Foreward | STXI | R
Title: Foreward
Series: STXI AU
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Rating: R
Length: 2,010
Warnings: Highly offensive slurs, swearing, graphic violence, gore, prostitution, murder.
Summary: Romulan Nuclear Hell broke loose, and the whole world went to shit. Starfleet on the planet itself has been obliterated, Earth is now known as the Wasteland, and vile mutations in its citizens are rife. With no cure or hope in sight, it’s a dog eat dog world. Even the crew of the Enterprise have been scattered to the winds. But, as always, Kirk and Spock find a way. A Fallout AU.
Disclaimer: Somewhere over the slash rainbow of my mind, it happened. But not in Kansas, unfortunately.
A/N 1: This is to celebrate the birthday of carouselcycles. One day we will finish this story together, as we planned. But for now, here is a completed snippet!
A/N 2: Please mind the warnings. I will blatantly ignore any complaints I may receive for the harsh environment of this fic. I’m just emulating the video game, ya’ll!
“Oh, you have to be fucking with me,” Jim said to the PIP-Boy 3000 secured to his forearm.
Starfleet’s - rest her soul - Personal Information Processor had still been in the works when Romulan Nuclear Hell had broke loose, but Jim had managed to snag one in the fray of government collapse. It really hadn’t been difficult to knock out a few guards and bypass laughable security measures to nab his very own arm computer. Okay, arm computer was putting it lightly, but that was the gist of it.
And currently, said ass-wipe of a PIP-Boy was showing him that the year was 2088.42 and the time was eighty-eight hundred hours.
Well fuck.
“You actually hate me, don’t you?” Jim said, rapping his knuckles against the black screen and then holding his arm to his ear. Hell if he knew what day it was, let alone how long he’d been wandering the forsaken Wastelands of blood and sand and scorched metal skeleton towns.
All Jim knew was that it had been weeks and all he’d encountered were tattooed desert crazies and a megaton of mutated monsters. The desert could only stretch so far, right? Right? He’d been following the cracked, crumbling blacktop for Gorn knows how long, passing through one hollow corpse of a city after the next.
Where the fucking fuck was New Vegas?
“Y’know,” Jim said as his boots crunched in a slow swagger on the pebbled pavement, “Sex has really dropped down on my list of things to do, these days. This last chick I was with had like, so many piercings down there that I felt like I was trying to take apart an engine or something. I mean, where did the dipstick even go? What has happened to this world, I find myself asking myself. Okay, so bombs drop, but why the sudden influx of goths? I’m not asking for everyone to be running around in sunhats and dresses - but twelve piercings down there? Twelve?”
His Pip-Boy honked in reply to the sound of Jim’s voice - and although Lil’ Pip shouldn’t actually be making goose noises, that was better than foreboding silence. Jim grinned down at his forearm, when a grey glint in the distance sparked in his periphery.
Jim’s holstered phaser was glued to his hand in seconds, his body winding tight and coiled and ready.
As the dilapidated pick-up truck lumbered down the shattered pavement, Jim heaved a sigh. Fucking raiders. Of course. Jim set his phaser to kill and waited.
Dust spat in his face as the vehicle screeched to a halt, the bumper not two feet from Jim’s shins. Cocking a hip, Jim shoved his goggles into his shaggy hair and squinted up through the shattered windshield.
“You heading to New Vegas?” Jim said, rounding the side of the truck. The back looked filled with supplies and scrap metal. Two raiders - tattooed, sneering dudes with shaved heads - laughed.
One said, “Are you fuckin’ retarded? We’re headed outta there. Got what we needed.”
So, that dude was actually a chick. Whoops.
“Really?” Jim shot each raider square in the face before they could react. “Then you have what I need.”
Wiping some grit from his eye and securing the oversized goggles once more, Jim opened the passenger door and watched one lifeless body fall out, head first, onto the blacktop. He ignored the pinch in his chest as he stepped over the body and began to rummage through the pockets for any goods.
This was a kill or be killed world now. Jim wasn’t stupid, delusional, or even particularly hopeful. There was a reason why he was a leader, a survivor. He did what he had to do.
Used to be that morality influenced his game plan. Now? Morality would get a poor asshole killed.
Stripping both corpses of caps, weapons, chewing gum (awesome), Jim revved the truck into a U-turn and bolted towards the direction of New Vegas. If he looked in the rear-view mirror on his way out - well, no one would be the wiser.
