Fic: Fucking for the Empire, MU!Pike/tentacles, NC-17
Title: Fucking for the Empire
Fandom & Pairing: Star Trek AOS, MU!Pike/tentacle creature
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: dub-con, mild D/s, tentacles!
Genre: drama
Word Count: Around 7300
Beta: the helpful ellie_pierson
Summary: Ordered to have sex with a telepathic cephalopod to seal a trade deal, Pike has to work out how to conceal his knowledge that the Empire has no intention of honoring the agreement. This may be the greatest challenge of his career.
A Mirror Universe remix of imachar's lovely In the interests of interspecies relations...
Author's Note: this is a thank-you fic for imachar for all her work in betaing my big bang.
THANK YOU! Your help is, as always, invaluable.
This is not what Chris Pike had envisioned when he'd first heard the term "fucking for the Empire" in Command School. They'd whispered about it with a mixture of fascination and distaste the day a grim-faced and so-not-embarrassed-that-it-couldn't-be-true junior official from the Colonial Corps had spent an afternoon discussing the more unorthodox ways in which treaties and trade deals could be sealed.
Clearly one's first choice in such matters is always force. It is an honor to do business with the Terran Empire and the lesser species, blinded by their genetic shortcomings, often need to be reminded of that fact at the sharp end of an array of torpedoes. But just occasionally the Empire runs across a species that, by some unfortunate quirk of nature, turns out to be resilient in their resistance to the Imperial glory. Then diplomacy is called for, the sort of diplomacy that keeps the enemy distracted long enough for one to find the back-door entrance for the torpedo array. And in a few instances said diplomacy includes sex in the line of duty.
A decade later Chris can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he's actually had to do it. And in every case he's risen to the challenge thanks to disinhibitors and arousal enhancers slipped to him by his grim-faced CMO. In the opinion of all educated Terrans, sex with non-Terran sentient species is little better than sex with an intelligent goat. In Chris's experience, it is probably worse. At least goats wouldn't be able to talk back, unlike that appalling ambassador on Narraax Prime with her shrill protests that his performance had been less than satisfactory.
Clearly the humanoid species are more or less acceptable. One can manage sex with one's so-called allies like the Vulcans by pinching one's nose against the smell and keeping one's eyes closed to avoid the hideously deformed ears. But this.... Chris stares stonily at his orders, the smirking voice of Admiral Sese Seko still ringing in his ears. This is a travesty, an insult of the gravest kind, and - if he faces the facts bluntly - a death-sentence to Captain Christopher Pike's hither-to stellar career in the Imperial Fleet.
He’s not going to be able to fake it this time. The whole point of this encounter is that his emotional responses will be as obvious as his physical ones. Much as he would dearly like to order a subordinate to do a job he does not wish to do himself, the inhabitants of Bectel V have indicated that only the captain of the ISS Nkrumah will be acceptable for this particular ritual. A ritual that happens to involve sexual congress with a two and half meter cephalopod.
There is no way that he is going to be able to mate with this monster and remain in control. The difference in physical strength is just too great. Despite the challenges of Imperial service, he's never let himself get into a situation where he is without resources. Even on his knees to Admirals when back at the Academy, he always had a flick-knife up his sleeve that could sever the femoral artery before the recipient of an artful and talented blowjob could drag his brains from his dick back up to his cranium. Chris has bent at times, but never without a plan to allow him to snap back more powerful than ever.
There is no doubt in his mind that he’s going to be totally at the mercy of the Bectel diplomat, outmatched physically in every way. However it is not the loss of physical control that worries him. He has to believe that he has enough control over his physical responses to force a faked response of desire. It is the mental connection he is concerned about. This treaty is supposedly about trust, and if the humanoid inhabitants of Bectel V, the Y’gran and their co-dependent species, the cephalopoid C'than, are going to trust the Empire sufficiently to let a commercial mining operation in to exploit their ditantalite deposits, they want a demonstration of goodwill in return.
Damn the Empire for being in such desperate need of ditantalite. When they first realised that ditantalum capacitors would allow their communications devices to run nearly three times as fast, they'd allowed the military establishment to sell use into the commercial sector to raise needed funds and so had created an unprecedented consumer demand. Before doing so, had it not occurred to anyone to check if they controlled access to the raw materials? Pike would never have let such a amateur mistake pass on his watch. The Empire had run through their own resources in a few short years and now find the closest reliable supply to be under the watchful, and sadly militarily highly competent, ownership of the denizens of Bectel V.
Which is where Pike and the loathsome squid come in. The C’than are touch telepaths, and the Y’gran, sufficiently well acquainted with Terrans to understand the concept of dissembling, want proof of the Empire's sincerity in the form of an hour of the Captain’s time with one of the senior negotiators. An hour of quality time, as they’re apparently under the not inaccurate impression that Terrans are at their most vulnerable and most unguarded at the moment of sexual release.
Pike has been assured that the C’than official, is willing, indeed positively eager to fulfill its duty, assured also that calling the multi-tentacled pale purple and gray behemoth “it” is just fine since the C’than have non-binary gender-identities that make the use of Standard gendered pronouns pointless (not that Terrans actually give a damn about such niceties). Pike has also been informed that his arousal will feed back to the diplomat, supposedly creating a mutually enjoyable experience, that, while it can’t guarantee anything about the wider intentions of the Empire, will at least provide a tangible demonstration of trust on the part of its most senior representative engaged in this particular negotiation.
Pike knows that his nervousness about this is entirely rational. The negotiations have been anything but threatening. Bectel’s diplomatic staff seems as eager as the Empire for the treaty to be ratified. It is clearly too good to be true. What the hell are the Bectalians thinking? What are his Imperial commanders thinking? No one within a sector's rumor of the edge of the Empire considers the Terrans trustworthy, let alone sincere. The Bectelians are a too highly developed civilization to be this naive.
And to top it all off, Admiral Asshole has just spent an hour telling Chris all sorts of highly classified detail about the plan of attack that will follow the moment the Terrans throw the treaty into the nearest incinerator and forcibly seize the ditantalite mines for their own use. Detail Chris is supposed to suppress in his head while having unwanted, uncontrollable sex with two-and-a-half metres of telepathic squid?
Of all of it, that is the thing that makes him the most angry. He has little doubt that the telepathic abilities of this overgrown octopus are far greater than the Bectalians are letting on, and that Starfleet suspects as much. And the fools back at Starfleet Command think Captain Christopher Pike so stupid that he will not realise that he is being set up, sent to deliver false information that will supposedly mislead the inhabitants of Bectel V as to the nature of the attack they have to anticipate is coming from the Terran Empire. One way or the other this will go wrong and he'll end up killed, either by the Bectalians or by his own commanders.
He's watched from afar as the Admirals he had allied with back in his Command School days have all been shifted to remote postings away from the heart of power in San Francisco. Where once the likes of April and Marchessi had guided Imperial Fleet policy with a ruthless but focused hand, now slime like Sese Seko, abetted by her allies Dolguruky and Voster, control the heart of command.
Pike paces restlessly back and forth in his cabin, fists clenching and unclenching as he tries to contain his anger. He should have been paying closer attention. When Captain Deysel had been killed in that unexpected rebellion on Benbecula it had sounded plausible. Then Captain Q'Tong had been crippled in that fusion chamber explosion on her ship. The engineers responsible had been executed of course but that didn't get Q'Tong out of her hospice bed. The liberal wing within Command is being slowly, systematically sidelined or disposed of. He's been too far into the black for too long to realise what is happening. And now they've come for him.
And won't they laugh, those fat-assed desk-captains back on Terra, when they imagine the renowned Christopher Pike being boned to death by an over-endowed squid. Pike stalks into the bathroom and looks himself in the mirror, aware of the fine tremors of fury running up his torso. He is Captain Christopher Fucking Pike. No one gets to do this to him. He'll find a way out of this. And once he has, his vengeance will be a sight to behold.
He does have one trick up his sleeve. He has abnormally high ESP ratings for a human. It is something that he'd gone to some lengths to get off his medical files, once he'd discovered the fact. With all types of telepathy not a skill humans possess, yet not infrequent among other species, Terrans of course despise any sign of such abilities. Chris, although sharing the general disdain for all beings unfortunate enough not to be Terran, is yet prepared to acknowledge that certain things can be learnt from other species. Knowledge is a tool, whatever its origins. While serving with a few Vulcans on his first tour of duty, he'd learnt a thing or two about mental control and types of shielding.
