Moving Day (RP)

[sharpestscalpel]

It was easy enough to empty sickbay out. Most of the wounds coming in were superficial – the real power struggle would take a few more days while alliances and allegiances shook themselves out of the wash. Uhura looked good in the chair and she’d already held it – with a knife blade so lazy from Chekov that the whole defense would have been an insult to the assassin if he hadn’t gurgled out his last breaths onto the floor at Uhura’s booted heels.

McCoy motioned to the last of the nurses and they scattered to take their positions in the halls. It wasn’t that McCoy trusted them. It was that they damn well knew better than to try anything on him or he’d make them wish he’d killed them before he fucked them.

Now it was just a matter of getting Kirk out the door. He hadn’t given the man any warning – it was more fun to keep him guessing.

The probes opened the door to the iso room at McCoy’s approach.

He was smiling.

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[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

M'Benga waited at the juncture of the halls, watching for any stray crewmembers who were not distracted by the shift in the balance of power. McCoy had time things carefully - the majority of crew were on shift and those who weren't would be deep in their sleep cycles.

The male nurse gave the all clear.

"Turn right and stop by the third door on the left."

McCoy did not slap M'Benga's ass - not that it wasn't a fine ass but the man had some groveling - and the nursing staff agreed right down to Chapel - to do before McCoy would reinstate his actual position and deign to notice it.

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Kirk didn't know, or care, who M'Benga was. He merely watched him carefully, without appearing to pay too much attention, as he passed. So far, no one but sickbay personnel. No one actually in sickbay but that cocksucking nurse. So wherever they were going--and this was a section reserved for officers' quarters--no one else was meant to know.

That was something, anyway. Kirk thought quickly as he followed instructions. It meant he probably wasn't going to die--not yet, anyway. It meant, further, that this was probably not Pike's doing. Which meant either McCoy was acting on his own, that Pike wasn't a factor, or both. Kirk would keep all options on the table until something happened to confirm or deny anything.

Stopping before the door, he glanced over his shoulder at McCoy.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

Pike had been in a hurry. That's the only reason McCoy could think of that the man wouldn't predict McCoy would take Pike's example as his lead when it came to the probes. Uhura had the rest of the ship - but it had been a small thing, once he'd figured out how to do it, to carry some of the sickbay probes to his own quarters.

The door... rippled with them, and then opened.

The hand at the small of Kirk's back was gentlemanly, if insistent and completely ungiving.

"That drink ain't going to drink itself, amusing quirks of nouns and verbs aside, Jimmy-boy."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Kirk didn't give a fuck about parts of speech, but he stepped into the room and managed to keep himself upright. He was breathing a little too heavily, his balance a little too put off by the relatively light pressure at his back. It was the first time he could remember McCoy touching him in a non-medical capacity, and there was a strange electricity to it, like a promise or a threat.

McCoy's quarters.

They could have been anyone's, he supposed, though it would have made little sense. And anyway, he knew. So. A secret, mid-shift transfer to McCoy's quarters. Not just a drink. Not just anything, since he had yet to figure what couldn't be done to him in sickbay. Still, there was the gleam in McCoy's eye when he looked at him, the interest he'd suddenly presented and which Kirk had decided to use as much as possible. His eyes scanned the room, finally resting on McCoy.

"Nice place."

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

The door shut silently, locked without sound but with a sense of finality.

McCoy's personal quarters were mostly tidy. There was a sense of clutter - many small objects that the room was not really designed to hold: books and papers in addition to stacks of PADDS, souvenirs from conquered peoples - though nothing overtly gruesome, artful photos displaying places though never any people.

Except for one, on the night stand. McCoy and a woman of striking features, between them a very small child.

The room was unassuming with its unmade bed - its lived-in comfortableness.

The man himself waved at Kirk to sit on the small couch of dubious comfort. He retrieved two glasses, real lead crystal brought from Earth, and poured them both a generous three fingers of bourbon from the stock of bottles in the tiny corner bar.

"You'd best pace yourself to avoid unpleasant drug interactions."

And he sprawled in an overstuffed armchair that was absolutely not standard issue even in the officers quarters to watch Kirk take it all in.

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Take it in Kirk did, even if he did not, at first, touch the drink except to hold it like it was a foreign artifact. The couch was hard but not so hard as the biobed--and it didn't fucking beep at him. The room was homier than his own had been--he could hardly expect any of this things still remained in it--somehow both tidier and more personal.

He wanted to examine the photos, the knick knacks, for clues about McCoy or why he was here. Wanted to find at theme in the decor, a pattern in the clutter. But it was difficult to do so with McCoy watching him, knowing what he was doing, taking his measure of Kirk's measure of him.

