Trek fic: If you want it, take it; Pike/McCoy/Kirk NC-17
Title: If you want it, take it
Beta: as ever, the lovely imachar
Warnings : Dubious consent. Mild D/s.
Rating: NC-17
Pairing/Characters: Pike/Kirk/McCoy from ST:AOS
Word Count: about 10,000
Summary: Set on the Enterprise as they limp home after defeating Nero. Pike's behaving very strangely and Jim comes up with a solution that Bones doesn't approve of. Bones is going to have to face up to both his own issues and his conflicted feelings about Jim.
Leonard rested his head against the cool wall and tried to think straight. What to do next? He just needed a minute...
He jerked up with a sudden sensation of dropping forward and realized he'd fallen asleep, standing right there in the corridor. He was just so tired, desperate for the rest that continued to elude him. He'd tried to sleep, attempting to relax on the camp bed in the CMO's office - his own cabin having long since been given up to house Vulcan survivors.
The minute he'd closed his eyes his mind had circled into a never-ending loop of the shrieking whine of impact, of flying metal and glass, bodies tearing open, blood and guts and bone and the CMO of the Enterprise bleeding out in his arms. No, he wasn't going to be trying to sleep again in a hurry. He needed to keep on going, do his duty, help where he could.
He'd eventually been chased out of the makeshift sick-bay by his head nurse, who seemed as little impressed by his field promotion as he himself was. But there were patients all over the ship who could productively be visited. Of course many of them were Vulcan and he instinctively shied away from them. Vulcans were difficult at the best of times, with their impassive superiority and their contempt for emotion. Overlay that with the image of the oh-so-logically-superior Spock with his hands squeezing round Jim's throat and Vulcans weren't his favorite patients.
Nor did it help that they disdained his physical skills, choosing their 'healing trances' over his years of training, and he knew he was no good at the kind of mental comfort that they might need. What did you say to people who'd just seen something like 99.999% of their species destroyed in a few minutes? I'm sorry? Aren't you the lucky ones? Shit happens? No, best that Leonard and his big mouth stayed well away from the Vulcans.
So who else was outside sick-bay that he could help? Pike. Of course. Once the captain (not-acting captain? previous captain? Leonard had no idea of the protocol for the situation) had received all the treatment they were able to offer, he'd made it clear - loudly and repeatedly clear - that he wanted to go to his cabin. Free up a bed, he'd said. Recover in peace, he'd said. Escape from the chaos and stew in private, Leonard had suspected, but then that was pretty much what all of them wanted. After all Pike had endured, who was he to say no?
Leonard had made it clear that someone would be visiting at regular intervals to check on his welfare and the captain had grudgingly agreed. Well, that was one thing he could do. Leonard scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to clear the fuzzy-headedness. He found Captain Christopher Pike intimidating at the best of times, and that was before he'd smuggled a suspended cadet onto Pike's ship in the middle of a crisis, before he'd had to extract an alien killer slug from the man's brainstem in a badly damaged sick-bay. He still remembered Pike's threat that they would be having words later.
He took a deep breath. He could do this, he had to do this. Be a doctor. Do his duty.
* * *
He hesitated at the door of Pike's cabin, eventually deciding to let himself in without knocking, just in case the man was asleep. God, he hoped the man was asleep. Then he could do the checks and slip back out again without any interaction.
"And what the fuck do you think you're doing, seizing the captaincy from Spock?"
Leonard's hopes were dashed the minute he sidled in through the door. Jim was standing at parade rest by the side of Pike's bed, staring down at the bedspread, only his clenched fists betraying his tension as he listened to Pike berate him.
"Are you not aware that he has far more experience that you do, that he has actually served as senior crew?" Pike's voice was a low rough rasp, all the more menacing for being so softly spoken. "This is not a fucking game, Kirk. This is not the fucking Kobayashi Maru where you get to show off how very clever you are. This is real lives on the line."
"You made me first officer. And he stood himself down," protested Jim, but his voice was unusually quiet. Leonard wondered where Jim's normal conviction in his own infallibility had gone.
"Don't you think you can twist the truth with me, you little shit. I've heard what happened. You forced him into it!" snapped Pike, his voice rising in anger. "You deliberately compromised his control, on the bridge, in front of all your senior crew. You forced onto him the most humiliating thing that can possibly happen to a Vulcan officer. Were you getting your own back for the disciplinary hearing or do you just get your kicks fucking over authority figures?"
Jim stared down at the bed, making no effort to defend himself. Leonard, watching unnoticed by the door, felt his own anger rising in the face of Jim's uncharacteristic reticence. Who the hell was Pike to go after Jim like this? Wasn't he doing exactly the same thing, undermining the commanding officer, even if in private? Was this any way to help Jim provide the leadership the rest of the crew so desperately needed?
"What's so damned great about that computer-brained Vulcan, anyway?" burst out Leonard. "He literally threw Jim off the ship the first time round, abandoned him on a monster-filled ice planet. And the second time round he skipped the monsters altogether and took it into his own hands and tried to strangle him!"
"Did I ask your--" started Pike furiously but he was overridden by Jim.
"And what did you do each time, hey Bones? Stood by with your arms folded and watched it happen. Who the fuck are you to get angry now? Stay the hell out of it." Jim abruptly turned his back on Leonard, looking at Pike once again.
A nauseated surge of remorse rose in Leonard's throat as he stared hopelessly at the rigid back of his best friend. It was the first time Jim had actually said anything about that, he'd somehow hoped that in all the drama, Jim hadn't noticed. How had they been reduced to this? Tearing each other apart just when they so desperately needed to be pulling together.
"What do you want, doctor?" said Pike icily.
"Just checking your readings." Trying to block out the memory of Jim's disdainful accusations - accusations that slotted seamlessly into his own aching feelings of guilt - Leonard took refuge in staring at his tricorder, trying to focus on the data he was supposed to be monitoring. But the stupid thing wasn't working properly, the numbers were all over the place, one more fucking failure of the tech that was supposed to be keeping them all safe. He shook the thing, pressed reset a few times, peered in growing confusion at the readings and finally realized that the unit was not malfunctioning. The numbers were right. Which meant... He stared abruptly at Pike.
"Sir? Are you feeling okay?"
"Oh yeah! Feeling just fine and dandy, doctor. Nothing I like more than a little light torture followed by brain surgery--"
"You know what I mean!" Leonard cut sharply across Pike's sarcastic tirade. "Your readings are all over the place. What aren't you telling me?" Leonard's medical knowledge was the one place where he had confidence in himself and he wasn't going to let Pike intimidate him over this.
"And this is what happens when fucking children get to play at senior crew! You're the doctor, you tell me. God knows how you got into Starfleet in the first place. Can't you both just fuck off and leave me in peace? Haven't I had to put up with enough--"
One part of Leonard's mind was frantically trying to analyze the numbers while another was letting Pike's rant roll over him, listening to the tone rather than the words. He didn't know Pike well, the man had a reputation as hard-assed, self-contained, expecting excellence and unforgiving of fools. But he was considered to be fair, if firm, and people fought for the right to serve under him. None of which quite matched his current behavior. Leonard had to be missing something.
Elevated heart rate, flushed skin, dilated pupils, rising levels of oxytocin, but mixed with cortisol and norepinephrine..... Pike suddenly convulsed in the bed and Jim grabbed his arm. Pike seized Jim's arm with both hands, pulling himself towards Jim's body while turning away with his head, face twisted in pained disgust. "Get the fuck off me," he snarled, while holding Jim so tightly Leonard could see his nails cutting into Jim's skin.
Leonard dropped the tricorder and advanced from the other side of the bed, grabbing the back of Pike's neck with one hand and his exposed forearm with the other. "Get out, fuck off, just leave me alone!" Pike growled.
"Like hell I will, sir. Something's going wrong. Talk to me! Give me something to go on," demanded Leonard, watching with puzzled fascination as Pike simultaneously tried to lean back against Leonard's body and to pull away from him.
"It doesn't matter, it's not serious, just leave me the fuck alone," demanded Pike, his eyes squeezed shut in agonized denial. He abruptly pulled a hand free from Jim's arm and brought it to his mouth, biting down so hard Leonard feared he might break the skin.
"You can't leave him like this," snapped Jim, still trying to hold Pike down.
"I'm not damned well going to!" Leonard focused in on Pike. "Sir, you have to tell me what's going on, otherwise I'll have to sedate you."
"No!" Pike tried to pull away from both of them, scrabbling back along the bed linens. "Fuck no, not more sedatives. Then it's much worse. Then I get trapped in my head with it and I just can't.... no."
"Woah, calm down, it's fine, no sedatives," said Leonard hurriedly, frightened Pike would do further damage to the barely healed wounds left by the surgery. "But you know something you're not telling me. Sir, you have to help me here." He stared despairingly at Pike's closed off face. "Sir, I told you after surgery everything would probably be okay eventually, but that's not exactly true. Your spinal cord is compromised. It's touch and go saving the mobility of your legs. We cannot allow anything more to interfere with the healing process. If you want to ever walk again without an exo-skeleton, you have to tell me what's going on."
Leonard ignored Jim's look of horror to focus on Pike's face. The man looked furious but he also looked humiliated. He was digging the nails of one hand into his other arm, as if using the pain to try and clear his mind.
"It's a toxin they injected into me on the Narada," admitted Pike eventually. "It's not from the slug, it's something else. It leaves the prisoner desperate, gagging for--" Pike turned his face away from both of them. "It forces arousal," he continued finally, trying to sound clinical. "Leave the victim begging to be touched, to be brought to... you know. It's just another way to humiliate and shame."
"Are you saying they raped you?" demanded Leonard, thinking frantically back over his pre-surgery assessment of Pike. He'd seen no signs of sexual assault when he examined the man.
"No, fucking hell, listen to me you fool," spat Pike. "It wasn't done by Nero, he didn't give a fuck about anything beyond his revenge. It was done by Ayel, I think he hoped to get a chance to play, but Nero kept him too busy. On the Narada I could deal with it. It was almost better than just lying there helpless. It gave me something to focus on, to fight against. There was no fucking way I was going to beg them." Pike sucked in a deep breath and released his hand from his other arm. Leonard could see blood in the crescent-shaped indents left by his nails.
He winced as after a moment Pike deliberately pressed back into the same marks. "I guess it all got suppressed under the drugs used in the surgery, but now it's back. And I've no focus for fighting it any more."
Leonard tried to chivvy his exhaustion-fogged brain into thinking productively, horrified that he'd missed any sign of this during his previous examinations. "Okay, I need another blood sample, and then I'll have to analyze it. Isolate the toxin. Then find a way to neutralize--"
"Don't be fucking ridiculous," interrupted Jim. "At the best of times that'd take hours, days even, and now you're asleep on your feet, sick-bay is trashed and there's no one free to help you. Let's go for the obvious solution. The man wants sex, let him have sex."
Both Leonard and Pike watched in astonishment as Jim pulled Pike's hand away from his other arm, and then ran both his hands up Pike's exposed forearms. The older man immediately jerked forward into Jim's touch, biting down on a desperate whimper.
"Jim! You can't do that," exclaimed Leonard. "It's against, against--" He flailed for a convincingly concrete objection. "Against all sorts of rules. Fraternization rules, and doctor-patient rules, and--"
"Fuck the rules," growled Jim as he sat down on the edge of the bed, freeing his hands to rapidly unbutton the pajama top Pike wore and then run his hands across the broad expanse of Pike's chest. "In all this fucking mess, here's one thing we can actually solve pretty simply. Why the hell are you objecting?"