With laser-like precision, he focuses his attention on the problem at hand. The first challenge is simply to survive the fucking without letting the loathsome squid squirm into his mind as well as into his body. He will just have to maintain an impenetrable mental barrier throughout the act. The fact that there is no chance of taking any emotional pleasure from the coupling should help.
He regards himself steadily in the mirror. This may be the most dangerous thing he's attempted yet in his entire career, but he can do this.
He has to.
* * *
That’s how Chris finds himself, a couple of hours after the negotiations have supposedly been successfully concluded, sprawled utterly naked in a very large bathtub. The water is oily and slick and a very soothing just-above-human-body temperature and the smooth rounded head of the C’than - its name, as near as can be translated for human speech is K’he - is rubbing against his chest, the mobile tips of two inquisitive tentacles exploring the rest of him.
Pike is using a Vulcan breathing technique to attempt to keep his body calm and pliant, while allowing his mind to slip away behind unbreachable walls. He is determined not to let his deception become apparent to K’he, who is now presumably sufficiently well-attached to his naked body to be able to divine his emotional state. He hopes that a certain nervousness will be seen as normal, given the circumstances, and tries to focus that feeling into his discomfort at being quite so naked in the company of a creature that has quite so many undulating appendages.
Once he feels reasonably secure in his control, he allows himself to focus on his partner, reaching out to tentatively stroke a tentacle, hoping that taking some initiative will help him keep his focus. To his surprise, he feels a warm ripple of sensation roll through the firm, pliant body at his side and an echo that could almost be satisfaction roll through his mind. And as if in reward, one tentacle slides up his chest and the tip flicks playfully across his nipple.
His breathing hitches in surprise and his barriers wobble for a moment as he arches involuntarily, shivering as K’he ripples again and uses the tentacle tip to rub back and forth across the taut little rise of flesh. His breath catches again as the rough papillae on the pad of the tentacle rasp across the already sensitive surface, the gentle stimulation sending little shocks of electric tension all the way to his groin. Imperial Fleet sex tends to be a quick and dirty affair, very much focused on dicks being thrust into orifices. He's not used to this kind of extended foreplay and hadn't realised his nipples could be this sensitive. His intense response is taking him by surprise and making it hard to concentrate on concealing his secrets. He sucks in a shaky breath. This may be more difficult to pull off than he'd thought.
His body-tingling awareness of all the muscular power that is curled up next to him in the bathtub isn't helping. He has never felt so out-classed, out-powered, out-weighed as he does at this moment. He is battling to contain his fear, yet at the same time the tentative, inquisitive touches of the C’than are turning him on in ways he would never have thought possible. The dual emotional assault of fear and arousal is nibbling at the edges of his mental control like small waves licking round the base of sandcastle. At the moment they are doing little damage but he knows that they are just the outliers of an inexorably rising tide, driven by the power of an entire ocean.
He focuses once more on his mantra. Control what really matters. Let the rest go. He lets his head fall back against the edge of the tub, his eyes closing as another tentacle works its way across his upper thigh, and then nudges its way down the crease between leg and torso. With K’he still rubbing rhythmically against his chest and rippling so continuously that it’s almost purring, Pike deliberately relaxes into the sensations and meets the creature half way, letting one leg fall to the side as the tip of the tentacle slides inquisitively over his only just waking cock and then curves around the soft, furred heft of his balls.
Pike has noticed over the course of the negotiations that as well as the six sturdy limbs that they use for mobility, the C’than have four longer, more versatile appendages - two with narrow tapered tips that seem to be used for manipulating delicate objects and the other two with flat leaf-shaped pads for gripping. It’s one of the latter that’s currently wrapped firmly around his balls, the rough surface tugging slightly on the thick tight curls as it grips and releases in a stuttering, irregular rhythm that is making his cock firm up at an impressive rate.
He squirms unhappily. Being held by the balls is a little to close to home on his feelings about the entire Terran Empire right now. It is obscene that it should manage to be simultaneously so terrifying and so arousing. Still if one is going to have one's balls ripped off in the line of duty he'll take the C'than over those eunuchs back at headquarters any day.
His mind is jerked brutally back into the present when the tip of one of the finer tentacles weaves its way up the hot twitching length of his dick. Pike bites down on a whimper of fear that morphs into an unashamedly wanton moan as the hot, slippery, silky-smooth organ traces over the weeping slit, hesitating for a moment as if it’s tasting him. Pike watches as the chromatophores on K’he’s skin flash pink and purple and a gorgeous deep indigo.
“Hmmm…” he grunts at the feel of the tip insinuating its way under his foreskin, spreading his own fluids, as well as the oily slickness of the bathwater over the shiny-slick glans and takes a breath before he’s able to go on. “…I guess you like that as much as I do.”
It’s a little odd, sex with someone that is for all practical purposes mute, but Pike has already noticed that K’he’s emotional state can be read on its skin and rapid bright colour changes are indications of intense pleasure. Another flash of magenta and one of those rippling purrs that feels so good and Pike thinks that he might just get away with this.
Maybe this will work, though not quite as he thought. If the sex is this overwhelming, and the C'than is tapping into his own rising arousal, perhaps their mutual distraction will successfully conceal all those other land-mines hiding in his head. Maybe there are a few things Terrans could learn from other species. He’s certainly not complaining.
Moments later K’he is shifting, the heavily muscled motor-appendages twisting and rolling to bring Pike into a cradle of warm, slippery, smooth flesh, now only barely covered by the still warm, oily water. As he settles his full weight onto the firm mass of undulating muscle that is beneath him, Pike’s anxiety level rises just a fraction as he feels the winding tease of the other tapered tentacle - the one that’s not still exploring contours of his now achingly hard prick - as it curves up to his throat, and rubs across the smooth line of his jaw. Pike tenses. Erotic asphyxiation is not an idea that he wants to share with a creature with tentacles that he suspects could crush the trunk of a giant redwood if they wanted to.
When the tentacle finishes its exploration of the curve of his throat and neck and wanders up to trace the arch of his ear he relaxes again. He wonders for a moment if the tip of the appendage is as sensitive as any one of his own extremities, and in an effort to be a little less passive in this whole scenario - and to stop his mind wandering off to dangerous places - he wraps his hand around it and moves it close enough to flick his tongue across the tip. There’s an immediate rippling shudder beneath him, and K’he flashes cerise and violet. Oh yes, apparently it really likes that. The more distracted he can make it, the better.
Pike does it again and this time draws the thumb-thick tip into his mouth, wrapping his tongue along the silky, slightly rubbery skin and suckling firmly. It tastes of the sea, salt and alien minerals all overlaid with a spicy, slightly citrus sweetness that makes his mouth water and then K’he is undulating under him, flashing brightly as the tentacle-tip convulses and swells slightly, leaking more slick fluid that bursts across his taste buds in a brilliant splash of flavor. Okay, forget everything he's ever been told. Inter-species sex just moved up to head the list of the top ten things to be done in a lifetime in space. He feels a ripple of amusement echo through his mind.
Distracted by sucking on the tentacle, it takes Pike a moment to notice that his cock is now firmly wrapped in the grip of one of the grasping tentacles and it’s jerking him in a torturously slow-motion hand job. Or maybe that should be a tentacle-job, whatever it is it feels fantastic. He realizes that the tentacle that has been teasing him - the partner to the one currently in his mouth - must have produced the same slick viscous fluid and it’s now slicking his cock, acting as a very effective lubricant. Which is a comforting thought because that same tentacle has now squirmed beneath Pike’s sac, his leg lifted out of the way by an accommodating motor-limb and it’s teasing along the cleft of his ass. All the way to his coccyx and back to his balls, again and again, each time neatly avoiding the tight, flexing muscle that guards his entrance, tracing around it but never quite giving Pike the contact that he wants. And he does want it. It takes him by surprise, the realization that he is completely aroused by K’he’s attentions. His myriad of concerns have been overwhelmed by his physical and emotional responses to this expert and incredibly attentive seduction.
