Caught in a bad romance

[sharpestscalpel]

The locked console gave a gentle trilling chime and McCoy looked over at it.

It didn't make that sound very often but, from the slowly spreading smile on his face, it was evident that he appreciated when it did.

The smile only widened as he read the communication sent from Earth. He readjusted himself in his pants as he scanned the words a second time.

That red silk had felt good, confining and constricting in all the right ways. Still, he'd have to buy her something pretty to make up for it. And if she floundered around trying to explain the new panties to that impotent fuckwad dicksnot of a senator she'd married, all the better.

McCoy's fingers were swift as he typed his response.

Aw, baby, there’s no damn reason to be like that about it. And you also know if Reggie gives you any trouble I’ll cut his fucking cock off and make him eat it like sashimi.

Hell, I’ll probably do that at some goddamn point anyway for fucking marrying my wife.

Besides, I know you found it and had two fingers in that pretty pussy faster than I’d be able to get into your pants if I’d been there. Don’t pretend to me it didn’t make you wet – you act like I don’t shitting know you, woman.

Just like you know I took the blue silk with me last time. Keep it in the top drawer of my nightstand for just in case I get lonesome.

You head of the Empire yet?

-L

He chuckled as he sent it off through protected, nearly invisible channels.

Comments

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

McCoy looked around and nodded at the drink in Kirk's hand.

"And I reckon I've earned the security clearance to hear about it."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

McCoy's liquor was good, but it wasn't that good. Not yet, anyway. "Your little woman dig this up? Who'd she marry, again?" He wasn't stalling. Okay, he was, but he hadn't expected this, not out of the blue like this. For McCoy to have asked, now, he had to have been told recently.

Kirk didn't like thinking about it. Even less so now, when the memories looked too much like the mirror.

"If you know I was there, you know when," he said, finally looking up though only with his eyes. It gave him a hooded, haunted look, unconsciously mimicking those he saw in his mind's eye. "So you know I turned 14 during the famine and the massacre. I survived. You do the math."

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

"I don't think you really want to try to make me talk about my wife's husband right now."

The thought of her giving it up for that slitdick galled him.

"Math ain't my specialty. And we've got nowhere else to go, Blue. I suspect it's time for you to tell me a goddamn story."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

What difference did it make now? He downed the rest of his glass. Pike had sealed those records, classified them, because they just complicated matters and he'd liked having that over Kirk. A favor, as well as a juicy tidbit held back. But McCoy wanted a fucking story, he'd give him one. He'd never been all that good at telling them, though. And never told this one.

"I was sent to Tarsus when I was 13," he said, the words coming hesitantly, though he could not identify the emotion that was tripping them up. "Mom couldn't deal with me, so she packed me off to some distant relatives to work their farm. Well, farms all failed. Whole crop just lost. We were okay for awhile, with our own place, but then the looting started. We fended them off. They just got thinner and more desperate. Finally there were too many, and we had nothing left anyway; I ran. Never heard from those cousins or whatever again."

His voice grew flat, uninflected.

"Sucked dick for awhile, when that still had some currency. Then no one would give up a wafer for anything less than my ass. Then there just wasn't food for any price. We banded together--me and some other kids, once things got so bad it didn't make sense on our own anymore. We were picked up by Kodos' army and found... useful."

He didn't look up. It wasn't remorse. He'd been too far gone for that. In a sense, he'd never come back.

"I don't know how many I killed myself. But we were the future, you know? The ones who got to serve. I got a commendation. At fourteen. Food. Pussy, when they had it. We were heroes."

And then they'd come home and no one had given a shit. It wasn't the waste of human life that bothered him. Or even what he'd done. Not anymore. But the horror he'd felt at the time hadn't left. The desperation to survive. The memory of those gaunt faces, offering him their mouths if he'd just throw them a crumb.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

McCoy sipped his drink and then sipped at it again, slow and easy.

"And when you came back?"

He'd read all the reports on Tarsus, had been old enough - and mature enough - when it was happening to appreciate the stupidity of it in a way the other bloodthirsty fools in his class had not.

Waste not, want not, his granny had always said. And Tarsus had been pure wasteful.

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

"What?" Kirk looked up, startled, uncharacteristically lost in the memories. He blinked. "Nothing. Nothing happened. No one fucking cared. I was supposed to go back to school, you know? Just... go back to giving head for grades, or something. Being told I ate too much."

He'd been someone on Tarsus.