Leonard stared as Jim's long fingers pushed through the grey curls that covered Pike's chest in sensuous abundance, trying to marshal his thoughts. "It's medically inadvisable," he stammered. "You're just assuming that orgasm will bring relief. It might make it all worse. This is no time to be experimenting."
"So you're just going to leave him here to suffer hour after hour while you run away to perform your blood tests? Sounds like a cop-out to me. Sounds like your standard procedure of standing on the sidelines watching. You're certainly an expert at that." Leonard flinched in the face of the disdain in Jim's voice. It was becoming increasingly clear that Jim had definitely noticed Leonard standing passively by as Jim fought his way through the day from hell and had been far more deeply hurt by Leonard's inaction than he'd ever imagined. "This is helping," continued Jim aggressively. "I'm not fucking stopping. If you're worried about him coming, then you'd better stay and watch. Hell, you might pick up a few tips to get over your own issues."
Leonard was abruptly furious. Who the hell was Jim to accuse him of having issues? After all the crap he'd had to put with during their years at the Academy. There were a few home truths he could tell Jim on that score but he was finding it surprisingly hard to put together a coherent argument when Pike was pulling Jim's uniform top over his head and running greedy hands up his lean torso. "Well, isn't that just like you?" accused Leonard, cringing as he heard his own words but unable to stop the outpouring of hurt and anger. "Sex always is your first solution to anything. Whether you just want to blow off steam or manipulate people or cheat on the Kobayashi Maru, sex is your tool of choice."
"Yeah, yeah, we all know you're too high and mighty to do anything as sordid as fuck," snapped Jim in reply. "So fuck off and go and play with your blood samples. You must have plenty left from the surgery." With that he turned away from Leonard and mashed his lips over Pike's while starting to push Pike's pajama bottoms down over his hips. Leonard tore his eyes away from the sight of Jim's hands on Pike's bare thighs and hurriedly retreated behind the barrier that divided the bedroom from the small living area of the captain's cabin.
He began to pace back and forth as he tried to work out what the hell to do next. He should stay, that was the responsible thing, just in case Jim's 'therapy' caused an adverse reaction in Pike. Oh fuck that, he should go. After all, they were both adults making their own terrible choices, they'd made it damned clear that his input wasn't wanted and there were remote monitors on Pike that would signal sick-bay if something went really wrong. No, he really should stay. Pike was clearly off his head emotionally as well as physically and Jim's let's-solve-it-all-with-sex wasn't helping. But screw that, he should go. He'd spent three years chasing after Jim with contraceptives and STD vaccines, patching Jim up after over-enthusiastic sex, trying to get Jim to shut-the-hell-up with over-sharing details of his conquests. He was damned if he'd actually be forced to sit through listening to one. But then what if the remote monitors did alert emergency medical personnel and they burst in on the two of them mid-fuck? Starfleet would never forgive that.
He pressed his head against the wall, trying to force himself towards a decision. The breathy moans and soft swearing coming from the other side of the barrier really weren't helping his concentration. His mind kept providing helpful imagery that might explain the sounds, hands and mouths and cocks, oh god. Jim was just over there getting it on, Jim naked and horny, there was a reason Leonard had tried to stay far away from Jim's sex life. And Leonard wasn't blind, Pike might be as intimidating as all hell but he was still remarkably easy on the eye, all that contained power and dry wit in a lean body an officer twenty years younger would envy. Leonard knew perfectly well who all the other cadets thought was far and away the hottest instructor on the campus.
He looked down at his tricorder, trying as ever to hide behind the security of the numbers, trying to soothe himself with the clinical clarity of the charts. Suddenly all the readings spiked, slamming into the red-zone warnings, and without a second thought Leonard rushed back into the bedroom to see what was happening.
Oh!
Well yes, that would likely cause any red-blooded male's readings to spike. Pike was lying naked on the bed, his back and head propped up with pillows, long limbs tangled in a mess of bed linens. Jim, who was now down to boxer shorts, was lying between his legs, running his hands over as much of Pike's washboard stomach and broad chest as he could reach, while filling his pretty mouth with Pike's substantial prick.
Leonard's mouth felt suddenly dry as he watched Jim's cheek distend, the outline of Pike's cockhead clearly visible through the skin. Jim seemed to be tackling the challenge with enthusiasm and plenty of skill. Leonard stared helplessly, unable to tear his gaze away, feeling both utterly useless and bitterly jealous. Even in medical matters, Jim's sex expertise was apparently of more use than his years of training as a doctor. And heaven help him, Jim was beautiful like this, plush pink lips stretched around Pike's dark blood-swollen cock, pale golden skin a luscious contrast to Pike's cooler tones.
Several minutes passed, watching mesmerized as Jim's dirty blond head bobbed up and down on Pike's cock, before Leonard realized he was being scrutinized. He looked up into Pike's steely grey eyes. Even naked, injured, emotionally compromised and with a younger officer sucking him off, the man still managed to be intimidating. "This is not a porn show for your amusement, doctor. Either join in or fuck off."
Leonard took a step backwards, mortified to be caught staring, yet oddly reluctant to leave. Jim pulled off Pike's cock with an audible pop, a trail of saliva still linking his swollen lips to the plump glans. "For fuck's sake Bones, get over here. He's still hurting. I can't touch his skin and blow him at the same time. I may be fucking awesome at this but even I'm not that good. Get your clothes off, climb in behind him and touch all the skin you can. Now, Lieutenant!"
Leonard was mortified to realise he'd been so caught up with staring at Jim that he'd not even noticed Pike straining forward for every touch, his face still a tight grimace of discomfort. Somehow a clear order from his commanding officer made things easier - as long as he didn't think about the fact that said CO was younger than him, currently nearly naked and had only been in command for about five minutes. No, don't go there. He hurriedly pulled off his shirt, got rid of his boots and shucked off his pants, trying to keep his actions ahead of his rising tide of panic. God help him, but deep down he wanted this, wanted an excuse to watch Jim without having to take responsibility for that. Blame the toxin, the Romulans, the whole damned fuck-up that was his life. Keeping moving, don't think about it.
He kept his boxers on in a bizarre attempt to claim some modesty and then clambered onto the bed, pulling out the pillows from behind Pike's back and wriggling into the space left behind. Soon he had a leg on either side of Pike's, with the older man leaning against his chest. Pike instantly pushed back against Leonard, flexing his back and rubbing his face against Leonard's neck. Leonard spread his hands wide and ran them over Pike's stomach and chest as Pike groaned softly in appreciation, his discomfort so clearly eased by the touch that Leonard felt ashamed of himself for resisting for so long.
Leonard pressed his face against Pike's hair while he let his hands run over the flat stomach and the firm pecs, let his fingers thread through the curls of chest hair and pinch at the rigid nubs of nipple. But keeping his eyes tightly closed only magnified the sounds, the rush of his own blood in his ears, Pike's labored panting, and over everything, the obscene slurp of Jim's mouth dragging up Pike's cock. It was so long since he'd touched another person for any reason other than to give medical aid, so long since he'd rubbed against warm skin simply to give and to take pleasure. He'd not realized how much he'd missed it.
Pike grabbed one of his hands and moved it down to put it on Jim's head, keeping it in place with his own, their fingers intertwined, buried in Jim's thick hair. Leonard couldn't not look. He peered over Pike's shoulder and watched mesmerized as Pike's swollen cock slid slickly in and out of Jim's stretched lips. "Isn't he pretty like that?" said Pike softly, his voice clearly pitched for Leonard to hear rather than Jim. "Sucks cock like he was born to do it."
The fact that Pike's words were true did nothing to lessen Leonard's intense surge of anger. He wondered furiously how often Captain Pike has fantasized about having cadet Kirk on his knees. He knew from Jim's irritating tendency to over-share about his sex life that he'd propositioned Pike more than once and been refused each time. Jim looked up at them, his bright blue eyes framed by a thick fringe of blond eyelashes, his lush pink lips obscenely distended. He pulled off and began to jack Pike's saliva-slick cock with his hand instead. "Enjoying the view, are we, gentlemen?" he asked sarcastically. "At least this is one thing we can all agree that I'm fully qualified to do. No doubting my competency for command here."
His actions belied his harsh words. He turned his head to kiss the forearm of the hand buried in his hair and then hesitated a moment when he realized it was Leonard's arm, not Pike's. He looked up and gave Leonard a wry grin. "Sorry man, wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable." With a lewd wink, he brought his focus back to Pike's prick, sucking on the flared glans like a popsicle, teasing the slit and the frenulum with deft flicks of his tongue. Pike groaned helplessly in response, twisting restlessly between Leonard's open thighs.
Whatever Pike might think about the matter, Leonard was damn sure Jim had a bit of a crush on the older man. He'd spent far too much time at the Academy bitching about his academic advisor for it to be anything else. Most other sexual conquests in Jim's life faded from view soon after he'd managed to bed them. Most other instructors interested Jim only for what they had to teach him or whether he could be seen to outsmart them. Pike was the only one to hold his attention for three long years.
Was this the culmination of all Jim's dreams? wondered Leonard sourly. Was this just Jim showing appreciation for the one man he really respected, or was this some kind of sick daddy fantasy, with Jim trying to get approval from the older man in the only way he knew how? Leonard didn't really believe that, and yet... this had been a day of things he would never have believed possible, up to and including this little coerced orgy.
He pressed his face against Pike's hair, letting his one hand roam across the man's broad chest while his other stayed buried in Jim's hair. Watching Jim suck his commanding officer's cock like a professional, Leonard tried to work through his contradictory feelings towards Pike. Confused though he was about the man, it was easier than facing up to the Gordian knot that was his feelings for Jim. Pike was a hero who'd walked onto the Narada to knowingly face certain torture and likely death to buy his crew precious time to try and disable the drill threatening Vulcan and get an emergency message through to Starfleet HQ. Pike was a patient, a victim, off his head with drugs, pain and trauma. But then again, maybe Pike was just a ruthless ass manipulating his injuries and his anger to get two junior officers into his bed, exploiting the crush of a cadet young enough to be his son.
Damn, but it was hard to think straight with the sound of sex all around him, the smell, the feel of skin. He was so tired yet so keyed-up after all that had happened - Leonard found himself desperately wanting the mindless relief of orgasm and the sated sleep that might follow. He'd never been one for easy sex, inclined by nature and upbringing to monogamy and then left bruised and betrayed by Jocelyn's infidelity with a mutual close friend - the infidelity that apparently everyone but him had known about. Wallowing in his self-imposed, flagellatory post-divorce celibacy, he'd found himself increasingly repulsed by Jim's indiscriminate sexual tastes and his own involuntary role in cleaning up after it all, while fighting to deal with with his confused feelings for the man that had quickly become his best friend. It'd been a very long time since he'd come with the help of anything other than his own hand and unhappy fantasies.
Pike moaned and arched against Leonard, frantically trying to rub more skin against him, running his free hand up Leonard's thigh, grinding back against the telltale lump swelling in Leonard's groin. Dammit, the man was clearly in pain and Leonard could hardly argue that he or Jim had been forced into this at the point of a phaser. If he was going to do this, he might as well do it properly. He nuzzled his face into Pike's thick hair, seeking out the edge of an ear with his mouth and running his tongue along it, while letting his hands roam across Pike's arms and chest, enjoying the rasp of the curls of chest hair under his palms. It was a relief to just let himself feel, stop worrying about what would come next and simply live in the moment, seeking and taking pleasure, letting the sound and smell of sex fill his senses....