'Fucking tease', he thinks as he he scrapes his teeth lightly down the the tentacle that is quivering and throbbing against his tongue. He suddenly want to prove that he can make this good for the creature, too, not just as a distraction to hide his secrets but as a mark of his ability to be brilliant at all things. He nibbles and nips and licks soothingly in turn and tentacle glows in a rapid-cycling light-show of pink, purple and indigo. He sprawls in the warm water, pulling his legs wanton-wide across the pliant flesh at his back, pushing back with his ass. He's not often let himself indulge in this kind of sex but that is for lack of safe opportunity, rather than lack of interest. It features often enough in the privacy of his fantasies.
K’he ripples, and he feels shivers of something almost like laughter running through his mind as it delicately circles the wet, slippery tip of the tentacle against Pike’s asshole. 'Unnghh…fuck...please'. Another mental plea, he knows that speech is pretty much superfluous, he can’t imagine that K’he can’t feel exactly what he wants - his body and certainly all of his conscious mind screaming for the C’than to just get on with it and fuck him, please, now.
As the tentacle pushes in a tantalizing tease just past the tight ring of muscle, he feels a different type of push in his mind, an intruder as elusive as a draught, riffling discreetly through thoughts now lying buried beneath the pulsing layers of arousal. The expert seduction has allowed him to forget that dealing with the sex is the least of his worries in this situation. Pike may be aware of the intrusion but he does not have the mental control to hide that awareness. He turns on the intruder, roughly tearing away the veils of arousal that are clouding his mind.
K'he stills in his head. He feels waves of startled surprise. Humans are not supposed to have any telepathic ability. Pike pushes mentally towards the intruder, as if trying to physically grapple with his opponent. The push takes him beyond the initial awareness of ripples of emotion, into a tumble of memory that is clearly not his own. The creature thinks in images rather than words, although it can understand the speech of the humanoid Y’gran and of the Terrans. Thrusting blindly forward, aware that he will never be stronger in this encounter than in this moment of initial surprise, he see memories of briefing meetings, the discussion of just how mentally crippled Terrans are with their lack of telepathy, the utter conviction that every word they are being told by the Terran negotiators is a lie, the plan to investigate the mind of the Terran's lead warrior, the assumption that he would be quite unaware of the intrusion.
Pike pauses in his headlong rush when it occurs to him that K'he is making no effort to stop him or to hide its memories. He senses intense curiosity and oddly, a perverse delight that this humanoid has proved more interesting than promised. C'thans do not see in the same way humanoids do, so the memories are oddly angled and strangely out-of-focus for Pike and he feels himself succumbing to a bilious sort of mental motion sickness. He pulls back into himself and they remain in a mental stand-off in his head. The physical world has retreated in his awareness although he senses that K'he has stopped its seduction, although it is still holding his limbs in its tentacles.
Rather than hunting for specific memories Pike lets himself reach out to sense the emotions of the cephalopod. He's never done anything like this but he's always been fascinated by new experiences and he is proud that he's managing to cope with doing this at all. However the emotions he encounters soon sober his excitement. K'he is curious, quite unthreatened, amused by his child-like exertions at mental control. 'Child-like?' Pike thinks, somewhat offended. He is surprised that he's managing to do this at all. He is offered an image of a school of baby cephalopods excitedly splashing in shallow waters, trying to work out how to control ten variously sized appendages without tying themselves up in insoluble knots. The memory is gently given but is also deliberately patronizing.
Pike pushes past it, refusing to be distracted and comes up against a wall of absolute confidence. The denizens of Bectel V are completely determined that they will not submit to the Terran Empire. They understand that their resistance may come at great cost. They are aware that every advantage they can win will be of use. But they are conscious of a military might that is far greater than anything the Imperial intelligence services have been able to uncover. And every thought and emotion in K'he's mind drips with disdain for the Terrans.
Pike feels his own anger welling up. He may have his own reservations about the Empire but he's damned if he's going to be judged by a jumped-up squid that can't even make its way in the world without its co-dependent humanoid species. He pushes back with his intimate knowledge of the military might of the Terrans and their subordinate colony planets. He realizes his mistake as soon as K'he reaches eagerly towards this treasure-trove of information. Powered by a surge of panic, he draws on everything he has ever learnt from Vulcan ship-mates and locks his knowledge down behind a grey wall that extends out into the mists of infinite distance.
K'he pushes gently against the wall and then gives up the attempt without exerting any real mental effort. A wary Pike is surprised to feel a kind of paternal pride emanating from the C'than. The small child has impressed the adult by doing something unexpectedly clever. He detects a sort of mental ruffling of his hair by K'he. But however able the child may prove to be at any one moment, the adult can still pick it up with little effort and put it on the naughty step.
In a wet slither of limbs K’he moves suddenly, jerking Pike's mind back to their physical surroundings, as it arranges him with arms pulled up above his head, pressed back against the lip of the bath, and legs lifted and pulled open to expose his ass. Panic rolls through him, his heart-rate spiking and his cock softening as the powerful tentacles wrap around his thighs and upper arms, tightening just past the point of discomfort, letting him know in no uncertain terms that there is nothing he can do to get out of this. There’s an immediate ripple-purr that doesn't quite soothe, hinting that harm is not intended right at this moment, although that is no guarantee that it won't be coming in the near future.
For long minutes, the only sound is the soft lap of the water on the edge of the bathtub as K’he moves in slow, rhythmic ripples under Pike, tempting him to relax into the new position. The grasping tentacle has his cock wrapped in a warm firm grip and it undulates around him, jacking him back to a mandatory quivering, slowly leaking, full hardness. This is no longer mutual. This is now a ruthless display of the C'than's ability to read his every physical nuance, to force him to levels of arousal he has never imagined, to drill down into his deepest, dirtiest fantasies and use them ruthlessly against him.
It is now making no effort to disguise its presence in his head, riffling blatantly through his sexual encounters, casually mocking his lack of experience with other species. It apparently thinks him boringly vanilla. And then it moves on into his fantasies. It is taunting him to give up his lock-down on his strategic knowledge to try and protect these embarrassingly intimate details instead. They both know he can't manage to do both at once. It is now plumbing depths of want that he only very occasionally acknowledges, even to himself. He has no choice but to let it go where it will. He realizes that it is going to destroy him by giving him exactly what he has never been able to admit he really wants.
The tentacle is back; the slow, slick press of flesh at his sphincter making the muscle flex and twitch in involuntary spasms. He hasn’t bottomed in a long damn time, there is no one in his life that he trusts with this kind of control and he's long since established what happens to any officer stupid enough to think they can force Pike into giving this up. But the squid is oiling effortlessly through his mind, flipping casually through his hidden fantasies. It has now found the place where he retreats to in the small hours of a sleepless night, when he wishes he could share his life with someone he could genuinely trust, when he wishes he could turn himself over to someone else's care and control, trust someone else to take him down from the unrelenting pressure of survival in the Imperial cesspit.
The warm tentacle-tip presses against the muscle until it yields and it’s slick and hot and slides in so easily, twisting as it thrusts roughly, his mind filling with the snide knowledge that the squid knows just how much he wants it like this as it stretches the muscles and the passage beyond, preparing them to take something far more substantial.
Something far more substantial turns out to be one of the thicker, more muscular motor-limbs. K'he brings it up in front of Pike's face, shows him with cool amusement how the limb, tapered at the tip, is capable of swelling to the thickness of Pike’s wrist, of his forearm, of his thigh... Pike is wincing just watching it. This thing could swell inside him until it literally ripped him open from the inside. He can taste the bile of his fear as the muscular length moves back to his ass, sliding easily past the breached muscle and begins to force him open with slow rhythmic thrusts, going deeper and getting thicker with each pulse.
K'he continues to wander through his fantasies as it pulses inside him, digging below the dirty dreams of having control taken from him, being ordered to take it and like it, begging for it from someone he trusts. Now it is looking for a face to put on the man that Pike wants to go on his knees for. A mixture of obstinacy and embarrassment keeps Pike resisting as long as he can, trying to keep the face grayed out, trying to keep the name out of focus. HIs insolence is punished as the tentacle thickens to an almost unbearable girth before starting to throb slowly. Oh holy hell - it’s like being fucked with a warm, supple, living vibrator, and it’s all Pike can do not to howl with the sheer intensity of it. And then the intruder is pressed, firmly, deliberately, against his prostate as a pulse of electricity fires across the little gland.