It was possible, he thought, that McCoy really had a reason for this, that they had something to talk about. McCoy had those probes. He had sickbay. He apparently had this room. Was he planning a coup?

Or was Kirk another relic, like the suspicious-looking mass on a side table?

He took a sip, absently, and then not-so-absently looked down at the glass in surprise.

"It's good," he said. Good, and strong, and he wondered without really wanting to know how much he weighed now, and whether whatever McCoy wanted from him really required inebriation, at this point.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

He sipped his own drink, sighing his appreciation.

"I don't serve shit. Life's too short for shitty booze."

McCoy stretched his legs out in front of him and looked at Kirk over the rim of his glass.

"What do you want out of life, Blue?"

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Kirk took another sip, because anything, these days, was a delicacy. And he still had little to lose. He watched McCoy as he did so, trying to read the answer he was supposed to give in the man's posture. Which gave nothing away.

"Guess I thought that was obvious, considering what I tried. I want the Enterprise." Power. He'd gotten his first taste on Tarsus, another in an alley behind a bar in Iowa, but that had been the power of others.

He wanted it for himself.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

"Why not more?"

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

"What?"

The word was involuntary, choked out of him in his surprise. He'd already been regretting his honesty, terse as it was, obvious as it had to be. You didn't just spill your plans unless you had some call to believe the hearer could help you. And you held back, knowing they would, as well. He'd recovered enough of himself to start yearning for life again, for something, to start regretting not just his dire circumstances but what his folly had cost him. What the future did not hold. He'd yet to make himself believe he had more to offer anyone than his bones, and McCoy seemed like the only person who could possibly have use for them.

Maybe not.

"You have to start somewhere," he said slowly. What did McCoy have on the back burner? What did it have to do with him? "And that's further back than ever."

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

McCoy smirked.

Jos had always told him his eyes weren't big enough to fill his stomach. But he had some ideas for this one....

"Here's the thing, Blue. The lay of the land has... changed quite a bit in the last few days."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

He didn't know if was the amber liquid or McCoy's apparent confidence that started the glow inside, but Kirk leaned forward, waiting. This was what he wanted to know. Needed to know. He was starting to think, more than ever, he needed a direction. He'd lost something, something symbolic, even.

He needed to replace it. He'd barely begun to consider making another play, once McCoy was eating out of his hand. And this... He didn't know what to make of it yet.

"Pike," he said.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

"Gone."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

The surge of adrenaline surprised him, and he covered it with another sip.

Gone.

Just like that. And McCoy staring at him intensely, his eyes never relaxed though his posture often was. He thought furiously. McCoy could only be telling him this because he thought something could be done.

"Uhura?"

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

"The Enterprise will never be yours, boy."

Uhura had taken to the probes like some people took to fucking right out in the open spaces of nature: like it was the most natural thing in the world to command the very fabric of the ship.

"But there's an entire goddamn Empire on the other side of it."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

McCoy was too quick. But he had more or less confirmed that Uhura was in charge. Fucking bitch. Left him high and dry.

"You don't strike me," he said carefully, "as the imperial type." McCoy liked his haven, his cozy den that he controlled entirely. He was a big fish in a big enough pond. Or so Kirk had pegged him.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

"I don't strike a lot of people as a lot of things, that is entirely fucking true."

He tipped his head back against the headrest of the chair, boneless and relaxed.

"Tell me, James Tiberius goddamn Kirk, what did Uhura see in you? Did you fuck her?"

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Kirk's mouth twitched, almost a frown. The warm glow was still there, radiating outward, but it hadn't pulled a veil over the wasteland his life had become.

"It's not my only quality, but it's not the least of them," he said. "We had plans." Plans she was moving on without him. With whom? he wondered. Sulu? Chekov? "You need a mover," he guessed. Stupid. Idiotic. Beyond the Enterprise... McCoy had to be insane. "Maybe something else besides."

He took a large swallow and rose, the bourbon lending him a kind of steadiness for now as he crossed to McCoy, eyes that never left his bright in his gaunt face.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

McCoy looked, steady in his chair.

"What do you think I need, Blue?"

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Kirk cocked his head, looking down at him. He had to ignore how grotesque he thought he himself looked--wasn't the point, now, if McCoy saw something he liked.

"You need someone who'll put himself out there," he said. "Someone to take the risks while you consolidate power." He took a risk and a step closer. "You want me."

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

"And what makes you think that?"