Pike tensed against him, his back arched and his face pushed hard against Leonard's neck, swearing softly under his breath as his groin jerked in distinctive pulses. Leonard cracked his eyes open enough to watch as Jim swallowed time and again, sucking down their commanding officer's come, oh god, this hadn't been in the recruitment brochure, how the hell were any of them going to look the others in the eye after this?
He closed his eyes again as Pike sagged back against him. He was the lowliest officer in this bed; let the others work out how to finish this up. His biggest worry right now was where he could find enough privacy to get his hand down his boxers and bring some relief to his rock-hard prick.
"Kirk, don't you dare!" Leonard peered round Pike's head in response to the older man's command snapped at Jim.
"But sir, that's hardly fair," whined Jim, who'd clearly decided that he didn't need privacy to take care of himself and was lying between Pike's legs with a hand down his own pants.
"I assure you, Kirk, fairness got fucked up the ass long ago, now it's down to survival of the most ruthless. And the question is, what the fuck am I going to do with the two of you? You both deserve to be punished."
Leonard had no idea where his tricorder had got to, what with all the writhing on the bed, but he could tell that Pike's pulse was steadier and slower. The vicious edge to his words had lessened but Leonard didn't know him well enough to be sure if the man was back to normal or not. Was this Pike still off his head from the toxins or just being his usual hard-assed self?
"Hey, I've been awesome," protested Jim, "and if I may say so, this is way above and beyond the call of duty." He waved a hand over Pike's groin as he spoke.
"You'll speak when you're spoken to," snapped Pike. "Kirk, you cheated on a test that was specifically designed to measure character and your character was shown up as that of a sore loser, who'd cheat rather than fail. Then, once on academic suspension, you smuggled yourself onto a ship on red alert, putting your ego ahead of the good of the Federation. You were so insubordinate your acting captain had you expelled from the ship, and you came back purely to force him into a breakdown that would let you seize control--"
"Hey, that's a pretty fucking selective re-telling--" protested Jim.
"Shut the fuck up, cadet. The fact that some other things may have gone your way - mostly due to sheer damned luck - doesn't make any of what I've just said untrue. And as for you--" Pike twisted to turn his face towards Leonard who shrunk back against the pillows. If he was going to get reamed a new one, he'd much rather have it happen when he was fully dressed and had a nice solid desk between him and his superior officer.
"I told you we'd have words later. You smuggled a suspended cadet onto a ship on red alert, onto my ship, and then didn't even have the balls to back up your fucking actions, letting him get thrown off the ship and then apparently almost strangled. What is it with you and your inability to stand by your fucking choices?"
Leonard listened in humiliated silence, devastated by how accurately Pike's words echoed his own internal critic.
"You both deserve to get comprehensively fucked over for your behavior over the last few days, hell, over the last few years while we're at it. But given that I'm out of action, only one of you can get thoroughly screwed right now." Pike turned back to Jim, grabbing his face with his hand, forcing the younger man to look into his eyes. "Do you want it to be you, Kirk? Do you want me to order your doctor to pin you down and make you take it, hold you down while he fucks that big cock into your tight ass, give you what you deserve for all that acting out?"
Leonard froze as he realized what Pike was implying, but neither man was paying him any attention, locked in silent battle of wills as each tried to out-stare the other. It was a private conversation between the two men, a conversation of layers he didn't understand, and he apparently had the importance of a dildo for all they cared.
"He won't do it," challenged Jim.
"Oh, but I think he will. There's a throbbing lump pressed up against my butt telling me a different story, and I don't think it's for me. You should've seen him drooling over your cocky mouth plugged up with my cock. You've spent years making him play madonna to your whore and now neither of you can get yourselves out of the damned trap you've created."
Pike twisted around toward Leonard again. "Fuck him, doctor. Flat on this bed, between my legs, fuck him like you've always wanted to. And that's an order."
Pike clearly wasn't well, Leonard told himself. The toxin was still affecting his judgement. This wasn't an order Leonard had any business following. And yet Pike's words were piercing straight through all his layers of denial and justification, straight to a place of small dirty truth where he was heartily sick of standing primly in judgement on Jim's reckless promiscuity. Vulcan was gone, the vision that had brought the Federation into being was destroyed and their enemies would be lining up on their borders, salivating at the opportunity brought by the chaos. Leonard and all his generation were now likely to face a lifetime at war. Why the hell shouldn't he take what he wanted, just this once?
"Well, Bones? Think you're man enough to do it?"
And wasn't that just like Jim, cocky to the last, his emotions hidden behind his trademark challenging smirk, not giving Leonard anything to go on, no help at all in knowing whether Jim wanted this or not. Fuck that, Jim was a big boy, he could say no if he chose to, for once in a blue moon Leonard wasn't going to think of anyone other than himself.
"Hell yes, why not, get your knees up and your ass in the air."
Jim's eyes narrowed in surprise, but still Leonard had no idea what he was hiding behind the mask. Leonard hesitated, waiting for Jim to say no, or yes, or anything that would offer some stability in this heaving ocean of uncertainty, but in the end all he got was Jim's normal pushy dare. "Hell, Bonsie, I didn't know you had it in you. Well, let's see what you've got." Jim rolled onto his side to pull off his boxers and then wriggled gracefully into position, giving a little wiggle of his creamy ass as he pulled his knees up under him.
His deep blue eyes never let go of Leonard's, there was anger there and challenge and something Leonard didn't begin to understand, but his own store of patience had run out in the face of his exhaustion and anger. Anger that he had in abundance, anger at himself, at the Romulans, at the Federation for ever letting things get this fair, at Pike for getting them into this, and at Jim - always damned Jim - so beautiful, so annoying, so in-his-face with all the best friend shit and so utterly out of his reach as Jim fucked his way through most of the student body, and, if the rumors were to be believed, through a fair number of the instructors.
He squirmed out from behind Pike and roughly pulled off his boxers, awkwardly aware that he had neither Jim's innate grace nor Pike's battle-hardened power, but it was tough shit, they'd have to deal. A rapid rummage in his medical bag produced a small tube of lubricant. Frankly he doubted Jim needed it, what with the variety of things he'd apparently cheerfully put up his ass in the last three years, but if Leonard was going to do this, he'd damned well do it properly.
He clambered onto the bed behind Jim and stuck two well-lubed fingers into Jim's ass without preamble, twisting roughly in the tight heat. Jim's sharp intake of breath was followed by a throaty laugh. "Fuck yeah, so you like it rough, Bones? Still waters run deep, baby." Still Jim's voice had a hard edge of challenge, and for a moment Leonard faltered. This was so very much not what he'd imagined when he'd allowed himself the occasional wistful fantasy about his best friend, this was not what he wanted them to be. But then he'd long acknowledged he wanted a Jim that didn't exist - the brilliance without the crap, the beauty without the attitude - and life had largely taught Leonard that he didn't get what he wanted.
"Get on with it," taunted Jim. "Jesus fuck, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? It's only sex, Bones." And yes, hadn't that always been the truth of it? Leonard wanted some impossible romantic relationship, and for Jim it had always been about the next hot hit of fucking. "Dammit sir, can't you order him to just slam it in?" Jim was rubbing his face across Pike's stomach, nosing up the grey treasure trail and placing biting kisses across Pike's broad chest. It was a brutal reminder to Leonard that this had never been about him at all. This was all about Jim's sordid little fantasy of pleasing daddy.
His reservations buried beneath a sudden flood of hot anger, he grabbed Jim's hip with one hand, brutally pumped his own cock back to full hardness with the other, and shoved it in just as Jim had demanded. The viciously tight grip of Jim's velvet-warm passage took his breath away for a moment, it'd been so long since he'd allowed himself this. He took several deep shuddering breaths, trying to pull himself back from tipping over the brink there and then. This was likely to be the only chance he ever got to do this, he wanted it to last for more than a few embarrassing seconds. Taking a moment to recall what he'd left behind him in the sick-bay was enough to take the edge off and left him more desperate than ever to forget it all for a few long minutes deep in the sensuous warmth of Jim's body.
He grabbed Jim's hips with both hands and began to slam into him, hard and fast, trying to shut down his awkward thoughts in the flood of sensation of furious fucking, in the stink of sweat and the raw drag of skin. "Fuck yeah, like that, harder Bones!" Jim, demanding as ever, was bracing himself on Pike's ribcage, face buried in the older man's stomach. Leonard, on his knees behind Jim, with both of them between Pike's splayed legs, stared defiantly across at his erstwhile captain, trying to read the emotion hidden by those opaque grey eyes.
"Slow down, doctor," ordered Pike. "We don't want this to be over too quickly, now do we? Cadet Kirk here deserves a slow thorough screwing, he's had it coming for years." And don't you wish you were the one to be giving it to him, thought Leonard bitterly, even as he did as he was told, pulling right out and then pushing back in with agonizing slowness before giving a final vicious punch of his hips to bury himself just that fraction of an inch deeper. Beneath him Jim was whining in frustration, rubbing his face restlessly against Pike's stomach, his wrists now held tight in Pike's hands.
"This isn't fucking fair," Jim complained, "I want it hard and fast."
"Nobody gives a shit what you want, Kirk," snapped Pike. "What matters is what you're going to get. And you're going to get done good and properly."
Jim moaned against Pike's skin and pushed back impatiently onto Leonard's cock. He liked being ordered around by Pike, thought Leonard sourly, and wasn't that just typical? It wasn't as if Jim had ever paid the blindest bit of attention when Leonard had tried to warn him about his reckless ways. He grabbed Jim's hips so hard that the fair skin was likely to bruise, holding them in place so that Jim couldn't push back, but was caught between him and Pike, not able to do anything but take it.
And Leonard wanted to give it to him, hard and rough, fuck into Jim's lithe body all his own anger and jealousy and endless uncertainty about where he fitted in Jim's life. His romantic fantasies about the two of them were nothing more than that, pathetic wishful thinking as fragile as the dew at dawn, and now being burnt away by the baking heat of reality. This was a new world where only the toughest would survive and he was going to take what he wanted, help himself to this one lonely chance, bury himself deep in Jim until he shook apart, forget the blood and bodies, the twisted metals and agonized screams, forget for a few brief selfish moments that their world had been torn apart.
He tried to lose himself in the rough rhythm of the fucking but he was still instantly aware the moment Pike released one of Jim's wrists and slid his hand under Jim's body. Jim immediately bucked forward, ever the eager slut for Pike's attention, and even now, balls deep in Jim's body, Leonard was still the outsider, still desperately jealous, still left wanting. He'd been letting his eyes stare down at the smooth skin of Jim's back, watching the ripple of muscle as Jim strained beneath him, but now he looked up, to find Pike's steely grey eyes focused on him.
"I hate you for this," said Leonard softly, holding Pike's gaze.
"I'm the one you hate?" mouthed Pike. "I doubt it."
Leonard couldn't see what was happening below him, but from the way Pike suddenly gasped, he gathered Jim had got his free hand to Pike's cock. Now all control had been lost, Leonard was slamming into Jim hard and fast, as Jim and Pike writhed against each other and when Jim suddenly clenched down hard his cock, he found he'd tipped over the edge, the burning rush of relief followed almost immediately by the icy wave of self-disgust.
Jim had slumped down onto Pike's torso and Leonard followed him down, burying his face between Jim's shoulder blades and wishing the universe would turn in on itself the way Vulcan had done and swallow them all whole before he had to face up to any of the consequences of all this.