His defences are brutally short-circuited and the face snaps into focus. His grim-faced son-of-a-bitch of a CMO looks back at him with clear cold blue eyes. K'he's amusement echoes through him as it realizes that he's worked with this man for nearly two tours without confessing his attraction, fearing the danger of rejection, fearing even more revealing to Boyce the kind of relationship he'd really like to have. He'd never have been able to hold his authority as an Imperial captain if it had been known he'd wanted not to dominate his CMO but be dominated by him.
Then the intensity of the assault on his groin eases as K'he's amusement shifts into puzzlement about why affection and attraction should be so dangerous that it needs to be ruthlessly hidden like this. It looks now at the most pathetic of his comfort fantasies, fantasies that are all about Boyce and have nothing to do with sex, that are just about love and mutual respect and a world where that could be openly expressed. He feels the creature's dislike of him dissipating to be replaced by a horrified pity.
Pitied by a squid. What a way to end his glorious career in Imperial service.
The limb continues to spasm and quiver in his ass, the other tentacles shifting gently in restless patterns across his skin. It is enough of a distraction to stop him managing to regain control of his mental defences. Still the intensity has been dialed down. K'he is feeding him a random stream of imagery instead. What the Terran Empire looks like to outsiders, corrupt, uncivilized, their cruelty a weakness, not a strength. Pike has never considered the Empire from this perspective and he is not encouraged by what he sees. He is further confused as he realizes that his desire for love, which he has always considered a shameful weakness to be hidden at all costs, the C'than believes to be a strength. K'he steers him towards memories of Bectel V. He see the co-dependent species strengthened by their understanding of each other, enhanced by their ability to know that there is more than one way of seeing the world. He sees beautiful seas, gambling squidlets in sunlit shallows, humanoid youngsters running shrieking through the surf, all watched over by loving adults, affection and respect flowing from being to being...
Pike lets the images wash by, focusing not so much on the content but on the feeling of K'he. Terrans are arrogantly certain that the other sentient species, for all they possess basic speech and intellect, cannot possibly actually think and feel and reason with the subtly and complexity of a human. Frankly Pike has always suspected that most humans fail to reach his own breadth and depth of capability. It is easier to direct the fate of other beings when one believes them all fundamentally retarded in their thinking.
But now that he is floating deep inside the mind of an alien species, he can see that he - that all Terrans - are wrong. There is beauty here, and complexity that is beyond his understanding. There are naves of emotion that rise to heavens he cannot visualize. There are caverns of connectedness to the environment that are like nothing he has ever imagined. How much knowledge and wonder and unrealized possibilities have been destroyed by Terrans annihilating planets and populations as they hunt resources to augment their own importance?
There is a gentle sorrow in K'he as it pulls back from these thoughts and slowly reawakens the vibrating tentacle buried in his ass. It offers him regret and apology but still it will do what it must to protect its own planet. He understands now how this is going to go. The creature will ramp up his arousal to levels beyond anything he's ever known, using every deep and dirty desire of his life to do so. And in the moment of orgasm all his mental defences will fall, his mind left unguarded, every secret he's fought so hard to protect laid bare to his ravisher.
One of the reasons Pike is such a successful captain is his ability to make complex decisions very rapidly. However, this moment of choice is surprisingly straightforward. He may in fact have no choice here, but still he will choose to jump rather than be pushed. 'Wait!' he thinks fiercely. With what little freedom of movement he has, he pulls all the free tentacles towards him. He twists to press his face against the quivering bulk of the cephalopod. And then he lets down all his mental barriers.
He thinks with vicious clarity of every detail of his briefing by Admiral Seke Seko, sharing his bone-deep conviction that the entire thing is a set-up. He shares everything he's learnt about the likely course of the invasion of Bectel V. And then he gives his mind to K'he to wander where it wishes in everything else he knows of the Empire. The creature is clearly better at multi-tasking than he is. It browses tenderly through his mind while simultaneously giving him the reward of its body.
With his head freed from its desperate efforts at mental subterfuge, he gives himself up to surfing the sensations K'he is creating in his body. The warm, smooth flesh beneath him quivers in almost constant trembling spasms. With a slow deep pulse the tentacle inside him swells once again and begins to thrust slowly in and out of his over-stretched and over-sensitized ass. He has to think that this must be what it feels like to be fisted. The sensation is utterly overwhelming. With the grasping tentacle working his cock in a fast, relentless rhythm Pike is hovering on the precipice of his orgasm even as the two free tentacles find ways to wring even more response out of him - one pressing against his perineum to give his prostate just that little extra nudge of feeling - the other flat on his chest, still flickering across exquisitely sensitized nipples.
Every physical sensation is profoundly heightened by a mental caress of gratitude and respect, a tender affection that leaves him trembling with emotion. Suckling desperately on the tentacle tip in a probably vain effort to feed some of this overwhelming sensation back to his partner, Pike finds that his orgasm is intensified by the additional tension of straining against the living restraints in silence. Thrashing up in a spasm of whipcord tense muscles and twisting tendons - sinews standing out against his arched body as his cock spurts thick ropes of milky come across his chest and belly - he’s only just sufficiently aware of his surroundings to feel the sudden flush of searing heat in all the places that he and K’he are connected.
* * *
When he is once again conscious and able to move, Pike opens his eyes to find that K’he is rubbing one tentacle across his sticky abdomen, still coursing through a whole series of colours from deepest indigo and crimson slowly fading to a pale, almost iridescent rose-pink and faintest lavender. He can feel a slightly astonished satisfaction washing off the creature, as if it has been as taken by surprise as him by the intensity of it all. He squirms more deeply into the tangle of tentacles and lets the sensation of deep, loving lassitude wash over him. He has no idea what he is going to do next and for now he is happy to hide from the future in the bliss of the afterglow.
At last K'he nudges gently at his mind, offering for inspection a thought found deep in Pike's head. He squirms with embarrassment at the sight of another of his more pathetic comfort fantasies, in which he allies with his CMO and his first officer, highjacks his ship, and flees the Empire to offer his services to the Alliance of Free Planets, the loose alliance of species that live in the neutral zone between the Terran and Klingon Empires, playing the one off against the other in order to maintain their independence.
He feels K'he's puzzlement at his discomfort. 'I can't control the ship on my own', he offers mentally. 'And just the act of attempting to find out if One or Boyce might be amenable to changing sides will get me executed if either of them is not in agreement. It's a hopeless dream.'
K'he hums thoughtfully inside his head, an odd sensation that is almost ticklish. Then it offers him a set of scenes, similar to the memories he saw before but from the fuzzy quality he gathers that these are idea of a possible future rather than memories of the past. He sees the Bectelians stalling for more time by demanding certain further additions to the treaty, using the knowledge they've gained from Pike to keep the Terrans eager while not quite completing the agreement. He sees their ambassador complimenting Pike's performance but asking for the assurance of two more senior officers, the first officer and the medical specialist. He sees K'he riffling through their minds as he has done with Pike and then sharing with Pike what he finds out about their loyalties. He sees himself departing for free space...
His post-orgasmic lassitude is completely dispelled as he wriggles upright within the nest of tentacles. Oh yes, he likes the idea. If either Boyce or One are on side, it will probably be enough. If they both are... Then he can do extraordinary things. If they are in fact loyal to the Empire, well then, a forearm-sized tentacle up the ass serves them right. He offers an image of his own to K'he. If he can fool his commanders into thinking he has successfully carried out the deception of K'he and he stays in Imperial service for the moment, his ship will be the lead vessel in the attack on Bectel V once the Empire chooses to break the treaty. He can elect to defect at a pivotal moment, agreed in advance with the Bectelians, giving them a major advantage and enhancing his chances of getting away with the ISS Nkrumah without being stopped.
K'he's approval of this plan suffuses his mind like summer sunshine. With the sensation of a sly smile, it offers the image of looking through Boyce's mind to see if Pike's attraction is returned. Pike finds himself startled into laughter as he rubs his naked body sinuously against the tangle of tentacles, kicking his legs to set the warm water lapping against them both. "Just full of bright ideas, aren't you?" he says to K'he. "For the moment, how about another fuck? Purely in the interests of inter-species relations, of course."
He feels approval and amusement ripple through his mind as the tentacles start to ripple over his skin. Pike thinks to himself that this fucking for the Empire thing really does have a lot to recommend it. And the Empire will indeed be royally fucked by the time he's done.