***
“Make a note of this, Pip,” Jim said to the contraption clamped to his forearm as he shut the door behind him and eyed the dilapidated bedroom. “My next profession, writer. How to Survive the Wasteland Without Having Your Balls Chopped Off. Bed and Brothels: Pay Less Caps, Get More Pussy. I don’t know, there are some working titles floating around. Either way, I don’t think people realise how much cheaper it is to stay in a brothel than it is one of the actual hotels on this strip. Yet again, the genius reigns thrifty and victorious.”
Lil’ Pip made no reply, but it blinked green and white with exuberance, and Jim took that for agreement. He really did need to get his hands on a set of tools, though. A PIP-Boy with dementia was not the best Second in Command right now.
Jim dropped two rucksacks onto the bed, and the mattress springs squawked with the weight. The room smelled damp and dusty, there was one bathroom on this floor, in the corridor, and the walls were thin as paper.
Hell, it was a place to sleep. And, these days, Jim slept light.
Plopping onto the thin duvet, Jim unzipped his luggage and rifled through until he came up with baggy of dog meat jerky. The raiders had collected a good amount of rations, and Jim wasn’t about to turn his nose up as some actual meat. Stringy and tough as it was.
He chewed thoughtfully for a while, mapping his next route. It would be good to explore a bit, see if any other members of Starfleet had flocked to the city. Maybe someone else had information about how it all went down, and to where everyone had escaped.
Jim knew his own story. How it had all gone to shit, and quick. How McCoy had stayed on, trying to help, until it was obvious that the only aid was death. Spock, who had disappeared in the fray after a particularly gruesome battle with some mutants. The dream team ripped apart and spewed in different directions of the Wasteland before they could ever really prove a thing about greatness to Starfleet.
Shaking away the festering memories, Jim stowed his bags beneath the bed. Stripping down to nothing but Lil’ Pip, Jim placed a 9mm under his musty pillow, and forced himself to sleep. He’d be lucky for a couple hours’ worth.
***
The curved blade pressed to his throat was probably the thing that woke him up first. Probably. Either that or the cushion of bare tits against his chest as the hooker wielding the knife straddled him all naked and malnourished.
“This may come as a surprise,” Jim said slowly, eyeing the chem-addled expression of the girl - and yeah, she was a girl, not more than eighteen. “But I’m not really the masochist type.”
Okay, lies, but it fit the moment.
“Here’s the deal,” the hooker said with a hiss, pricking the skin of Jim’s neck, “You’re gonna detach the thingie on that there arm and give it to me. Know I couldn’t do it while you slept, ‘cause it’s damn good attached to you, ain’t it?”
“I like to think that the attachment is mutual. Probably the most intimate relationship I’ve ever had.”
“Cut the shit and give it to me or I cut you.”
Jim had never reacted well to threats. Not even from skin-and-bones teenagers with no sense of how to mount a person in order to keep them still. Jim arched his hips and rolled with almost embarrassing ease, sending the hooker toppling onto the floor with a shriek. The back of her head knocked against the wall and then she was on her feet, lunging across the bed to where Jim was braced on the other side.
“Shit,” Jim said, barely breathless as the girl swung the knife at him like a scythe. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
She lunged at him again, totally exposed. Jim stepped aside, bunched his fist in the crown of her hair, and slammed her face-first into the wall. Just hard enough to knock her out. She slumped to the floor with a whimper, eyes shut, knife dropped to the rickety floorboards.
Sighing, Jim placed his hands on his hips and eyed the unconscious body. He should probably go now. Turning, he crouched to slide out his rucksacks from beneath the bed. The noise behind him had him turning just a touch before the base of the knife cracked him across the face.
Jim saw red and dove for her - flung the hooker onto the bed with more struggling than he’d have given her credit for. But still, she had a knife, and said weapon wanted to be in him. So, he would fight.
A rapid rap on the door had both Jim and the girl freezing for mere seconds. Jim saw the hooker’s painted mouth open to scream and he quickly covered it with one hand, his free fingers latching onto the wrist that held up the blade.
Unfortunately, that didn’t last long. The bitch bit him, screamed - and Jim plunged the knife into her chest.
Well, what the hell else was he meant to do?
Unconcerned with the knock at the door - he had enough caps to pay off the chick’s life, if he had to - Jim wretched the blade from the girl’s body with a squelch and began to polish it off on the blanket. It was a good knife, Jim would keep this one.