* * *
Leonard lay with his head pressed against Jim's shoulder, now tacky with cooling sweat, wondering what the hell to do next. What was the protocol for departing from a semi-coerced orgy with your fellow officers? After all he was nothing more than an ambulatory dildo in Pike and Jim's little incest fantasy. He had to escape this while he had any shreds of dignity left.
He sucked in a deep breath. Be a doctor. That was the one thing he knew he could do. Get up, get out, do his duty. Seeing his tricorder lying abandoned on the floor he reached out. A strong hand caught his wrist as he picked it up.
"Put that fucking thing down. You hide behind it all the time," said Pike.
"I'm a doctor," protested Leonard.
"Yes, you hide behind that too. You're more than that. You deserve more than that."
Leonard looked at Pike in surprise. The nasty edge to his tone had gone and his eyes looked clearer, although very tired. Leonard abruptly pulled his arm away and looked down the readings on the tricorder. All Pike's vital readings had settled down.
"The toxin has cleared?"
"It feels like it. For the moment, anyway." Pike ran a hand through his hair as he looked at the two officers sprawled naked across his bed, across his body. His face fell as if he was abruptly realizing that everything that had just passed was not simply a fevered hallucination caused by the toxin but had actually happened. He dropped his head back onto the pillow. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck."
For a long moment he covered his face with his hands before speaking again in a flat voice. "Clearly this is not recommended procedure in the Starfleet Human Resources manual. I would urge both of you to register a complaint of sexual coercion with the proper authorities. I won't deny it, I--"
"I don't have much room to complain," interrupted Leonard bitterly. "I just fucked a patient under my care. Two of them, sort of. I ought to be struck-off, I should be--"
Jim butted in. "Oh, for fuck's sake, can you two stop competing in the guilt olympics. It's just sex, it's not a big deal. It's a nothing deal. Nobody gives a shit."
Pike grabbed Jim's face with his hand, forcing the younger man to turn to him. "Just sex? Oh really? When it comes to me and to him, especially to him--" He nodded towards Leonard. "Look me in the eye, Kirk, and tell me this is just sex to you."
Leonard watched in surprise as Jim's eyes skated away to stare down at the crumpled bedclothes.
"You two are the damned limit, you're so annoying." Pike stared at them both, clearly thinking furiously. "Oh hell," he continued. "We're hip-deep in inappropriate behavior here. Might as well wade right on in. I have some things to say to the two of you. For two highly intelligent men, you are both dumb as dirt in some regards. Kirk, we'll start with you."
Leonard shrunk back internally. The last thing he wanted was another round of Pike's unvarnished opinion of his character. He was feeling battered enough as it was.
"Hey," protested Jim, "I saved your ass out there, I've been fucking awesome!"
"Which makes it all the more inexplicable how un-awesome your personal life is," retorted Pike. "Now shut the fuck up and listen. I'll put this in words of one syllable in the hope you'll get it." Pike continued, over-enunciating his words, as if addressing a dim-witted foreigner. "Jim, when a boy likes another boy, it helps if you tell him that. Going out and fucking a never-ending string of strangers of multiple sexes and species, and then going back to your boy and expecting him to cure your STD's, patch up your rough-sex injuries and generally pep you up so you can go out and do it all over again the next night - that doesn't really get your message across. Indeed, some people might even consider it counter-productive.
"No, don't start protesting," continued Pike as Jim's mouth began to flap like a fish recently landed on a river bank. "There are a multitude of species in the Federation with a vast range of sexual and romantic practices. And not a single one of them would consider your behavior through your three years at the Academy as a recommended means of signaling interest to a potential partner. Don't gape at me. Jim, you know what I'm saying is true."
Leonard stared in astonishment at Pike and at Jim. This was bullshit, it had to be. Pike couldn't be implying.... No, of course not. Jim would laugh it off any minute now, put Pike straight in no uncertain terms.
Jim, staring down at the rumpled sheets, eventually offered Pike an awkward shrug. "Somehow it seemed to make sense in the moment..."
That startled a dry laugh out of Pike. "I told you you're dumb!"
"Now hang on a god-damned minute," protested Leonard. "This is crap--"
"Oh yes, you!" interrupted Pike. "You're older than him, you've been married, you've had a professional career. What's your excuse for being quite so fucking stupid? Because you're as bad as he is, if not worse. You've got passive-aggressive suffering down to a fine art, you could teach a damned class in it."
Leonard gaped at him, speechless. What had he ever done to deserve this on top of all the other fuckery of the last few days?
"So, Leonard, the same goes for you. Once again, when a boy like another boy, it helps to say something! Sitting in your dorm stewing in long-suffering grumpiness is not a good communications strategy. Why do you let him do it to you? Treat you like shit, use you to clean up his mess before he goes out to fuck himself up yet again? Where's your pride? Lock the god-damned door, pin him to the nearest wall and tell him in no uncertain terms that he's yours and he will behave himself. Why do you think he always comes back to you? Why do you think he's always trying to provoke you? If he can't say it for whatever reason, then you need to act."
Leonard shook his head. Pike couldn't mean... "No. This isn't... you can't... What are you saying?"
"I'm saying, if you really want him, take him! Put a fucking collar on him if you need to. He'd probably like that."
They both looked across at Jim who was staring studiously at his hands as if they were about to reveal the meaning of life, while a faint flush crept up his neck. Leonard could have sworn that nothing in the sector could possibly have made love-machine Kirk blush but it seemed he was wrong. The awkward silence slowly stretched into an ever-deepening abyss of embarrassment.
Pike thumped his head back against his pillow, closing his eyes. "Such morons," he muttered to himself.
Finally Jim lifted his head to look towards Leonard, not quite meeting his eye. "He's talking out of his ass," he said softly. "Still the toxins, Bones, he's off his head. Just ignore it all. Nothing to worry about."
Which was an odd sort of denial, thought Leonard. Not exactly convincing. He hesitated. Maybe there was something here they should talk about. Expect that talking about shit was not exactly their strong point. If they both walked out of this room at this moment, he just knew that the appropriate moment to discuss this would never arrive. Time would pass. At some point Jim would take off after another hot piece of ass and Leonard would retreat behind his tricorder and his grumbling. No one could call either Pike or Jim a coward. Maybe it was time Leonard tried living up to the standard of Starfleet service.
Leonard was reasonably self aware, conscious of some of his less attractive character traits, even if he didn't overcome them that well. And one of them was passivity. Outside the boundaries of his greatest passion - medicine - and of his area of expertise - again medicine - he mostly just let life happen to him. He'd never actually proposed to Jocelyn, she'd just decided that they were engaged and he'd gone along with it. In the same spirit eight years later she'd decided she preferred her lover to him and he'd followed her to the lawyer's office.
He'd ended up in Starfleet because his brother-in-law's wife was in the recruiting office in Atlanta and it seemed like a good way to get off-planet for a while. The only thing he'd ever actively reached out for in his life had been his medical career and - just the once, standing in the cavernous hanger that housed the shuttles to the space-port - his best friend, Jim Kirk. Even then he'd begun to second-guess himself, keeping quiet when Spock threw Jim off the ship down onto an icy planet, hating himself even as he stood by passively.
He'd found the only other thing in his life that he wanted the way he'd always wanted medicine. He'd reached out for it once. He'd let it slip away once. It was time to decide which way he was going to jump. Just take him Pike had said. With a deep breath and a quick prayer that Pike was not in fact talking out of his ass, he reached out and grabbed Jim by the neck. He had just a moment to process startled blue eyes before they moved out of focus as he pressed his mouth against Jim's.
Leonard had imagined a first kiss with Jim many times in many situations. However, sprawled naked across the lap of Captain Pike after a coerced orgy had not featured in any of his wistful fantasies. Still, a lot of unexpected things had happened in the last little while. He met no resistance, just a soft sigh and an eager parting of lips. Wriggling awkwardly across Pike's legs, he pushed Jim backwards so he was laid on his back. Leonard caught his face with both hands and focused on trying to make this kiss everything that their fuck hadn't been - tender, loving, and filled with three years of viciously suppressed longing.
"Bones." A broken whisper, almost a sob. Leonard swallowed the sound into his mouth, relishing the feel of the freshly shaven cheeks under his thumbs. A fragment of Pike's strange conversation came back to him and on a whim he slid both his hands down past the angular line of Jim's jawbone and onto the soft throat beneath. For a moment his mind filled with images of Spock doing just this thing to Jim while he stood by, utterly useless, and his hands faltered. But this wasn't that. It wasn't that at all. With infinite gentleness he circled the throat with his hands, feeling the soft skin, the resistance of bone and sinew, the wild beating of Jim's pulse. He tightened his fingers very slowly. "Mine," he whispered against Jim's plush lips. "You're mine."
"Uh.... yeah... Bones." He felt Jim jerk up against him, felt Jim's hands scrabbling on his back, one eventually sliding up between his shoulder blades, the other grabbing onto his ass, trying to pull their bodies into alignment. The kiss turned frantic now as if Jim was trying to crawl right into his mouth, to take up residence somewhere nearby to that lump in his throat.
"Easy, Jim, easy," he murmured, trying to calm Jim's frenzy by stroking his hand slowly down Jim's flank. "I'm not letting you go, never again." Jim's breath hitched and he seemed to melt beneath Leonard, pressed against him in perfect surrender. Leonard let himself be lost in slick heat and eager lips, soft skin and shaky breath, in the touch and taste and scent of Jim.
He was so caught up in the intensity of the kiss that he startled when a hand stroked gently through his hair. He knew Jim liked touching but hands in three places was quite a feat, even for him. Finally it came back to him exactly where they were. He pulled away to look up at Pike who was smiling at both of them, his grey eyes warm with affection. "Nice work, doctor. You can do it when you believe in yourself."
Doctor. Damn, he had responsibilities here beyond just his own happiness. He glanced at his tricorder, ignoring Pike's wry snort as he did so. Pike's readings were still good, but from looking at him he was clearly exhausted, the lines on his face exaggerated and his skin grey-tinged. Jim did not look much better, bags under his eyes as dark as the bruises flowering on his neck. They all needed rest, himself included.
He hesitated. There was no way of knowing if the toxins were now out of Pike's system or if they'd just taken the edge off for the moment. He needed to be monitored, and preferably by someone who understood the impact of the toxins. And as for Jim, he didn't trust the man to rest if released from this cabin. Leonard just knew that Jim would head back to the bridge, or go and see if he could help with the engine repairs.
He looked across at Jim who was now dozing against Pike's chest. He wasn't sure that their one kiss in such strange circumstances was enough to get them past their mutual reticence - their mutual fucked-up-ness - once they reentered the real world with its myriad of pressing problems. If you want it, take it Pike had said, or something similar.
"Right, this is what's gonna happen. And there'll be no back-chat from any cocky command types," announced Leonard. "Everyone needs sleep, I don't trust y'all further than I could throw you when it comes to resting, but this bed is too small for three. Jim, you're gonna get Captain Pike and his mattress onto the floor while I go and retrieve the mattress from the CMO's camp bed in the sick-bay and bring it back. And then everyone gets twelve hours sleep. Are we clear?"
Jim grinned lazily up at him, offering him a vague approximation of a salute. "Sir, yes sir!"
Pike ruffled Jim's hair sleepily. "Sexy as hell when he gets all bossy, isn't he? Very well, doctor, we'll follow our orders."
"Fuckwits," muttered Leonard to himself as he scrambled into his clothing, but still he couldn't suppress the spring in his step as he headed for the door. Maybe something good would come of all this, after all.