- THE END -
Fandom & Pairing: Star Trek AOS, MU!Pike/tentacle creature
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: dub-con, mild D/s, tentacles!
Genre: drama
Word Count: Around 7300
Beta: the helpful ellie_pierson
Summary: Ordered to have sex with a telepathic cephalopod to seal a trade deal, Pike has to work out how to conceal his knowledge that the Empire has no intention of honoring the agreement. This may be the greatest challenge of his career.
A Mirror Universe remix of imachar's lovely In the interests of interspecies relations...
Author's Note: this is a thank-you fic for imachar for all her work in betaing my big bang.
THANK YOU! Your help is, as always, invaluable.
This is not what Chris Pike had envisioned when he'd first heard the term "fucking for the Empire" in Command School. They'd whispered about it with a mixture of fascination and distaste the day a grim-faced and so-not-embarrassed-that-it-couldn't-be-true junior official from the Colonial Corps had spent an afternoon discussing the more unorthodox ways in which treaties and trade deals could be sealed.
Clearly one's first choice in such matters is always force. It is an honor to do business with the Terran Empire and the lesser species, blinded by their genetic shortcomings, often need to be reminded of that fact at the sharp end of an array of torpedoes. But just occasionally the Empire runs across a species that, by some unfortunate quirk of nature, turns out to be resilient in their resistance to the Imperial glory. Then diplomacy is called for, the sort of diplomacy that keeps the enemy distracted long enough for one to find the back-door entrance for the torpedo array. And in a few instances said diplomacy includes sex in the line of duty.
A decade later Chris can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he's actually had to do it. And in every case he's risen to the challenge thanks to disinhibitors and arousal enhancers slipped to him by his grim-faced CMO. In the opinion of all educated Terrans, sex with non-Terran sentient species is little better than sex with an intelligent goat. In Chris's experience, it is probably worse. At least goats wouldn't be able to talk back, unlike that appalling ambassador on Narraax Prime with her shrill protests that his performance had been less than satisfactory.
Clearly the humanoid species are more or less acceptable. One can manage sex with one's so-called allies like the Vulcans by pinching one's nose against the smell and keeping one's eyes closed to avoid the hideously deformed ears. But this.... Chris stares stonily at his orders, the smirking voice of Admiral Sese Seko still ringing in his ears. This is a travesty, an insult of the gravest kind, and - if he faces the facts bluntly - a death-sentence to Captain Christopher Pike's hither-to stellar career in the Imperial Fleet.
He’s not going to be able to fake it this time. The whole point of this encounter is that his emotional responses will be as obvious as his physical ones. Much as he would dearly like to order a subordinate to do a job he does not wish to do himself, the inhabitants of Bectel V have indicated that only the captain of the ISS Nkrumah will be acceptable for this particular ritual. A ritual that happens to involve sexual congress with a two and half meter cephalopod.
There is no way that he is going to be able to mate with this monster and remain in control. The difference in physical strength is just too great. Despite the challenges of Imperial service, he's never let himself get into a situation where he is without resources. Even on his knees to Admirals when back at the Academy, he always had a flick-knife up his sleeve that could sever the femoral artery before the recipient of an artful and talented blowjob could drag his brains from his dick back up to his cranium. Chris has bent at times, but never without a plan to allow him to snap back more powerful than ever.
There is no doubt in his mind that he’s going to be totally at the mercy of the Bectel diplomat, outmatched physically in every way. However it is not the loss of physical control that worries him. He has to believe that he has enough control over his physical responses to force a faked response of desire. It is the mental connection he is concerned about. This treaty is supposedly about trust, and if the humanoid inhabitants of Bectel V, the Y’gran and their co-dependent species, the cephalopoid C'than, are going to trust the Empire sufficiently to let a commercial mining operation in to exploit their ditantalite deposits, they want a demonstration of goodwill in return.
Damn the Empire for being in such desperate need of ditantalite. When they first realised that ditantalum capacitors would allow their communications devices to run nearly three times as fast, they'd allowed the military establishment to sell use into the commercial sector to raise needed funds and so had created an unprecedented consumer demand. Before doing so, had it not occurred to anyone to check if they controlled access to the raw materials? Pike would never have let such a amateur mistake pass on his watch. The Empire had run through their own resources in a few short years and now find the closest reliable supply to be under the watchful, and sadly militarily highly competent, ownership of the denizens of Bectel V.
Which is where Pike and the loathsome squid come in. The C’than are touch telepaths, and the Y’gran, sufficiently well acquainted with Terrans to understand the concept of dissembling, want proof of the Empire's sincerity in the form of an hour of the Captain’s time with one of the senior negotiators. An hour of quality time, as they’re apparently under the not inaccurate impression that Terrans are at their most vulnerable and most unguarded at the moment of sexual release.
Pike has been assured that the C’than official, is willing, indeed positively eager to fulfill its duty, assured also that calling the multi-tentacled pale purple and gray behemoth “it” is just fine since the C’than have non-binary gender-identities that make the use of Standard gendered pronouns pointless (not that Terrans actually give a damn about such niceties). Pike has also been informed that his arousal will feed back to the diplomat, supposedly creating a mutually enjoyable experience, that, while it can’t guarantee anything about the wider intentions of the Empire, will at least provide a tangible demonstration of trust on the part of its most senior representative engaged in this particular negotiation.
Pike knows that his nervousness about this is entirely rational. The negotiations have been anything but threatening. Bectel’s diplomatic staff seems as eager as the Empire for the treaty to be ratified. It is clearly too good to be true. What the hell are the Bectalians thinking? What are his Imperial commanders thinking? No one within a sector's rumor of the edge of the Empire considers the Terrans trustworthy, let alone sincere. The Bectelians are a too highly developed civilization to be this naive.
And to top it all off, Admiral Asshole has just spent an hour telling Chris all sorts of highly classified detail about the plan of attack that will follow the moment the Terrans throw the treaty into the nearest incinerator and forcibly seize the ditantalite mines for their own use. Detail Chris is supposed to suppress in his head while having unwanted, uncontrollable sex with two-and-a-half metres of telepathic squid?
Of all of it, that is the thing that makes him the most angry. He has little doubt that the telepathic abilities of this overgrown octopus are far greater than the Bectalians are letting on, and that Starfleet suspects as much. And the fools back at Starfleet Command think Captain Christopher Pike so stupid that he will not realise that he is being set up, sent to deliver false information that will supposedly mislead the inhabitants of Bectel V as to the nature of the attack they have to anticipate is coming from the Terran Empire. One way or the other this will go wrong and he'll end up killed, either by the Bectalians or by his own commanders.
He's watched from afar as the Admirals he had allied with back in his Command School days have all been shifted to remote postings away from the heart of power in San Francisco. Where once the likes of April and Marchessi had guided Imperial Fleet policy with a ruthless but focused hand, now slime like Sese Seko, abetted by her allies Dolguruky and Voster, control the heart of command.
Pike paces restlessly back and forth in his cabin, fists clenching and unclenching as he tries to contain his anger. He should have been paying closer attention. When Captain Deysel had been killed in that unexpected rebellion on Benbecula it had sounded plausible. Then Captain Q'Tong had been crippled in that fusion chamber explosion on her ship. The engineers responsible had been executed of course but that didn't get Q'Tong out of her hospice bed. The liberal wing within Command is being slowly, systematically sidelined or disposed of. He's been too far into the black for too long to realise what is happening. And now they've come for him.
And won't they laugh, those fat-assed desk-captains back on Terra, when they imagine the renowned Christopher Pike being boned to death by an over-endowed squid. Pike stalks into the bathroom and looks himself in the mirror, aware of the fine tremors of fury running up his torso. He is Captain Christopher Fucking Pike. No one gets to do this to him. He'll find a way out of this. And once he has, his vengeance will be a sight to behold.
He does have one trick up his sleeve. He has abnormally high ESP ratings for a human. It is something that he'd gone to some lengths to get off his medical files, once he'd discovered the fact. With all types of telepathy not a skill humans possess, yet not infrequent among other species, Terrans of course despise any sign of such abilities. Chris, although sharing the general disdain for all beings unfortunate enough not to be Terran, is yet prepared to acknowledge that certain things can be learnt from other species. Knowledge is a tool, whatever its origins. While serving with a few Vulcans on his first tour of duty, he'd learnt a thing or two about mental control and types of shielding.