He wouldn't say no. But he wasn't saying yes. It wasn't the time for any of that - not until Kirk wanted it. Begged for it. Thought it was his own idea and that he held something valuable.

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

The question was very nearly rhetorical; it seemed obvious to Kirk that he did, for whatever reason, and examining why was irrelevant. He watched McCoy, the carefully relaxed pose--open, inviting in a way. Deceptively so.

"I'm not at my best," he understated. "Doesn't mean I'm a complete moron." He remembered words from days or weeks ago, he couldn't remember now. You make the right people love you... Well, that was asking a lot. But he could use what he had, use that hardon he'd seen, use whatever fucking interest this sick fuck had in him. "I'm here for a reason."

Sure, he was still scared. Uncertain. But he'd been outnumbered before. He'd made alliances and survived. McCoy wanted him. That was what he had now.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

McCoy took a considering sip of his bourbon, looked at Kirk where he stood between McCoy's open legs.

Then he placed his drink on the side table and gathered himself up until he was standing, way too close for it to be anything other than what it was about to become. He fisted the loose fabric of Kirk's shirt and pulled until their mouths were only a fraction of an inch apart. When he spoke, his warm breath, slightly sweet from the drink, brushed over Kirk's lips.

"You have no goddamn idea what I want. You figure you got me mapped out?"

Now he was ghosting warmth exhales over Kirk's cheek, not touching him in any other way.

"Blue, you don't even know. But I suspect you fucking will. Come see me again when that happens. In the meantime -"

Here, he released Kirk, stepped back and around him, picking up his drink and walking with it to the head.

"In the meantime, you're staying here for the duration. Couch pulls out. Welcome to your new shitting home."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Kirk did not, in actual fact, figure he had McCoy mapped out. He knew that if he waited to do that, he'd never act. And maybe that was part of why he was here; Kirk didn't tend to look before he leapt, because more often than not his instincts caught him before he plummeted.

But that hadn't happened this time. McCoy had caught him, for purposes yet unknown, and Kirk was just twisting in his web. He could fight all he wanted. He might even pull himself free enough to think he was acting on his own. But he wasn't capable of seeing all the threads.

He felt nothing at McCoy's proximity that could be termed sexual. Slight fear. Confusion. What anticipation there was was pure instinct, his mind readying himself for what he knew he needed to do, utterly divorced from desire. He could not feel it. Perhaps never would again. But he hadn't on Tarsus either, hadn't with Pike, hadn't in countless situations where it wasn't about what he wanted on a physical level but what he was reaching for beyond it. Climbing bodies like a ladder. He could do this, master his own self-loathing, long enough to pull McCoy in among those sticky strands too and claw his way out.

And then McCoy was gone, Kirk's poorly insulated body suddenly cold though it didn't register. He stared back at the couch, all his focus gone with McCoy's removal. No. He didn't know. Didn't understand. McCoy, for whatever fucked up reason, wanted him here.

But not for that?

Fucking him, making him service McCoy like the nurses did, made sense. Humiliation and power he understood. But that could all be done in that iso room, with a lot less inconvenience to McCoy himself. Why he'd tolerate, let alone want, Kirk in his own room was beyond him. Some new humiliation? If it was, it was elaborate.

McCoy couldn't possibly care. Couldn't like him. Kirk knew very well that McCoy, somehow, in some corner of his twisted brain, found Kirk either amusing, useful, or both. The trick was figuring out which and playing on it. For now, he grabbed his drink, downed the rest (not, probably, a great idea) and took a closer look at the room. The photos were impersonal, though they showed taste. The relics were various degrees of unsettling, but Kirk was used to that.

The one photo, however, was interesting. The women in it was gorgeous, unbearably so if Kirk had still been in a position to worry about the tightness of his pants. As it was, she only reminded him of what he'd lost, and it wasn't the kid he was thinking about. He wondered if the photo meant what he thought it did. And what it had to do with McCoy being on this ship.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

In the bathroom, McCoy stripped out of his uniform, drink on the counter, and ran the shower water until it was hot enough to nearly scald. When it was finally the right temperature, he stepped in and hissed as the water streamed over his closed eyes.

He'd have to fucking settings so Kirk didn't run through the water ration - twisting more out of Gaila was fun but he didn't have time for those goddamn reindeer games right the fuck just now.

Just the fuck now, the game was finally getting interesting. And Kirk didn't even know it.

It was good that McCoy was a patient man. He used the shampoo to scrub something crusty out of his hair and considered.

He'd bring Chapel in one night. Maybe Chapel and Rien both. Nothing like a little show to twist the metaphorical damn knife in Kirk's side.