- THE END -
Beta: as ever, the lovely imachar
Warnings : Dubious consent. Mild D/s.
Rating: NC-17
Pairing/Characters: Pike/Kirk/McCoy from ST:AOS
Word Count: about 10,000
Summary: Set on the Enterprise as they limp home after defeating Nero. Pike's behaving very strangely and Jim comes up with a solution that Bones doesn't approve of. Bones is going to have to face up to both his own issues and his conflicted feelings about Jim.
Leonard rested his head against the cool wall and tried to think straight. What to do next? He just needed a minute...
He jerked up with a sudden sensation of dropping forward and realized he'd fallen asleep, standing right there in the corridor. He was just so tired, desperate for the rest that continued to elude him. He'd tried to sleep, attempting to relax on the camp bed in the CMO's office - his own cabin having long since been given up to house Vulcan survivors.
The minute he'd closed his eyes his mind had circled into a never-ending loop of the shrieking whine of impact, of flying metal and glass, bodies tearing open, blood and guts and bone and the CMO of the Enterprise bleeding out in his arms. No, he wasn't going to be trying to sleep again in a hurry. He needed to keep on going, do his duty, help where he could.
He'd eventually been chased out of the makeshift sick-bay by his head nurse, who seemed as little impressed by his field promotion as he himself was. But there were patients all over the ship who could productively be visited. Of course many of them were Vulcan and he instinctively shied away from them. Vulcans were difficult at the best of times, with their impassive superiority and their contempt for emotion. Overlay that with the image of the oh-so-logically-superior Spock with his hands squeezing round Jim's throat and Vulcans weren't his favorite patients.
Nor did it help that they disdained his physical skills, choosing their 'healing trances' over his years of training, and he knew he was no good at the kind of mental comfort that they might need. What did you say to people who'd just seen something like 99.999% of their species destroyed in a few minutes? I'm sorry? Aren't you the lucky ones? Shit happens? No, best that Leonard and his big mouth stayed well away from the Vulcans.
So who else was outside sick-bay that he could help? Pike. Of course. Once the captain (not-acting captain? previous captain? Leonard had no idea of the protocol for the situation) had received all the treatment they were able to offer, he'd made it clear - loudly and repeatedly clear - that he wanted to go to his cabin. Free up a bed, he'd said. Recover in peace, he'd said. Escape from the chaos and stew in private, Leonard had suspected, but then that was pretty much what all of them wanted. After all Pike had endured, who was he to say no?
Leonard had made it clear that someone would be visiting at regular intervals to check on his welfare and the captain had grudgingly agreed. Well, that was one thing he could do. Leonard scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to clear the fuzzy-headedness. He found Captain Christopher Pike intimidating at the best of times, and that was before he'd smuggled a suspended cadet onto Pike's ship in the middle of a crisis, before he'd had to extract an alien killer slug from the man's brainstem in a badly damaged sick-bay. He still remembered Pike's threat that they would be having words later.
He took a deep breath. He could do this, he had to do this. Be a doctor. Do his duty.
* * *
He hesitated at the door of Pike's cabin, eventually deciding to let himself in without knocking, just in case the man was asleep. God, he hoped the man was asleep. Then he could do the checks and slip back out again without any interaction.
"And what the fuck do you think you're doing, seizing the captaincy from Spock?"
Leonard's hopes were dashed the minute he sidled in through the door. Jim was standing at parade rest by the side of Pike's bed, staring down at the bedspread, only his clenched fists betraying his tension as he listened to Pike berate him.
"Are you not aware that he has far more experience that you do, that he has actually served as senior crew?" Pike's voice was a low rough rasp, all the more menacing for being so softly spoken. "This is not a fucking game, Kirk. This is not the fucking Kobayashi Maru where you get to show off how very clever you are. This is real lives on the line."
"You made me first officer. And he stood himself down," protested Jim, but his voice was unusually quiet. Leonard wondered where Jim's normal conviction in his own infallibility had gone.
"Don't you think you can twist the truth with me, you little shit. I've heard what happened. You forced him into it!" snapped Pike, his voice rising in anger. "You deliberately compromised his control, on the bridge, in front of all your senior crew. You forced onto him the most humiliating thing that can possibly happen to a Vulcan officer. Were you getting your own back for the disciplinary hearing or do you just get your kicks fucking over authority figures?"
Jim stared down at the bed, making no effort to defend himself. Leonard, watching unnoticed by the door, felt his own anger rising in the face of Jim's uncharacteristic reticence. Who the hell was Pike to go after Jim like this? Wasn't he doing exactly the same thing, undermining the commanding officer, even if in private? Was this any way to help Jim provide the leadership the rest of the crew so desperately needed?
"What's so damned great about that computer-brained Vulcan, anyway?" burst out Leonard. "He literally threw Jim off the ship the first time round, abandoned him on a monster-filled ice planet. And the second time round he skipped the monsters altogether and took it into his own hands and tried to strangle him!"
"Did I ask your--" started Pike furiously but he was overridden by Jim.
"And what did you do each time, hey Bones? Stood by with your arms folded and watched it happen. Who the fuck are you to get angry now? Stay the hell out of it." Jim abruptly turned his back on Leonard, looking at Pike once again.
A nauseated surge of remorse rose in Leonard's throat as he stared hopelessly at the rigid back of his best friend. It was the first time Jim had actually said anything about that, he'd somehow hoped that in all the drama, Jim hadn't noticed. How had they been reduced to this? Tearing each other apart just when they so desperately needed to be pulling together.
"What do you want, doctor?" said Pike icily.
"Just checking your readings." Trying to block out the memory of Jim's disdainful accusations - accusations that slotted seamlessly into his own aching feelings of guilt - Leonard took refuge in staring at his tricorder, trying to focus on the data he was supposed to be monitoring. But the stupid thing wasn't working properly, the numbers were all over the place, one more fucking failure of the tech that was supposed to be keeping them all safe. He shook the thing, pressed reset a few times, peered in growing confusion at the readings and finally realized that the unit was not malfunctioning. The numbers were right. Which meant... He stared abruptly at Pike.
"Sir? Are you feeling okay?"
"Oh yeah! Feeling just fine and dandy, doctor. Nothing I like more than a little light torture followed by brain surgery--"
"You know what I mean!" Leonard cut sharply across Pike's sarcastic tirade. "Your readings are all over the place. What aren't you telling me?" Leonard's medical knowledge was the one place where he had confidence in himself and he wasn't going to let Pike intimidate him over this.
"And this is what happens when fucking children get to play at senior crew! You're the doctor, you tell me. God knows how you got into Starfleet in the first place. Can't you both just fuck off and leave me in peace? Haven't I had to put up with enough--"
One part of Leonard's mind was frantically trying to analyze the numbers while another was letting Pike's rant roll over him, listening to the tone rather than the words. He didn't know Pike well, the man had a reputation as hard-assed, self-contained, expecting excellence and unforgiving of fools. But he was considered to be fair, if firm, and people fought for the right to serve under him. None of which quite matched his current behavior. Leonard had to be missing something.
Elevated heart rate, flushed skin, dilated pupils, rising levels of oxytocin, but mixed with cortisol and norepinephrine..... Pike suddenly convulsed in the bed and Jim grabbed his arm. Pike seized Jim's arm with both hands, pulling himself towards Jim's body while turning away with his head, face twisted in pained disgust. "Get the fuck off me," he snarled, while holding Jim so tightly Leonard could see his nails cutting into Jim's skin.
Leonard dropped the tricorder and advanced from the other side of the bed, grabbing the back of Pike's neck with one hand and his exposed forearm with the other. "Get out, fuck off, just leave me alone!" Pike growled.
"Like hell I will, sir. Something's going wrong. Talk to me! Give me something to go on," demanded Leonard, watching with puzzled fascination as Pike simultaneously tried to lean back against Leonard's body and to pull away from him.
"It doesn't matter, it's not serious, just leave me the fuck alone," demanded Pike, his eyes squeezed shut in agonized denial. He abruptly pulled a hand free from Jim's arm and brought it to his mouth, biting down so hard Leonard feared he might break the skin.
"You can't leave him like this," snapped Jim, still trying to hold Pike down.
"I'm not damned well going to!" Leonard focused in on Pike. "Sir, you have to tell me what's going on, otherwise I'll have to sedate you."
"No!" Pike tried to pull away from both of them, scrabbling back along the bed linens. "Fuck no, not more sedatives. Then it's much worse. Then I get trapped in my head with it and I just can't.... no."
"Woah, calm down, it's fine, no sedatives," said Leonard hurriedly, frightened Pike would do further damage to the barely healed wounds left by the surgery. "But you know something you're not telling me. Sir, you have to help me here." He stared despairingly at Pike's closed off face. "Sir, I told you after surgery everything would probably be okay eventually, but that's not exactly true. Your spinal cord is compromised. It's touch and go saving the mobility of your legs. We cannot allow anything more to interfere with the healing process. If you want to ever walk again without an exo-skeleton, you have to tell me what's going on."
Leonard ignored Jim's look of horror to focus on Pike's face. The man looked furious but he also looked humiliated. He was digging the nails of one hand into his other arm, as if using the pain to try and clear his mind.
"It's a toxin they injected into me on the Narada," admitted Pike eventually. "It's not from the slug, it's something else. It leaves the prisoner desperate, gagging for--" Pike turned his face away from both of them. "It forces arousal," he continued finally, trying to sound clinical. "Leave the victim begging to be touched, to be brought to... you know. It's just another way to humiliate and shame."
"Are you saying they raped you?" demanded Leonard, thinking frantically back over his pre-surgery assessment of Pike. He'd seen no signs of sexual assault when he examined the man.
"No, fucking hell, listen to me you fool," spat Pike. "It wasn't done by Nero, he didn't give a fuck about anything beyond his revenge. It was done by Ayel, I think he hoped to get a chance to play, but Nero kept him too busy. On the Narada I could deal with it. It was almost better than just lying there helpless. It gave me something to focus on, to fight against. There was no fucking way I was going to beg them." Pike sucked in a deep breath and released his hand from his other arm. Leonard could see blood in the crescent-shaped indents left by his nails.
He winced as after a moment Pike deliberately pressed back into the same marks. "I guess it all got suppressed under the drugs used in the surgery, but now it's back. And I've no focus for fighting it any more."
Leonard tried to chivvy his exhaustion-fogged brain into thinking productively, horrified that he'd missed any sign of this during his previous examinations. "Okay, I need another blood sample, and then I'll have to analyze it. Isolate the toxin. Then find a way to neutralize--"
"Don't be fucking ridiculous," interrupted Jim. "At the best of times that'd take hours, days even, and now you're asleep on your feet, sick-bay is trashed and there's no one free to help you. Let's go for the obvious solution. The man wants sex, let him have sex."
Both Leonard and Pike watched in astonishment as Jim pulled Pike's hand away from his other arm, and then ran both his hands up Pike's exposed forearms. The older man immediately jerked forward into Jim's touch, biting down on a desperate whimper.
"Jim! You can't do that," exclaimed Leonard. "It's against, against--" He flailed for a convincingly concrete objection. "Against all sorts of rules. Fraternization rules, and doctor-patient rules, and--"
"Fuck the rules," growled Jim as he sat down on the edge of the bed, freeing his hands to rapidly unbutton the pajama top Pike wore and then run his hands across the broad expanse of Pike's chest. "In all this fucking mess, here's one thing we can actually solve pretty simply. Why the hell are you objecting?"