With laser-like precision, he focuses his attention on the problem at hand. The first challenge is simply to survive the fucking without letting the loathsome squid squirm into his mind as well as into his body. He will just have to maintain an impenetrable mental barrier throughout the act. The fact that there is no chance of taking any emotional pleasure from the coupling should help.
He regards himself steadily in the mirror. This may be the most dangerous thing he's attempted yet in his entire career, but he can do this.
He has to.
* * *
That’s how Chris finds himself, a couple of hours after the negotiations have supposedly been successfully concluded, sprawled utterly naked in a very large bathtub. The water is oily and slick and a very soothing just-above-human-body temperature and the smooth rounded head of the C’than - its name, as near as can be translated for human speech is K’he - is rubbing against his chest, the mobile tips of two inquisitive tentacles exploring the rest of him.
Pike is using a Vulcan breathing technique to attempt to keep his body calm and pliant, while allowing his mind to slip away behind unbreachable walls. He is determined not to let his deception become apparent to K’he, who is now presumably sufficiently well-attached to his naked body to be able to divine his emotional state. He hopes that a certain nervousness will be seen as normal, given the circumstances, and tries to focus that feeling into his discomfort at being quite so naked in the company of a creature that has quite so many undulating appendages.
Once he feels reasonably secure in his control, he allows himself to focus on his partner, reaching out to tentatively stroke a tentacle, hoping that taking some initiative will help him keep his focus. To his surprise, he feels a warm ripple of sensation roll through the firm, pliant body at his side and an echo that could almost be satisfaction roll through his mind. And as if in reward, one tentacle slides up his chest and the tip flicks playfully across his nipple.
His breathing hitches in surprise and his barriers wobble for a moment as he arches involuntarily, shivering as K’he ripples again and uses the tentacle tip to rub back and forth across the taut little rise of flesh. His breath catches again as the rough papillae on the pad of the tentacle rasp across the already sensitive surface, the gentle stimulation sending little shocks of electric tension all the way to his groin. Imperial Fleet sex tends to be a quick and dirty affair, very much focused on dicks being thrust into orifices. He's not used to this kind of extended foreplay and hadn't realised his nipples could be this sensitive. His intense response is taking him by surprise and making it hard to concentrate on concealing his secrets. He sucks in a shaky breath. This may be more difficult to pull off than he'd thought.
His body-tingling awareness of all the muscular power that is curled up next to him in the bathtub isn't helping. He has never felt so out-classed, out-powered, out-weighed as he does at this moment. He is battling to contain his fear, yet at the same time the tentative, inquisitive touches of the C’than are turning him on in ways he would never have thought possible. The dual emotional assault of fear and arousal is nibbling at the edges of his mental control like small waves licking round the base of sandcastle. At the moment they are doing little damage but he knows that they are just the outliers of an inexorably rising tide, driven by the power of an entire ocean.
He focuses once more on his mantra. Control what really matters. Let the rest go. He lets his head fall back against the edge of the tub, his eyes closing as another tentacle works its way across his upper thigh, and then nudges its way down the crease between leg and torso. With K’he still rubbing rhythmically against his chest and rippling so continuously that it’s almost purring, Pike deliberately relaxes into the sensations and meets the creature half way, letting one leg fall to the side as the tip of the tentacle slides inquisitively over his only just waking cock and then curves around the soft, furred heft of his balls.
Pike has noticed over the course of the negotiations that as well as the six sturdy limbs that they use for mobility, the C’than have four longer, more versatile appendages - two with narrow tapered tips that seem to be used for manipulating delicate objects and the other two with flat leaf-shaped pads for gripping. It’s one of the latter that’s currently wrapped firmly around his balls, the rough surface tugging slightly on the thick tight curls as it grips and releases in a stuttering, irregular rhythm that is making his cock firm up at an impressive rate.
He squirms unhappily. Being held by the balls is a little to close to home on his feelings about the entire Terran Empire right now. It is obscene that it should manage to be simultaneously so terrifying and so arousing. Still if one is going to have one's balls ripped off in the line of duty he'll take the C'than over those eunuchs back at headquarters any day.
His mind is jerked brutally back into the present when the tip of one of the finer tentacles weaves its way up the hot twitching length of his dick. Pike bites down on a whimper of fear that morphs into an unashamedly wanton moan as the hot, slippery, silky-smooth organ traces over the weeping slit, hesitating for a moment as if it’s tasting him. Pike watches as the chromatophores on K’he’s skin flash pink and purple and a gorgeous deep indigo.
“Hmmm…” he grunts at the feel of the tip insinuating its way under his foreskin, spreading his own fluids, as well as the oily slickness of the bathwater over the shiny-slick glans and takes a breath before he’s able to go on. “…I guess you like that as much as I do.”
It’s a little odd, sex with someone that is for all practical purposes mute, but Pike has already noticed that K’he’s emotional state can be read on its skin and rapid bright colour changes are indications of intense pleasure. Another flash of magenta and one of those rippling purrs that feels so good and Pike thinks that he might just get away with this.
Maybe this will work, though not quite as he thought. If the sex is this overwhelming, and the C'than is tapping into his own rising arousal, perhaps their mutual distraction will successfully conceal all those other land-mines hiding in his head. Maybe there are a few things Terrans could learn from other species. He’s certainly not complaining.
Moments later K’he is shifting, the heavily muscled motor-appendages twisting and rolling to bring Pike into a cradle of warm, slippery, smooth flesh, now only barely covered by the still warm, oily water. As he settles his full weight onto the firm mass of undulating muscle that is beneath him, Pike’s anxiety level rises just a fraction as he feels the winding tease of the other tapered tentacle - the one that’s not still exploring contours of his now achingly hard prick - as it curves up to his throat, and rubs across the smooth line of his jaw. Pike tenses. Erotic asphyxiation is not an idea that he wants to share with a creature with tentacles that he suspects could crush the trunk of a giant redwood if they wanted to.
When the tentacle finishes its exploration of the curve of his throat and neck and wanders up to trace the arch of his ear he relaxes again. He wonders for a moment if the tip of the appendage is as sensitive as any one of his own extremities, and in an effort to be a little less passive in this whole scenario - and to stop his mind wandering off to dangerous places - he wraps his hand around it and moves it close enough to flick his tongue across the tip. There’s an immediate rippling shudder beneath him, and K’he flashes cerise and violet. Oh yes, apparently it really likes that. The more distracted he can make it, the better.
Pike does it again and this time draws the thumb-thick tip into his mouth, wrapping his tongue along the silky, slightly rubbery skin and suckling firmly. It tastes of the sea, salt and alien minerals all overlaid with a spicy, slightly citrus sweetness that makes his mouth water and then K’he is undulating under him, flashing brightly as the tentacle-tip convulses and swells slightly, leaking more slick fluid that bursts across his taste buds in a brilliant splash of flavor. Okay, forget everything he's ever been told. Inter-species sex just moved up to head the list of the top ten things to be done in a lifetime in space. He feels a ripple of amusement echo through his mind.
Distracted by sucking on the tentacle, it takes Pike a moment to notice that his cock is now firmly wrapped in the grip of one of the grasping tentacles and it’s jerking him in a torturously slow-motion hand job. Or maybe that should be a tentacle-job, whatever it is it feels fantastic. He realizes that the tentacle that has been teasing him - the partner to the one currently in his mouth - must have produced the same slick viscous fluid and it’s now slicking his cock, acting as a very effective lubricant. Which is a comforting thought because that same tentacle has now squirmed beneath Pike’s sac, his leg lifted out of the way by an accommodating motor-limb and it’s teasing along the cleft of his ass. All the way to his coccyx and back to his balls, again and again, each time neatly avoiding the tight, flexing muscle that guards his entrance, tracing around it but never quite giving Pike the contact that he wants. And he does want it. It takes him by surprise, the realization that he is completely aroused by K’he’s attentions. His myriad of concerns have been overwhelmed by his physical and emotional responses to this expert and incredibly attentive seduction.
