike with a sense of having completed some perverse ceremony, and watches in sick fascination as he wraps the saliva-dampened fabric around his waist.
PIke leans in to lay a hand against Kirk’s face.
“This isn’t goodbye, Jim, but it is farewell. I hope your new owner gets as much value out of you as I have.” He withdraws his hand with the ghost of a caress. “Don’t stay up too late, boys. There’s a senior staff meeting at 0800 and you know how I feel about lateness.”
And with that, he turns his back on them both and walks out. McCoy’s eyes follow him until the door closes behind him with a whisper.
“Release cuffs and retract,” Kirk’s hoarse voice says behind him. McCoy turns around in time to see the crossbar vanish into the ceiling and Kirk’s arms fall to his sides. McCoy barely has time to register that little point of information when Kirk says “Ahh” and hunches over, wincing with the pain of circulation returning to his shoulders.
“This part sucks,” he whispers, flexing his arms. When McCoy whips out his tricorder, Kirk bats it away. “Oh, just fucking don’t. Get me some water, okay?”
McCoy does, and Kirk takes the glass in a wobbly hand and drains it. “Can I get you anything else?”
Kirk holds out the glass again. “Maybe something stronger?” When McCoy doesn’t take the glass, or move, he says,with exasperation, “What?”
“After all that, you have nothing to say?” McCoy is starting to vibrate in reaction to everything that’s happened, and anger is as good an emotion as any to attach to it.
“Like what?” Kirk rasps. “I’ve got no more shocking revelations, if that’s what you want.”
“I thought maybe you’d like to say something about the fact that I won your freedom from at the possible cost of sending myself to that--place.”
Kirk gives him an oh, please look that’s no less effective for the fact that he’s naked.
“Don’t flatter yourself. He was cheating the whole time.”
“Cheating? And I beat him anyway?”
“Cheating so that you would win. I could see his cards. That last hand, he fed you every card you needed and when you were too spaced to call Gin, he knocked out.” He sits down heavily on the edge of his bed. “Don’t tell him I told you, okay? I’m sure he had his reasons, but the last thing I want is for you to think you’re good at cards. In fact, you should never play again.”
McCoy sits down next to him, taking the load off his shaky legs. “I swear, the mind games you two play are way above my pay grade. For all I know this whole thing was contrived between you as some form of sick-ass entertainment. You know, make the funny little doctor’s life flash before his eyes--was that it?”
“Nope. I’ve never lied to you, you know. Well,” Kirk amends, cocking his head, “not about anything important. Here, I’ll show you how real it is.”
He turns his head, and McCoy is so conditioned to think of their mouths as mutually repellent objects that he almost jerks away. But Kirk’s lips are warm, maybe a little chafed from the rough treatment of the gag, and McCoy nips at them softly with his own, relying mostly on his tongue to say You son of a bitch and You’re going to drive me to an early grave and Yes.
“You never asked him if he fucked me,” Kirk says somewhere between his chin and his ear.
“It wasn’t important.”
Kirk gives a gravelly chuckle that does weird things to McCoy’s nervous system. “You and your fucked-up priorities. Next thing you’ll be telling me you don’t care if I screw around or not.”
“I don’t, I really don’t. And this whole ‘ownership’ thing--” he puts a hand on Kirk’s neck to push him away, just far enough to look in his eyes, and when he strokes the tight tendon with his thumb, Kirk winces. “Hey,” he says, remembering. “Pike said he punished you. What did he do, Jim? You looked like death warmed over when I got here.”
“Oh, that.” Kirk gives a twisted half smile. “He told me that he’d killed you.”
McCoy feels something hard and tight in his throat. “And you believed him?”
“Yeah,” Kirk says. “I guess he had us both fooled.” He frowns, kicks the bed with the back of his heel, and then grabs McCoy’s hand, fast and tight. “I don’t understand a lot of this, McCoy. You’re going to have to explain.”
“Well, for one thing, sometimes it makes you stupid.” McCoy grips Kirk’s hand like it’s the only thing he’s got in the world.
“Yeah, I got that part,” Kirk says, nodding and squeezing back. “That’s why I said no cards.”