It was all around that time that Commander fucking Spock barged the hell in.
Jim froze, caught those familiar whiskey hued eyes, and broke into a grin. “Holy fucking shit, Spock!” He leapt from the bed, blade in hand, and barrelled towards his Second without a thought for his own nudity. He clapped Spock on the shoulder, frowning for a second as he noted he’d smeared a bit of hooker blood on Spock’s undershirt. Still, he beamed. “Where the fuck’ve you been?”
Spock took a step back, one hand just brushing the doorknob as his unerring gaze swept the room. “Captain, what is -”
“Jim. I’m not a Captain anymore.” That was as near to a stab in the chest as any hooker wielding a knife.
“May I inquire as to...” Spock actually seemed at a loss for words as he peered over Jim’s shoulder, attention rapt on the dead body flung across the bed.
Jim rubbed the back of his neck and hoped he looked properly chagrined. “Well -” Shrill, female voices congregated at the base of the stairs, their alarm clear even from a level down. Jim licked his lips and scrambled for a plan. “Follow my lead,” he said, and promptly turned around and shoved the corpse off the bed and onto the side of the floor that couldn’t be seen from the doorway. He tossed the blade over the side, too.
“Come’re,” Jim said, only now noticing the funky bandages enveloping Spock’s arms as Jim raised his hand, cupped the back of Spock’s neck, and yanked him into the room. “Let me do this,” Jim whispered when Spock stiffened. Jim jammed his knee behind Spock’s to drop them both, and just as the remaining prostitutes rounded the corner into the room, Jim was sprawled naked over Spock’s half-clothed body.
Jim looked up and over his shoulder sharply, eyes wide as he played up a sheepish smile for the women who were getting an eye-full of his ass and all sorts. “Oh, hi - um. Wow, this is embarrassing. I guess we got a little too, uh -” He flicked a glance over Spock’s face, found him unreadable. “Rough.”
It didn’t take long for the hookers to book it and slam the door on their way. Jim, however, didn’t move for quite some time. He studied Spock’s face, noted the exhaustion and the distance in his expression.
“So,” Jim said finally. “Spill it, Spock.”
He had feeling this would be good.
Series: STXI AU
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Rating: R
Length: 2,010
Warnings: Highly offensive slurs, swearing, graphic violence, gore, prostitution, murder.
Summary: Romulan Nuclear Hell broke loose, and the whole world went to shit. Starfleet on the planet itself has been obliterated, Earth is now known as the Wasteland, and vile mutations in its citizens are rife. With no cure or hope in sight, it’s a dog eat dog world. Even the crew of the Enterprise have been scattered to the winds. But, as always, Kirk and Spock find a way. A Fallout AU.
Disclaimer: Somewhere over the slash rainbow of my mind, it happened. But not in Kansas, unfortunately.
A/N 1: This is to celebrate the birthday of carouselcycles. One day we will finish this story together, as we planned. But for now, here is a completed snippet!
A/N 2: Please mind the warnings. I will blatantly ignore any complaints I may receive for the harsh environment of this fic. I’m just emulating the video game, ya’ll!
“Oh, you have to be fucking with me,” Jim said to the PIP-Boy 3000 secured to his forearm.
Starfleet’s - rest her soul - Personal Information Processor had still been in the works when Romulan Nuclear Hell had broke loose, but Jim had managed to snag one in the fray of government collapse. It really hadn’t been difficult to knock out a few guards and bypass laughable security measures to nab his very own arm computer. Okay, arm computer was putting it lightly, but that was the gist of it.
And currently, said ass-wipe of a PIP-Boy was showing him that the year was 2088.42 and the time was eighty-eight hundred hours.
Well fuck.
“You actually hate me, don’t you?” Jim said, rapping his knuckles against the black screen and then holding his arm to his ear. Hell if he knew what day it was, let alone how long he’d been wandering the forsaken Wastelands of blood and sand and scorched metal skeleton towns.
All Jim knew was that it had been weeks and all he’d encountered were tattooed desert crazies and a megaton of mutated monsters. The desert could only stretch so far, right? Right? He’d been following the cracked, crumbling blacktop for Gorn knows how long, passing through one hollow corpse of a city after the next.
Where the fucking fuck was New Vegas?