'Fucking tease', he thinks as he he scrapes his teeth lightly down the the tentacle that is quivering and throbbing against his tongue. He suddenly want to prove that he can make this good for the creature, too, not just as a distraction to hide his secrets but as a mark of his ability to be brilliant at all things. He nibbles and nips and licks soothingly in turn and tentacle glows in a rapid-cycling light-show of pink, purple and indigo. He sprawls in the warm water, pulling his legs wanton-wide across the pliant flesh at his back, pushing back with his ass. He's not often let himself indulge in this kind of sex but that is for lack of safe opportunity, rather than lack of interest. It features often enough in the privacy of his fantasies.
K’he ripples, and he feels shivers of something almost like laughter running through his mind as it delicately circles the wet, slippery tip of the tentacle against Pike’s asshole. 'Unnghh…fuck...please'. Another mental plea, he knows that speech is pretty much superfluous, he can’t imagine that K’he can’t feel exactly what he wants - his body and certainly all of his conscious mind screaming for the C’than to just get on with it and fuck him, please, now.
As the tentacle pushes in a tantalizing tease just past the tight ring of muscle, he feels a different type of push in his mind, an intruder as elusive as a draught, riffling discreetly through thoughts now lying buried beneath the pulsing layers of arousal. The expert seduction has allowed him to forget that dealing with the sex is the least of his worries in this situation. Pike may be aware of the intrusion but he does not have the mental control to hide that awareness. He turns on the intruder, roughly tearing away the veils of arousal that are clouding his mind.
K'he stills in his head. He feels waves of startled surprise. Humans are not supposed to have any telepathic ability. Pike pushes mentally towards the intruder, as if trying to physically grapple with his opponent. The push takes him beyond the initial awareness of ripples of emotion, into a tumble of memory that is clearly not his own. The creature thinks in images rather than words, although it can understand the speech of the humanoid Y’gran and of the Terrans. Thrusting blindly forward, aware that he will never be stronger in this encounter than in this moment of initial surprise, he see memories of briefing meetings, the discussion of just how mentally crippled Terrans are with their lack of telepathy, the utter conviction that every word they are being told by the Terran negotiators is a lie, the plan to investigate the mind of the Terran's lead warrior, the assumption that he would be quite unaware of the intrusion.
Pike pauses in his headlong rush when it occurs to him that K'he is making no effort to stop him or to hide its memories. He senses intense curiosity and oddly, a perverse delight that this humanoid has proved more interesting than promised. C'thans do not see in the same way humanoids do, so the memories are oddly angled and strangely out-of-focus for Pike and he feels himself succumbing to a bilious sort of mental motion sickness. He pulls back into himself and they remain in a mental stand-off in his head. The physical world has retreated in his awareness although he senses that K'he has stopped its seduction, although it is still holding his limbs in its tentacles.
Rather than hunting for specific memories Pike lets himself reach out to sense the emotions of the cephalopod. He's never done anything like this but he's always been fascinated by new experiences and he is proud that he's managing to cope with doing this at all. However the emotions he encounters soon sober his excitement. K'he is curious, quite unthreatened, amused by his child-like exertions at mental control. 'Child-like?' Pike thinks, somewhat offended. He is surprised that he's managing to do this at all. He is offered an image of a school of baby cephalopods excitedly splashing in shallow waters, trying to work out how to control ten variously sized appendages without tying themselves up in insoluble knots. The memory is gently given but is also deliberately patronizing.
Pike pushes past it, refusing to be distracted and comes up against a wall of absolute confidence. The denizens of Bectel V are completely determined that they will not submit to the Terran Empire. They understand that their resistance may come at great cost. They are aware that every advantage they can win will be of use. But they are conscious of a military might that is far greater than anything the Imperial intelligence services have been able to uncover. And every thought and emotion in K'he's mind drips with disdain for the Terrans.
Pike feels his own anger welling up. He may have his own reservations about the Empire but he's damned if he's going to be judged by a jumped-up squid that can't even make its way in the world without its co-dependent humanoid species. He pushes back with his intimate knowledge of the military might of the Terrans and their subordinate colony planets. He realizes his mistake as soon as K'he reaches eagerly towards this treasure-trove of information. Powered by a surge of panic, he draws on everything he has ever learnt from Vulcan ship-mates and locks his knowledge down behind a grey wall that extends out into the mists of infinite distance.
K'he pushes gently against the wall and then gives up the attempt without exerting any real mental effort. A wary Pike is surprised to feel a kind of paternal pride emanating from the C'than. The small child has impressed the adult by doing something unexpectedly clever. He detects a sort of mental ruffling of his hair by K'he. But however able the child may prove to be at any one moment, the adult can still pick it up with little effort and put it on the naughty step.
In a wet slither of limbs K’he moves suddenly, jerking Pike's mind back to their physical surroundings, as it arranges him with arms pulled up above his head, pressed back against the lip of the bath, and legs lifted and pulled open to expose his ass. Panic rolls through him, his heart-rate spiking and his cock softening as the powerful tentacles wrap around his thighs and upper arms, tightening just past the point of discomfort, letting him know in no uncertain terms that there is nothing he can do to get out of this. There’s an immediate ripple-purr that doesn't quite soothe, hinting that harm is not intended right at this moment, although that is no guarantee that it won't be coming in the near future.
For long minutes, the only sound is the soft lap of the water on the edge of the bathtub as K’he moves in slow, rhythmic ripples under Pike, tempting him to relax into the new position. The grasping tentacle has his cock wrapped in a warm firm grip and it undulates around him, jacking him back to a mandatory quivering, slowly leaking, full hardness. This is no longer mutual. This is now a ruthless display of the C'than's ability to read his every physical nuance, to force him to levels of arousal he has never imagined, to drill down into his deepest, dirtiest fantasies and use them ruthlessly against him.
It is now making no effort to disguise its presence in his head, riffling blatantly through his sexual encounters, casually mocking his lack of experience with other species. It apparently thinks him boringly vanilla. And then it moves on into his fantasies. It is taunting him to give up his lock-down on his strategic knowledge to try and protect these embarrassingly intimate details instead. They both know he can't manage to do both at once. It is now plumbing depths of want that he only very occasionally acknowledges, even to himself. He has no choice but to let it go where it will. He realizes that it is going to destroy him by giving him exactly what he has never been able to admit he really wants.
The tentacle is back; the slow, slick press of flesh at his sphincter making the muscle flex and twitch in involuntary spasms. He hasn’t bottomed in a long damn time, there is no one in his life that he trusts with this kind of control and he's long since established what happens to any officer stupid enough to think they can force Pike into giving this up. But the squid is oiling effortlessly through his mind, flipping casually through his hidden fantasies. It has now found the place where he retreats to in the small hours of a sleepless night, when he wishes he could share his life with someone he could genuinely trust, when he wishes he could turn himself over to someone else's care and control, trust someone else to take him down from the unrelenting pressure of survival in the Imperial cesspit.
The warm tentacle-tip presses against the muscle until it yields and it’s slick and hot and slides in so easily, twisting as it thrusts roughly, his mind filling with the snide knowledge that the squid knows just how much he wants it like this as it stretches the muscles and the passage beyond, preparing them to take something far more substantial.
Something far more substantial turns out to be one of the thicker, more muscular motor-limbs. K'he brings it up in front of Pike's face, shows him with cool amusement how the limb, tapered at the tip, is capable of swelling to the thickness of Pike’s wrist, of his forearm, of his thigh... Pike is wincing just watching it. This thing could swell inside him until it literally ripped him open from the inside. He can taste the bile of his fear as the muscular length moves back to his ass, sliding easily past the breached muscle and begins to force him open with slow rhythmic thrusts, going deeper and getting thicker with each pulse.
K'he continues to wander through his fantasies as it pulses inside him, digging below the dirty dreams of having control taken from him, being ordered to take it and like it, begging for it from someone he trusts. Now it is looking for a face to put on the man that Pike wants to go on his knees for. A mixture of obstinacy and embarrassment keeps Pike resisting as long as he can, trying to keep the face grayed out, trying to keep the name out of focus. HIs insolence is punished as the tentacle thickens to an almost unbearable girth before starting to throb slowly. Oh holy hell - it’s like being fucked with a warm, supple, living vibrator, and it’s all Pike can do not to howl with the sheer intensity of it. And then the intruder is pressed, firmly, deliberately, against his prostate as a pulse of electricity fires across the little gland.