Leonard stared as Jim's long fingers pushed through the grey curls that covered Pike's chest in sensuous abundance, trying to marshal his thoughts. "It's medically inadvisable," he stammered. "You're just assuming that orgasm will bring relief. It might make it all worse. This is no time to be experimenting."
"So you're just going to leave him here to suffer hour after hour while you run away to perform your blood tests? Sounds like a cop-out to me. Sounds like your standard procedure of standing on the sidelines watching. You're certainly an expert at that." Leonard flinched in the face of the disdain in Jim's voice. It was becoming increasingly clear that Jim had definitely noticed Leonard standing passively by as Jim fought his way through the day from hell and had been far more deeply hurt by Leonard's inaction than he'd ever imagined. "This is helping," continued Jim aggressively. "I'm not fucking stopping. If you're worried about him coming, then you'd better stay and watch. Hell, you might pick up a few tips to get over your own issues."
Leonard was abruptly furious. Who the hell was Jim to accuse him of having issues? After all the crap he'd had to put with during their years at the Academy. There were a few home truths he could tell Jim on that score but he was finding it surprisingly hard to put together a coherent argument when Pike was pulling Jim's uniform top over his head and running greedy hands up his lean torso. "Well, isn't that just like you?" accused Leonard, cringing as he heard his own words but unable to stop the outpouring of hurt and anger. "Sex always is your first solution to anything. Whether you just want to blow off steam or manipulate people or cheat on the Kobayashi Maru, sex is your tool of choice."
"Yeah, yeah, we all know you're too high and mighty to do anything as sordid as fuck," snapped Jim in reply. "So fuck off and go and play with your blood samples. You must have plenty left from the surgery." With that he turned away from Leonard and mashed his lips over Pike's while starting to push Pike's pajama bottoms down over his hips. Leonard tore his eyes away from the sight of Jim's hands on Pike's bare thighs and hurriedly retreated behind the barrier that divided the bedroom from the small living area of the captain's cabin.
He began to pace back and forth as he tried to work out what the hell to do next. He should stay, that was the responsible thing, just in case Jim's 'therapy' caused an adverse reaction in Pike. Oh fuck that, he should go. After all, they were both adults making their own terrible choices, they'd made it damned clear that his input wasn't wanted and there were remote monitors on Pike that would signal sick-bay if something went really wrong. No, he really should stay. Pike was clearly off his head emotionally as well as physically and Jim's let's-solve-it-all-with-sex wasn't helping. But screw that, he should go. He'd spent three years chasing after Jim with contraceptives and STD vaccines, patching Jim up after over-enthusiastic sex, trying to get Jim to shut-the-hell-up with over-sharing details of his conquests. He was damned if he'd actually be forced to sit through listening to one. But then what if the remote monitors did alert emergency medical personnel and they burst in on the two of them mid-fuck? Starfleet would never forgive that.
He pressed his head against the wall, trying to force himself towards a decision. The breathy moans and soft swearing coming from the other side of the barrier really weren't helping his concentration. His mind kept providing helpful imagery that might explain the sounds, hands and mouths and cocks, oh god. Jim was just over there getting it on, Jim naked and horny, there was a reason Leonard had tried to stay far away from Jim's sex life. And Leonard wasn't blind, Pike might be as intimidating as all hell but he was still remarkably easy on the eye, all that contained power and dry wit in a lean body an officer twenty years younger would envy. Leonard knew perfectly well who all the other cadets thought was far and away the hottest instructor on the campus.
He looked down at his tricorder, trying as ever to hide behind the security of the numbers, trying to soothe himself with the clinical clarity of the charts. Suddenly all the readings spiked, slamming into the red-zone warnings, and without a second thought Leonard rushed back into the bedroom to see what was happening.
Oh!
Well yes, that would likely cause any red-blooded male's readings to spike. Pike was lying naked on the bed, his back and head propped up with pillows, long limbs tangled in a mess of bed linens. Jim, who was now down to boxer shorts, was lying between his legs, running his hands over as much of Pike's washboard stomach and broad chest as he could reach, while filling his pretty mouth with Pike's substantial prick.
Leonard's mouth felt suddenly dry as he watched Jim's cheek distend, the outline of Pike's cockhead clearly visible through the skin. Jim seemed to be tackling the challenge with enthusiasm and plenty of skill. Leonard stared helplessly, unable to tear his gaze away, feeling both utterly useless and bitterly jealous. Even in medical matters, Jim's sex expertise was apparently of more use than his years of training as a doctor. And heaven help him, Jim was beautiful like this, plush pink lips stretched around Pike's dark blood-swollen cock, pale golden skin a luscious contrast to Pike's cooler tones.
Several minutes passed, watching mesmerized as Jim's dirty blond head bobbed up and down on Pike's cock, before Leonard realized he was being scrutinized. He looked up into Pike's steely grey eyes. Even naked, injured, emotionally compromised and with a younger officer sucking him off, the man still managed to be intimidating. "This is not a porn show for your amusement, doctor. Either join in or fuck off."
Leonard took a step backwards, mortified to be caught staring, yet oddly reluctant to leave. Jim pulled off Pike's cock with an audible pop, a trail of saliva still linking his swollen lips to the plump glans. "For fuck's sake Bones, get over here. He's still hurting. I can't touch his skin and blow him at the same time. I may be fucking awesome at this but even I'm not that good. Get your clothes off, climb in behind him and touch all the skin you can. Now, Lieutenant!"
Leonard was mortified to realise he'd been so caught up with staring at Jim that he'd not even noticed Pike straining forward for every touch, his face still a tight grimace of discomfort. Somehow a clear order from his commanding officer made things easier - as long as he didn't think about the fact that said CO was younger than him, currently nearly naked and had only been in command for about five minutes. No, don't go there. He hurriedly pulled off his shirt, got rid of his boots and shucked off his pants, trying to keep his actions ahead of his rising tide of panic. God help him, but deep down he wanted this, wanted an excuse to watch Jim without having to take responsibility for that. Blame the toxin, the Romulans, the whole damned fuck-up that was his life. Keeping moving, don't think about it.
He kept his boxers on in a bizarre attempt to claim some modesty and then clambered onto the bed, pulling out the pillows from behind Pike's back and wriggling into the space left behind. Soon he had a leg on either side of Pike's, with the older man leaning against his chest. Pike instantly pushed back against Leonard, flexing his back and rubbing his face against Leonard's neck. Leonard spread his hands wide and ran them over Pike's stomach and chest as Pike groaned softly in appreciation, his discomfort so clearly eased by the touch that Leonard felt ashamed of himself for resisting for so long.
Leonard pressed his face against Pike's hair while he let his hands run over the flat stomach and the firm pecs, let his fingers thread through the curls of chest hair and pinch at the rigid nubs of nipple. But keeping his eyes tightly closed only magnified the sounds, the rush of his own blood in his ears, Pike's labored panting, and over everything, the obscene slurp of Jim's mouth dragging up Pike's cock. It was so long since he'd touched another person for any reason other than to give medical aid, so long since he'd rubbed against warm skin simply to give and to take pleasure. He'd not realized how much he'd missed it.
Pike grabbed one of his hands and moved it down to put it on Jim's head, keeping it in place with his own, their fingers intertwined, buried in Jim's thick hair. Leonard couldn't not look. He peered over Pike's shoulder and watched mesmerized as Pike's swollen cock slid slickly in and out of Jim's stretched lips. "Isn't he pretty like that?" said Pike softly, his voice clearly pitched for Leonard to hear rather than Jim. "Sucks cock like he was born to do it."
The fact that Pike's words were true did nothing to lessen Leonard's intense surge of anger. He wondered furiously how often Captain Pike has fantasized about having cadet Kirk on his knees. He knew from Jim's irritating tendency to over-share about his sex life that he'd propositioned Pike more than once and been refused each time. Jim looked up at them, his bright blue eyes framed by a thick fringe of blond eyelashes, his lush pink lips obscenely distended. He pulled off and began to jack Pike's saliva-slick cock with his hand instead. "Enjoying the view, are we, gentlemen?" he asked sarcastically. "At least this is one thing we can all agree that I'm fully qualified to do. No doubting my competency for command here."
His actions belied his harsh words. He turned his head to kiss the forearm of the hand buried in his hair and then hesitated a moment when he realized it was Leonard's arm, not Pike's. He looked up and gave Leonard a wry grin. "Sorry man, wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable." With a lewd wink, he brought his focus back to Pike's prick, sucking on the flared glans like a popsicle, teasing the slit and the frenulum with deft flicks of his tongue. Pike groaned helplessly in response, twisting restlessly between Leonard's open thighs.
Whatever Pike might think about the matter, Leonard was damn sure Jim had a bit of a crush on the older man. He'd spent far too much time at the Academy bitching about his academic advisor for it to be anything else. Most other sexual conquests in Jim's life faded from view soon after he'd managed to bed them. Most other instructors interested Jim only for what they had to teach him or whether he could be seen to outsmart them. Pike was the only one to hold his attention for three long years.
Was this the culmination of all Jim's dreams? wondered Leonard sourly. Was this just Jim showing appreciation for the one man he really respected, or was this some kind of sick daddy fantasy, with Jim trying to get approval from the older man in the only way he knew how? Leonard didn't really believe that, and yet... this had been a day of things he would never have believed possible, up to and including this little coerced orgy.
He pressed his face against Pike's hair, letting his one hand roam across the man's broad chest while his other stayed buried in Jim's hair. Watching Jim suck his commanding officer's cock like a professional, Leonard tried to work through his contradictory feelings towards Pike. Confused though he was about the man, it was easier than facing up to the Gordian knot that was his feelings for Jim. Pike was a hero who'd walked onto the Narada to knowingly face certain torture and likely death to buy his crew precious time to try and disable the drill threatening Vulcan and get an emergency message through to Starfleet HQ. Pike was a patient, a victim, off his head with drugs, pain and trauma. But then again, maybe Pike was just a ruthless ass manipulating his injuries and his anger to get two junior officers into his bed, exploiting the crush of a cadet young enough to be his son.
Damn, but it was hard to think straight with the sound of sex all around him, the smell, the feel of skin. He was so tired yet so keyed-up after all that had happened - Leonard found himself desperately wanting the mindless relief of orgasm and the sated sleep that might follow. He'd never been one for easy sex, inclined by nature and upbringing to monogamy and then left bruised and betrayed by Jocelyn's infidelity with a mutual close friend - the infidelity that apparently everyone but him had known about. Wallowing in his self-imposed, flagellatory post-divorce celibacy, he'd found himself increasingly repulsed by Jim's indiscriminate sexual tastes and his own involuntary role in cleaning up after it all, while fighting to deal with with his confused feelings for the man that had quickly become his best friend. It'd been a very long time since he'd come with the help of anything other than his own hand and unhappy fantasies.
Pike moaned and arched against Leonard, frantically trying to rub more skin against him, running his free hand up Leonard's thigh, grinding back against the telltale lump swelling in Leonard's groin. Dammit, the man was clearly in pain and Leonard could hardly argue that he or Jim had been forced into this at the point of a phaser. If he was going to do this, he might as well do it properly. He nuzzled his face into Pike's thick hair, seeking out the edge of an ear with his mouth and running his tongue along it, while letting his hands roam across Pike's arms and chest, enjoying the rasp of the curls of chest hair under his palms. It was a relief to just let himself feel, stop worrying about what would come next and simply live in the moment, seeking and taking pleasure, letting the sound and smell of sex fill his senses....