“Y’know,” Jim said as his boots crunched in a slow swagger on the pebbled pavement, “Sex has really dropped down on my list of things to do, these days. This last chick I was with had like, so many piercings down there that I felt like I was trying to take apart an engine or something. I mean, where did the dipstick even go? What has happened to this world, I find myself asking myself. Okay, so bombs drop, but why the sudden influx of goths? I’m not asking for everyone to be running around in sunhats and dresses - but twelve piercings down there? Twelve?”
His Pip-Boy honked in reply to the sound of Jim’s voice - and although Lil’ Pip shouldn’t actually be making goose noises, that was better than foreboding silence. Jim grinned down at his forearm, when a grey glint in the distance sparked in his periphery.
Jim’s holstered phaser was glued to his hand in seconds, his body winding tight and coiled and ready.
As the dilapidated pick-up truck lumbered down the shattered pavement, Jim heaved a sigh. Fucking raiders. Of course. Jim set his phaser to kill and waited.
Dust spat in his face as the vehicle screeched to a halt, the bumper not two feet from Jim’s shins. Cocking a hip, Jim shoved his goggles into his shaggy hair and squinted up through the shattered windshield.
“You heading to New Vegas?” Jim said, rounding the side of the truck. The back looked filled with supplies and scrap metal. Two raiders - tattooed, sneering dudes with shaved heads - laughed.
One said, “Are you fuckin’ retarded? We’re headed outta there. Got what we needed.”
So, that dude was actually a chick. Whoops.
“Really?” Jim shot each raider square in the face before they could react. “Then you have what I need.”
Wiping some grit from his eye and securing the oversized goggles once more, Jim opened the passenger door and watched one lifeless body fall out, head first, onto the blacktop. He ignored the pinch in his chest as he stepped over the body and began to rummage through the pockets for any goods.
This was a kill or be killed world now. Jim wasn’t stupid, delusional, or even particularly hopeful. There was a reason why he was a leader, a survivor. He did what he had to do.
Used to be that morality influenced his game plan. Now? Morality would get a poor asshole killed.
Stripping both corpses of caps, weapons, chewing gum (awesome), Jim revved the truck into a U-turn and bolted towards the direction of New Vegas. If he looked in the rear-view mirror on his way out - well, no one would be the wiser.
***
“Make a note of this, Pip,” Jim said to the contraption clamped to his forearm as he shut the door behind him and eyed the dilapidated bedroom. “My next profession, writer. How to Survive the Wasteland Without Having Your Balls Chopped Off. Bed and Brothels: Pay Less Caps, Get More Pussy. I don’t know, there are some working titles floating around. Either way, I don’t think people realise how much cheaper it is to stay in a brothel than it is one of the actual hotels on this strip. Yet again, the genius reigns thrifty and victorious.”
Lil’ Pip made no reply, but it blinked green and white with exuberance, and Jim took that for agreement. He really did need to get his hands on a set of tools, though. A PIP-Boy with dementia was not the best Second in Command right now.
Jim dropped two rucksacks onto the bed, and the mattress springs squawked with the weight. The room smelled damp and dusty, there was one bathroom on this floor, in the corridor, and the walls were thin as paper.
Hell, it was a place to sleep. And, these days, Jim slept light.
Plopping onto the thin duvet, Jim unzipped his luggage and rifled through until he came up with baggy of dog meat jerky. The raiders had collected a good amount of rations, and Jim wasn’t about to turn his nose up as some actual meat. Stringy and tough as it was.
He chewed thoughtfully for a while, mapping his next route. It would be good to explore a bit, see if any other members of Starfleet had flocked to the city. Maybe someone else had information about how it all went down, and to where everyone had escaped.
Jim knew his own story. How it had all gone to shit, and quick. How McCoy had stayed on, trying to help, until it was obvious that the only aid was death. Spock, who had disappeared in the fray after a particularly gruesome battle with some mutants. The dream team ripped apart and spewed in different directions of the Wasteland before they could ever really prove a thing about greatness to Starfleet.
Shaking away the festering memories, Jim stowed his bags beneath the bed. Stripping down to nothing but Lil’ Pip, Jim placed a 9mm under his musty pillow, and forced himself to sleep. He’d be lucky for a couple hours’ worth.
***
The curved blade pressed to his throat was probably the thing that woke him up first. Probably. Either that or the cushion of bare tits against his chest as the hooker wielding the knife straddled him all naked and malnourished.