His defences are brutally short-circuited and the face snaps into focus. His grim-faced son-of-a-bitch of a CMO looks back at him with clear cold blue eyes. K'he's amusement echoes through him as it realizes that he's worked with this man for nearly two tours without confessing his attraction, fearing the danger of rejection, fearing even more revealing to Boyce the kind of relationship he'd really like to have. He'd never have been able to hold his authority as an Imperial captain if it had been known he'd wanted not to dominate his CMO but be dominated by him.
Then the intensity of the assault on his groin eases as K'he's amusement shifts into puzzlement about why affection and attraction should be so dangerous that it needs to be ruthlessly hidden like this. It looks now at the most pathetic of his comfort fantasies, fantasies that are all about Boyce and have nothing to do with sex, that are just about love and mutual respect and a world where that could be openly expressed. He feels the creature's dislike of him dissipating to be replaced by a horrified pity.
Pitied by a squid. What a way to end his glorious career in Imperial service.
The limb continues to spasm and quiver in his ass, the other tentacles shifting gently in restless patterns across his skin. It is enough of a distraction to stop him managing to regain control of his mental defences. Still the intensity has been dialed down. K'he is feeding him a random stream of imagery instead. What the Terran Empire looks like to outsiders, corrupt, uncivilized, their cruelty a weakness, not a strength. Pike has never considered the Empire from this perspective and he is not encouraged by what he sees. He is further confused as he realizes that his desire for love, which he has always considered a shameful weakness to be hidden at all costs, the C'than believes to be a strength. K'he steers him towards memories of Bectel V. He see the co-dependent species strengthened by their understanding of each other, enhanced by their ability to know that there is more than one way of seeing the world. He sees beautiful seas, gambling squidlets in sunlit shallows, humanoid youngsters running shrieking through the surf, all watched over by loving adults, affection and respect flowing from being to being...
Pike lets the images wash by, focusing not so much on the content but on the feeling of K'he. Terrans are arrogantly certain that the other sentient species, for all they possess basic speech and intellect, cannot possibly actually think and feel and reason with the subtly and complexity of a human. Frankly Pike has always suspected that most humans fail to reach his own breadth and depth of capability. It is easier to direct the fate of other beings when one believes them all fundamentally retarded in their thinking.
But now that he is floating deep inside the mind of an alien species, he can see that he - that all Terrans - are wrong. There is beauty here, and complexity that is beyond his understanding. There are naves of emotion that rise to heavens he cannot visualize. There are caverns of connectedness to the environment that are like nothing he has ever imagined. How much knowledge and wonder and unrealized possibilities have been destroyed by Terrans annihilating planets and populations as they hunt resources to augment their own importance?
There is a gentle sorrow in K'he as it pulls back from these thoughts and slowly reawakens the vibrating tentacle buried in his ass. It offers him regret and apology but still it will do what it must to protect its own planet. He understands now how this is going to go. The creature will ramp up his arousal to levels beyond anything he's ever known, using every deep and dirty desire of his life to do so. And in the moment of orgasm all his mental defences will fall, his mind left unguarded, every secret he's fought so hard to protect laid bare to his ravisher.
One of the reasons Pike is such a successful captain is his ability to make complex decisions very rapidly. However, this moment of choice is surprisingly straightforward. He may in fact have no choice here, but still he will choose to jump rather than be pushed. 'Wait!' he thinks fiercely. With what little freedom of movement he has, he pulls all the free tentacles towards him. He twists to press his face against the quivering bulk of the cephalopod. And then he lets down all his mental barriers.
He thinks with vicious clarity of every detail of his briefing by Admiral Seke Seko, sharing his bone-deep conviction that the entire thing is a set-up. He shares everything he's learnt about the likely course of the invasion of Bectel V. And then he gives his mind to K'he to wander where it wishes in everything else he knows of the Empire. The creature is clearly better at multi-tasking than he is. It browses tenderly through his mind while simultaneously giving him the reward of its body.
With his head freed from its desperate efforts at mental subterfuge, he gives himself up to surfing the sensations K'he is creating in his body. The warm, smooth flesh beneath him quivers in almost constant trembling spasms. With a slow deep pulse the tentacle inside him swells once again and begins to thrust slowly in and out of his over-stretched and over-sensitized ass. He has to think that this must be what it feels like to be fisted. The sensation is utterly overwhelming. With the grasping tentacle working his cock in a fast, relentless rhythm Pike is hovering on the precipice of his orgasm even as the two free tentacles find ways to wring even more response out of him - one pressing against his perineum to give his prostate just that little extra nudge of feeling - the other flat on his chest, still flickering across exquisitely sensitized nipples.
Every physical sensation is profoundly heightened by a mental caress of gratitude and respect, a tender affection that leaves him trembling with emotion. Suckling desperately on the tentacle tip in a probably vain effort to feed some of this overwhelming sensation back to his partner, Pike finds that his orgasm is intensified by the additional tension of straining against the living restraints in silence. Thrashing up in a spasm of whipcord tense muscles and twisting tendons - sinews standing out against his arched body as his cock spurts thick ropes of milky come across his chest and belly - he’s only just sufficiently aware of his surroundings to feel the sudden flush of searing heat in all the places that he and K’he are connected.
* * *
When he is once again conscious and able to move, Pike opens his eyes to find that K’he is rubbing one tentacle across his sticky abdomen, still coursing through a whole series of colours from deepest indigo and crimson slowly fading to a pale, almost iridescent rose-pink and faintest lavender. He can feel a slightly astonished satisfaction washing off the creature, as if it has been as taken by surprise as him by the intensity of it all. He squirms more deeply into the tangle of tentacles and lets the sensation of deep, loving lassitude wash over him. He has no idea what he is going to do next and for now he is happy to hide from the future in the bliss of the afterglow.
At last K'he nudges gently at his mind, offering for inspection a thought found deep in Pike's head. He squirms with embarrassment at the sight of another of his more pathetic comfort fantasies, in which he allies with his CMO and his first officer, highjacks his ship, and flees the Empire to offer his services to the Alliance of Free Planets, the loose alliance of species that live in the neutral zone between the Terran and Klingon Empires, playing the one off against the other in order to maintain their independence.
He feels K'he's puzzlement at his discomfort. 'I can't control the ship on my own', he offers mentally. 'And just the act of attempting to find out if One or Boyce might be amenable to changing sides will get me executed if either of them is not in agreement. It's a hopeless dream.'
K'he hums thoughtfully inside his head, an odd sensation that is almost ticklish. Then it offers him a set of scenes, similar to the memories he saw before but from the fuzzy quality he gathers that these are idea of a possible future rather than memories of the past. He sees the Bectelians stalling for more time by demanding certain further additions to the treaty, using the knowledge they've gained from Pike to keep the Terrans eager while not quite completing the agreement. He sees their ambassador complimenting Pike's performance but asking for the assurance of two more senior officers, the first officer and the medical specialist. He sees K'he riffling through their minds as he has done with Pike and then sharing with Pike what he finds out about their loyalties. He sees himself departing for free space...
His post-orgasmic lassitude is completely dispelled as he wriggles upright within the nest of tentacles. Oh yes, he likes the idea. If either Boyce or One are on side, it will probably be enough. If they both are... Then he can do extraordinary things. If they are in fact loyal to the Empire, well then, a forearm-sized tentacle up the ass serves them right. He offers an image of his own to K'he. If he can fool his commanders into thinking he has successfully carried out the deception of K'he and he stays in Imperial service for the moment, his ship will be the lead vessel in the attack on Bectel V once the Empire chooses to break the treaty. He can elect to defect at a pivotal moment, agreed in advance with the Bectelians, giving them a major advantage and enhancing his chances of getting away with the ISS Nkrumah without being stopped.
K'he's approval of this plan suffuses his mind like summer sunshine. With the sensation of a sly smile, it offers the image of looking through Boyce's mind to see if Pike's attraction is returned. Pike finds himself startled into laughter as he rubs his naked body sinuously against the tangle of tentacles, kicking his legs to set the warm water lapping against them both. "Just full of bright ideas, aren't you?" he says to K'he. "For the moment, how about another fuck? Purely in the interests of inter-species relations, of course."
He feels approval and amusement ripple through his mind as the tentacles start to ripple over his skin. Pike thinks to himself that this fucking for the Empire thing really does have a lot to recommend it. And the Empire will indeed be royally fucked by the time he's done.
- THE END -