Pike tensed against him, his back arched and his face pushed hard against Leonard's neck, swearing softly under his breath as his groin jerked in distinctive pulses. Leonard cracked his eyes open enough to watch as Jim swallowed time and again, sucking down their commanding officer's come, oh god, this hadn't been in the recruitment brochure, how the hell were any of them going to look the others in the eye after this?
He closed his eyes again as Pike sagged back against him. He was the lowliest officer in this bed; let the others work out how to finish this up. His biggest worry right now was where he could find enough privacy to get his hand down his boxers and bring some relief to his rock-hard prick.
"Kirk, don't you dare!" Leonard peered round Pike's head in response to the older man's command snapped at Jim.
"But sir, that's hardly fair," whined Jim, who'd clearly decided that he didn't need privacy to take care of himself and was lying between Pike's legs with a hand down his own pants.
"I assure you, Kirk, fairness got fucked up the ass long ago, now it's down to survival of the most ruthless. And the question is, what the fuck am I going to do with the two of you? You both deserve to be punished."
Leonard had no idea where his tricorder had got to, what with all the writhing on the bed, but he could tell that Pike's pulse was steadier and slower. The vicious edge to his words had lessened but Leonard didn't know him well enough to be sure if the man was back to normal or not. Was this Pike still off his head from the toxins or just being his usual hard-assed self?
"Hey, I've been awesome," protested Jim, "and if I may say so, this is way above and beyond the call of duty." He waved a hand over Pike's groin as he spoke.
"You'll speak when you're spoken to," snapped Pike. "Kirk, you cheated on a test that was specifically designed to measure character and your character was shown up as that of a sore loser, who'd cheat rather than fail. Then, once on academic suspension, you smuggled yourself onto a ship on red alert, putting your ego ahead of the good of the Federation. You were so insubordinate your acting captain had you expelled from the ship, and you came back purely to force him into a breakdown that would let you seize control--"
"Hey, that's a pretty fucking selective re-telling--" protested Jim.
"Shut the fuck up, cadet. The fact that some other things may have gone your way - mostly due to sheer damned luck - doesn't make any of what I've just said untrue. And as for you--" Pike twisted to turn his face towards Leonard who shrunk back against the pillows. If he was going to get reamed a new one, he'd much rather have it happen when he was fully dressed and had a nice solid desk between him and his superior officer.
"I told you we'd have words later. You smuggled a suspended cadet onto a ship on red alert, onto my ship, and then didn't even have the balls to back up your fucking actions, letting him get thrown off the ship and then apparently almost strangled. What is it with you and your inability to stand by your fucking choices?"
Leonard listened in humiliated silence, devastated by how accurately Pike's words echoed his own internal critic.
"You both deserve to get comprehensively fucked over for your behavior over the last few days, hell, over the last few years while we're at it. But given that I'm out of action, only one of you can get thoroughly screwed right now." Pike turned back to Jim, grabbing his face with his hand, forcing the younger man to look into his eyes. "Do you want it to be you, Kirk? Do you want me to order your doctor to pin you down and make you take it, hold you down while he fucks that big cock into your tight ass, give you what you deserve for all that acting out?"
Leonard froze as he realized what Pike was implying, but neither man was paying him any attention, locked in silent battle of wills as each tried to out-stare the other. It was a private conversation between the two men, a conversation of layers he didn't understand, and he apparently had the importance of a dildo for all they cared.
"He won't do it," challenged Jim.
"Oh, but I think he will. There's a throbbing lump pressed up against my butt telling me a different story, and I don't think it's for me. You should've seen him drooling over your cocky mouth plugged up with my cock. You've spent years making him play madonna to your whore and now neither of you can get yourselves out of the damned trap you've created."
Pike twisted around toward Leonard again. "Fuck him, doctor. Flat on this bed, between my legs, fuck him like you've always wanted to. And that's an order."
Pike clearly wasn't well, Leonard told himself. The toxin was still affecting his judgement. This wasn't an order Leonard had any business following. And yet Pike's words were piercing straight through all his layers of denial and justification, straight to a place of small dirty truth where he was heartily sick of standing primly in judgement on Jim's reckless promiscuity. Vulcan was gone, the vision that had brought the Federation into being was destroyed and their enemies would be lining up on their borders, salivating at the opportunity brought by the chaos. Leonard and all his generation were now likely to face a lifetime at war. Why the hell shouldn't he take what he wanted, just this once?
"Well, Bones? Think you're man enough to do it?"
And wasn't that just like Jim, cocky to the last, his emotions hidden behind his trademark challenging smirk, not giving Leonard anything to go on, no help at all in knowing whether Jim wanted this or not. Fuck that, Jim was a big boy, he could say no if he chose to, for once in a blue moon Leonard wasn't going to think of anyone other than himself.
"Hell yes, why not, get your knees up and your ass in the air."
Jim's eyes narrowed in surprise, but still Leonard had no idea what he was hiding behind the mask. Leonard hesitated, waiting for Jim to say no, or yes, or anything that would offer some stability in this heaving ocean of uncertainty, but in the end all he got was Jim's normal pushy dare. "Hell, Bonsie, I didn't know you had it in you. Well, let's see what you've got." Jim rolled onto his side to pull off his boxers and then wriggled gracefully into position, giving a little wiggle of his creamy ass as he pulled his knees up under him.
His deep blue eyes never let go of Leonard's, there was anger there and challenge and something Leonard didn't begin to understand, but his own store of patience had run out in the face of his exhaustion and anger. Anger that he had in abundance, anger at himself, at the Romulans, at the Federation for ever letting things get this fair, at Pike for getting them into this, and at Jim - always damned Jim - so beautiful, so annoying, so in-his-face with all the best friend shit and so utterly out of his reach as Jim fucked his way through most of the student body, and, if the rumors were to be believed, through a fair number of the instructors.
He squirmed out from behind Pike and roughly pulled off his boxers, awkwardly aware that he had neither Jim's innate grace nor Pike's battle-hardened power, but it was tough shit, they'd have to deal. A rapid rummage in his medical bag produced a small tube of lubricant. Frankly he doubted Jim needed it, what with the variety of things he'd apparently cheerfully put up his ass in the last three years, but if Leonard was going to do this, he'd damned well do it properly.
He clambered onto the bed behind Jim and stuck two well-lubed fingers into Jim's ass without preamble, twisting roughly in the tight heat. Jim's sharp intake of breath was followed by a throaty laugh. "Fuck yeah, so you like it rough, Bones? Still waters run deep, baby." Still Jim's voice had a hard edge of challenge, and for a moment Leonard faltered. This was so very much not what he'd imagined when he'd allowed himself the occasional wistful fantasy about his best friend, this was not what he wanted them to be. But then he'd long acknowledged he wanted a Jim that didn't exist - the brilliance without the crap, the beauty without the attitude - and life had largely taught Leonard that he didn't get what he wanted.
"Get on with it," taunted Jim. "Jesus fuck, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? It's only sex, Bones." And yes, hadn't that always been the truth of it? Leonard wanted some impossible romantic relationship, and for Jim it had always been about the next hot hit of fucking. "Dammit sir, can't you order him to just slam it in?" Jim was rubbing his face across Pike's stomach, nosing up the grey treasure trail and placing biting kisses across Pike's broad chest. It was a brutal reminder to Leonard that this had never been about him at all. This was all about Jim's sordid little fantasy of pleasing daddy.
His reservations buried beneath a sudden flood of hot anger, he grabbed Jim's hip with one hand, brutally pumped his own cock back to full hardness with the other, and shoved it in just as Jim had demanded. The viciously tight grip of Jim's velvet-warm passage took his breath away for a moment, it'd been so long since he'd allowed himself this. He took several deep shuddering breaths, trying to pull himself back from tipping over the brink there and then. This was likely to be the only chance he ever got to do this, he wanted it to last for more than a few embarrassing seconds. Taking a moment to recall what he'd left behind him in the sick-bay was enough to take the edge off and left him more desperate than ever to forget it all for a few long minutes deep in the sensuous warmth of Jim's body.
He grabbed Jim's hips with both hands and began to slam into him, hard and fast, trying to shut down his awkward thoughts in the flood of sensation of furious fucking, in the stink of sweat and the raw drag of skin. "Fuck yeah, like that, harder Bones!" Jim, demanding as ever, was bracing himself on Pike's ribcage, face buried in the older man's stomach. Leonard, on his knees behind Jim, with both of them between Pike's splayed legs, stared defiantly across at his erstwhile captain, trying to read the emotion hidden by those opaque grey eyes.
"Slow down, doctor," ordered Pike. "We don't want this to be over too quickly, now do we? Cadet Kirk here deserves a slow thorough screwing, he's had it coming for years." And don't you wish you were the one to be giving it to him, thought Leonard bitterly, even as he did as he was told, pulling right out and then pushing back in with agonizing slowness before giving a final vicious punch of his hips to bury himself just that fraction of an inch deeper. Beneath him Jim was whining in frustration, rubbing his face restlessly against Pike's stomach, his wrists now held tight in Pike's hands.
"This isn't fucking fair," Jim complained, "I want it hard and fast."
"Nobody gives a shit what you want, Kirk," snapped Pike. "What matters is what you're going to get. And you're going to get done good and properly."
Jim moaned against Pike's skin and pushed back impatiently onto Leonard's cock. He liked being ordered around by Pike, thought Leonard sourly, and wasn't that just typical? It wasn't as if Jim had ever paid the blindest bit of attention when Leonard had tried to warn him about his reckless ways. He grabbed Jim's hips so hard that the fair skin was likely to bruise, holding them in place so that Jim couldn't push back, but was caught between him and Pike, not able to do anything but take it.
And Leonard wanted to give it to him, hard and rough, fuck into Jim's lithe body all his own anger and jealousy and endless uncertainty about where he fitted in Jim's life. His romantic fantasies about the two of them were nothing more than that, pathetic wishful thinking as fragile as the dew at dawn, and now being burnt away by the baking heat of reality. This was a new world where only the toughest would survive and he was going to take what he wanted, help himself to this one lonely chance, bury himself deep in Jim until he shook apart, forget the blood and bodies, the twisted metals and agonized screams, forget for a few brief selfish moments that their world had been torn apart.
He tried to lose himself in the rough rhythm of the fucking but he was still instantly aware the moment Pike released one of Jim's wrists and slid his hand under Jim's body. Jim immediately bucked forward, ever the eager slut for Pike's attention, and even now, balls deep in Jim's body, Leonard was still the outsider, still desperately jealous, still left wanting. He'd been letting his eyes stare down at the smooth skin of Jim's back, watching the ripple of muscle as Jim strained beneath him, but now he looked up, to find Pike's steely grey eyes focused on him.
"I hate you for this," said Leonard softly, holding Pike's gaze.
"I'm the one you hate?" mouthed Pike. "I doubt it."
Leonard couldn't see what was happening below him, but from the way Pike suddenly gasped, he gathered Jim had got his free hand to Pike's cock. Now all control had been lost, Leonard was slamming into Jim hard and fast, as Jim and Pike writhed against each other and when Jim suddenly clenched down hard his cock, he found he'd tipped over the edge, the burning rush of relief followed almost immediately by the icy wave of self-disgust.
Jim had slumped down onto Pike's torso and Leonard followed him down, burying his face between Jim's shoulder blades and wishing the universe would turn in on itself the way Vulcan had done and swallow them all whole before he had to face up to any of the consequences of all this.