“This may come as a surprise,” Jim said slowly, eyeing the chem-addled expression of the girl - and yeah, she was a girl, not more than eighteen. “But I’m not really the masochist type.”
Okay, lies, but it fit the moment.
“Here’s the deal,” the hooker said with a hiss, pricking the skin of Jim’s neck, “You’re gonna detach the thingie on that there arm and give it to me. Know I couldn’t do it while you slept, ‘cause it’s damn good attached to you, ain’t it?”
“I like to think that the attachment is mutual. Probably the most intimate relationship I’ve ever had.”
“Cut the shit and give it to me or I cut you.”
Jim had never reacted well to threats. Not even from skin-and-bones teenagers with no sense of how to mount a person in order to keep them still. Jim arched his hips and rolled with almost embarrassing ease, sending the hooker toppling onto the floor with a shriek. The back of her head knocked against the wall and then she was on her feet, lunging across the bed to where Jim was braced on the other side.
“Shit,” Jim said, barely breathless as the girl swung the knife at him like a scythe. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
She lunged at him again, totally exposed. Jim stepped aside, bunched his fist in the crown of her hair, and slammed her face-first into the wall. Just hard enough to knock her out. She slumped to the floor with a whimper, eyes shut, knife dropped to the rickety floorboards.
Sighing, Jim placed his hands on his hips and eyed the unconscious body. He should probably go now. Turning, he crouched to slide out his rucksacks from beneath the bed. The noise behind him had him turning just a touch before the base of the knife cracked him across the face.
Jim saw red and dove for her - flung the hooker onto the bed with more struggling than he’d have given her credit for. But still, she had a knife, and said weapon wanted to be in him. So, he would fight.
A rapid rap on the door had both Jim and the girl freezing for mere seconds. Jim saw the hooker’s painted mouth open to scream and he quickly covered it with one hand, his free fingers latching onto the wrist that held up the blade.
Unfortunately, that didn’t last long. The bitch bit him, screamed - and Jim plunged the knife into her chest.
Well, what the hell else was he meant to do?
Unconcerned with the knock at the door - he had enough caps to pay off the chick’s life, if he had to - Jim wretched the blade from the girl’s body with a squelch and began to polish it off on the blanket. It was a good knife, Jim would keep this one.
It was all around that time that Commander fucking Spock barged the hell in.
Jim froze, caught those familiar whiskey hued eyes, and broke into a grin. “Holy fucking shit, Spock!” He leapt from the bed, blade in hand, and barrelled towards his Second without a thought for his own nudity. He clapped Spock on the shoulder, frowning for a second as he noted he’d smeared a bit of hooker blood on Spock’s undershirt. Still, he beamed. “Where the fuck’ve you been?”
Spock took a step back, one hand just brushing the doorknob as his unerring gaze swept the room. “Captain, what is -”
“Jim. I’m not a Captain anymore.” That was as near to a stab in the chest as any hooker wielding a knife.
“May I inquire as to...” Spock actually seemed at a loss for words as he peered over Jim’s shoulder, attention rapt on the dead body flung across the bed.
Jim rubbed the back of his neck and hoped he looked properly chagrined. “Well -” Shrill, female voices congregated at the base of the stairs, their alarm clear even from a level down. Jim licked his lips and scrambled for a plan. “Follow my lead,” he said, and promptly turned around and shoved the corpse off the bed and onto the side of the floor that couldn’t be seen from the doorway. He tossed the blade over the side, too.
“Come’re,” Jim said, only now noticing the funky bandages enveloping Spock’s arms as Jim raised his hand, cupped the back of Spock’s neck, and yanked him into the room. “Let me do this,” Jim whispered when Spock stiffened. Jim jammed his knee behind Spock’s to drop them both, and just as the remaining prostitutes rounded the corner into the room, Jim was sprawled naked over Spock’s half-clothed body.
Jim looked up and over his shoulder sharply, eyes wide as he played up a sheepish smile for the women who were getting an eye-full of his ass and all sorts. “Oh, hi - um. Wow, this is embarrassing. I guess we got a little too, uh -” He flicked a glance over Spock’s face, found him unreadable. “Rough.”
It didn’t take long for the hookers to book it and slam the door on their way. Jim, however, didn’t move for quite some time. He studied Spock’s face, noted the exhaustion and the distance in his expression.
“So,” Jim said finally. “Spill it, Spock.”
He had feeling this would be good.