* * *
Leonard lay with his head pressed against Jim's shoulder, now tacky with cooling sweat, wondering what the hell to do next. What was the protocol for departing from a semi-coerced orgy with your fellow officers? After all he was nothing more than an ambulatory dildo in Pike and Jim's little incest fantasy. He had to escape this while he had any shreds of dignity left.
He sucked in a deep breath. Be a doctor. That was the one thing he knew he could do. Get up, get out, do his duty. Seeing his tricorder lying abandoned on the floor he reached out. A strong hand caught his wrist as he picked it up.
"Put that fucking thing down. You hide behind it all the time," said Pike.
"I'm a doctor," protested Leonard.
"Yes, you hide behind that too. You're more than that. You deserve more than that."
Leonard looked at Pike in surprise. The nasty edge to his tone had gone and his eyes looked clearer, although very tired. Leonard abruptly pulled his arm away and looked down the readings on the tricorder. All Pike's vital readings had settled down.
"The toxin has cleared?"
"It feels like it. For the moment, anyway." Pike ran a hand through his hair as he looked at the two officers sprawled naked across his bed, across his body. His face fell as if he was abruptly realizing that everything that had just passed was not simply a fevered hallucination caused by the toxin but had actually happened. He dropped his head back onto the pillow. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck."
For a long moment he covered his face with his hands before speaking again in a flat voice. "Clearly this is not recommended procedure in the Starfleet Human Resources manual. I would urge both of you to register a complaint of sexual coercion with the proper authorities. I won't deny it, I--"
"I don't have much room to complain," interrupted Leonard bitterly. "I just fucked a patient under my care. Two of them, sort of. I ought to be struck-off, I should be--"
Jim butted in. "Oh, for fuck's sake, can you two stop competing in the guilt olympics. It's just sex, it's not a big deal. It's a nothing deal. Nobody gives a shit."
Pike grabbed Jim's face with his hand, forcing the younger man to turn to him. "Just sex? Oh really? When it comes to me and to him, especially to him--" He nodded towards Leonard. "Look me in the eye, Kirk, and tell me this is just sex to you."
Leonard watched in surprise as Jim's eyes skated away to stare down at the crumpled bedclothes.
"You two are the damned limit, you're so annoying." Pike stared at them both, clearly thinking furiously. "Oh hell," he continued. "We're hip-deep in inappropriate behavior here. Might as well wade right on in. I have some things to say to the two of you. For two highly intelligent men, you are both dumb as dirt in some regards. Kirk, we'll start with you."
Leonard shrunk back internally. The last thing he wanted was another round of Pike's unvarnished opinion of his character. He was feeling battered enough as it was.
"Hey," protested Jim, "I saved your ass out there, I've been fucking awesome!"
"Which makes it all the more inexplicable how un-awesome your personal life is," retorted Pike. "Now shut the fuck up and listen. I'll put this in words of one syllable in the hope you'll get it." Pike continued, over-enunciating his words, as if addressing a dim-witted foreigner. "Jim, when a boy likes another boy, it helps if you tell him that. Going out and fucking a never-ending string of strangers of multiple sexes and species, and then going back to your boy and expecting him to cure your STD's, patch up your rough-sex injuries and generally pep you up so you can go out and do it all over again the next night - that doesn't really get your message across. Indeed, some people might even consider it counter-productive.
"No, don't start protesting," continued Pike as Jim's mouth began to flap like a fish recently landed on a river bank. "There are a multitude of species in the Federation with a vast range of sexual and romantic practices. And not a single one of them would consider your behavior through your three years at the Academy as a recommended means of signaling interest to a potential partner. Don't gape at me. Jim, you know what I'm saying is true."
Leonard stared in astonishment at Pike and at Jim. This was bullshit, it had to be. Pike couldn't be implying.... No, of course not. Jim would laugh it off any minute now, put Pike straight in no uncertain terms.
Jim, staring down at the rumpled sheets, eventually offered Pike an awkward shrug. "Somehow it seemed to make sense in the moment..."
That startled a dry laugh out of Pike. "I told you you're dumb!"
"Now hang on a god-damned minute," protested Leonard. "This is crap--"
"Oh yes, you!" interrupted Pike. "You're older than him, you've been married, you've had a professional career. What's your excuse for being quite so fucking stupid? Because you're as bad as he is, if not worse. You've got passive-aggressive suffering down to a fine art, you could teach a damned class in it."
Leonard gaped at him, speechless. What had he ever done to deserve this on top of all the other fuckery of the last few days?
"So, Leonard, the same goes for you. Once again, when a boy like another boy, it helps to say something! Sitting in your dorm stewing in long-suffering grumpiness is not a good communications strategy. Why do you let him do it to you? Treat you like shit, use you to clean up his mess before he goes out to fuck himself up yet again? Where's your pride? Lock the god-damned door, pin him to the nearest wall and tell him in no uncertain terms that he's yours and he will behave himself. Why do you think he always comes back to you? Why do you think he's always trying to provoke you? If he can't say it for whatever reason, then you need to act."
Leonard shook his head. Pike couldn't mean... "No. This isn't... you can't... What are you saying?"
"I'm saying, if you really want him, take him! Put a fucking collar on him if you need to. He'd probably like that."
They both looked across at Jim who was staring studiously at his hands as if they were about to reveal the meaning of life, while a faint flush crept up his neck. Leonard could have sworn that nothing in the sector could possibly have made love-machine Kirk blush but it seemed he was wrong. The awkward silence slowly stretched into an ever-deepening abyss of embarrassment.
Pike thumped his head back against his pillow, closing his eyes. "Such morons," he muttered to himself.
Finally Jim lifted his head to look towards Leonard, not quite meeting his eye. "He's talking out of his ass," he said softly. "Still the toxins, Bones, he's off his head. Just ignore it all. Nothing to worry about."
Which was an odd sort of denial, thought Leonard. Not exactly convincing. He hesitated. Maybe there was something here they should talk about. Expect that talking about shit was not exactly their strong point. If they both walked out of this room at this moment, he just knew that the appropriate moment to discuss this would never arrive. Time would pass. At some point Jim would take off after another hot piece of ass and Leonard would retreat behind his tricorder and his grumbling. No one could call either Pike or Jim a coward. Maybe it was time Leonard tried living up to the standard of Starfleet service.
Leonard was reasonably self aware, conscious of some of his less attractive character traits, even if he didn't overcome them that well. And one of them was passivity. Outside the boundaries of his greatest passion - medicine - and of his area of expertise - again medicine - he mostly just let life happen to him. He'd never actually proposed to Jocelyn, she'd just decided that they were engaged and he'd gone along with it. In the same spirit eight years later she'd decided she preferred her lover to him and he'd followed her to the lawyer's office.
He'd ended up in Starfleet because his brother-in-law's wife was in the recruiting office in Atlanta and it seemed like a good way to get off-planet for a while. The only thing he'd ever actively reached out for in his life had been his medical career and - just the once, standing in the cavernous hanger that housed the shuttles to the space-port - his best friend, Jim Kirk. Even then he'd begun to second-guess himself, keeping quiet when Spock threw Jim off the ship down onto an icy planet, hating himself even as he stood by passively.
He'd found the only other thing in his life that he wanted the way he'd always wanted medicine. He'd reached out for it once. He'd let it slip away once. It was time to decide which way he was going to jump. Just take him Pike had said. With a deep breath and a quick prayer that Pike was not in fact talking out of his ass, he reached out and grabbed Jim by the neck. He had just a moment to process startled blue eyes before they moved out of focus as he pressed his mouth against Jim's.
Leonard had imagined a first kiss with Jim many times in many situations. However, sprawled naked across the lap of Captain Pike after a coerced orgy had not featured in any of his wistful fantasies. Still, a lot of unexpected things had happened in the last little while. He met no resistance, just a soft sigh and an eager parting of lips. Wriggling awkwardly across Pike's legs, he pushed Jim backwards so he was laid on his back. Leonard caught his face with both hands and focused on trying to make this kiss everything that their fuck hadn't been - tender, loving, and filled with three years of viciously suppressed longing.
"Bones." A broken whisper, almost a sob. Leonard swallowed the sound into his mouth, relishing the feel of the freshly shaven cheeks under his thumbs. A fragment of Pike's strange conversation came back to him and on a whim he slid both his hands down past the angular line of Jim's jawbone and onto the soft throat beneath. For a moment his mind filled with images of Spock doing just this thing to Jim while he stood by, utterly useless, and his hands faltered. But this wasn't that. It wasn't that at all. With infinite gentleness he circled the throat with his hands, feeling the soft skin, the resistance of bone and sinew, the wild beating of Jim's pulse. He tightened his fingers very slowly. "Mine," he whispered against Jim's plush lips. "You're mine."
"Uh.... yeah... Bones." He felt Jim jerk up against him, felt Jim's hands scrabbling on his back, one eventually sliding up between his shoulder blades, the other grabbing onto his ass, trying to pull their bodies into alignment. The kiss turned frantic now as if Jim was trying to crawl right into his mouth, to take up residence somewhere nearby to that lump in his throat.
"Easy, Jim, easy," he murmured, trying to calm Jim's frenzy by stroking his hand slowly down Jim's flank. "I'm not letting you go, never again." Jim's breath hitched and he seemed to melt beneath Leonard, pressed against him in perfect surrender. Leonard let himself be lost in slick heat and eager lips, soft skin and shaky breath, in the touch and taste and scent of Jim.
He was so caught up in the intensity of the kiss that he startled when a hand stroked gently through his hair. He knew Jim liked touching but hands in three places was quite a feat, even for him. Finally it came back to him exactly where they were. He pulled away to look up at Pike who was smiling at both of them, his grey eyes warm with affection. "Nice work, doctor. You can do it when you believe in yourself."
Doctor. Damn, he had responsibilities here beyond just his own happiness. He glanced at his tricorder, ignoring Pike's wry snort as he did so. Pike's readings were still good, but from looking at him he was clearly exhausted, the lines on his face exaggerated and his skin grey-tinged. Jim did not look much better, bags under his eyes as dark as the bruises flowering on his neck. They all needed rest, himself included.
He hesitated. There was no way of knowing if the toxins were now out of Pike's system or if they'd just taken the edge off for the moment. He needed to be monitored, and preferably by someone who understood the impact of the toxins. And as for Jim, he didn't trust the man to rest if released from this cabin. Leonard just knew that Jim would head back to the bridge, or go and see if he could help with the engine repairs.
He looked across at Jim who was now dozing against Pike's chest. He wasn't sure that their one kiss in such strange circumstances was enough to get them past their mutual reticence - their mutual fucked-up-ness - once they reentered the real world with its myriad of pressing problems. If you want it, take it Pike had said, or something similar.
"Right, this is what's gonna happen. And there'll be no back-chat from any cocky command types," announced Leonard. "Everyone needs sleep, I don't trust y'all further than I could throw you when it comes to resting, but this bed is too small for three. Jim, you're gonna get Captain Pike and his mattress onto the floor while I go and retrieve the mattress from the CMO's camp bed in the sick-bay and bring it back. And then everyone gets twelve hours sleep. Are we clear?"
Jim grinned lazily up at him, offering him a vague approximation of a salute. "Sir, yes sir!"
Pike ruffled Jim's hair sleepily. "Sexy as hell when he gets all bossy, isn't he? Very well, doctor, we'll follow our orders."
"Fuckwits," muttered Leonard to himself as he scrambled into his clothing, but still he couldn't suppress the spring in his step as he headed for the door. Maybe something good would come of all this, after all.
- THE END -