"So I said fuck it, and left home. Did my own thing until Pike convinced me Starfleet was the answer." He bit that off bitterly. He hadn't had much choice, once Pike was done with him. And part of him had been able to appreciate that Starfleet did offer something to his ambition.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

His snort was a clear response to that. Pike had convinced McCoy as well - though McCoy's only other option at the time had been a filthy cell and guards who kept slanting distrustful looks his way.

He'd only hurt the one of them.

"Why'd he hide it for you?"

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

"Probably had something to do with my dad," he said. "Pike always had a thing about him. Got the impression he was holding me in reserve for something." He looked at McCoy, tilted his head. He'd said enough. "Where'd he find you?"

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

McCoy's teeth were very white when he smiled.

"The supermax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermax) wing of the old US Pen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Penitentiary,_Atlanta) in Atlanta."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Kirk's eyes twitched slightly. That was the smile of a predator.

"Guess that's classified, too," he said slowly.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

His innocent face was good. It had fooled church-goers and over-protective mamas alike.

But there was still something in his eyes, those green and amber pools, that looked like decay: long-past dead, scattered remnants of prey upon whom he had feasted.

"I apparently make some people fucking nervous. Of course, I have no goddamn idea why."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

It was a toss-up, at this point, whether Kirk feared or admired McCoy more. They were the same thing, really. While justice was a pretty twisted concept in their world, they didn't put you away for nerves. And Kirk couldn't look away.

"Who's got the skinny on you? Other than Pike?"

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

His eyes blazed for a moment, anger restrained and carefully banked for later.

"No fucking clue. Pike called in a goddamn favor or three - which he held over me like a fucking sword but he never would shitting tell me who. He ain't stupid."

McCoy's gaze flickered back over to the console that had been so active.

"Jos, of course. But that's different."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

The anger had been clear, as close as Kirk had been watching. He didn't think it was for him. But he had to know, however little choice he had about this alliance, how risky a position they were both in. Whatever McCoy had done, it was bad enough.

But he didn't ask if it really was different, or how. He knew he'd have to keep an ear out for this woman. If McCoy thought he could trust her, well... McCoy was crazy.

But he was interested. And that touched Kirk deeper than he knew.

"She knows about me."

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

Jos had been angry. Angrier than he'd ever seen her. He still wasn't sure if she'd had fucking feelings for the kid or if he'd just fucked up one of her goddamn schemes.

Woman was always scheming something.

"Some. Enough to interest her."

McCoy knocked back the rest of his drink, went to the bar for a refill. He considered - and then brought the bottle back to the couch with him. He grasped Kirk's hand in one of his own to steady it as he refilled the glass.

The amber liquid in his own glass matched the ring around his eyes as he thought about Jocelyn. No one else like her.

"You fucking trust me when I tell you: you want to hold her goddamn interest, I tell you what."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

Had McCoy failed to? Was that what had happened? He seemed to have it back, to some extent anyway. Enough to exchange a hundred goddamned messages a day. What part was Kirk playing in that, he wondered.

He nodded, not missing the "my interest" hidden in the sentiment. The alcohol was going straight to his head again, but he couldn't bring himself to care too much. He was fucked either way, and he might as well be fucked by or with this maniac as anyone else. Until and unless he could get the upper hand. But that was the long game. The kind Kirk had better start learning how to play.

"I'm getting that," he said.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

"Pissing her off ain't a damn good idea either - ain't like I called the fucking cops on myself."

McCoy chuckled, fond.

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

McCoy was a grade-A lunatic, that was what. With good liquor.

"Seems like she got over it."

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

He stretched his legs out, comfortable.

"She likes to lord it over me. That woman can hold a goddamn grudge. Don't stop her from loving what I got to offer."

If it had been anyone else, he'd have grasped his cock, sated for the moment from the video he'd sent her and the favorable response, through his pants in an obscene gesture. But this was Jocelyn. And that woman needed a fucking challenge like most organisms needed air, needed food and water. McCoy never bored her and she'd never be able to let him go. He didn't have her pegged entirely - and that was why he goddamn knew he was stuck in the same trap right there with her.

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

McCoy's easy physical comfort was part of his menace; Kirk could not relax so completely, and the distinction was telling. Though Kirk was looser, now, from the shower and liquor and talk than he'd been in awhile. Not off his guard, but... slightly lulled, despite himself.

He'd never had anything like what McCoy was describing. As fucked up as it was, there wasn't anyone waiting for him anywhere. No alliances in wait, nothing to call his own.

"Sounds like an arrangement," he said. "What do you offer?"

It was a slightly dangerous question, but only depending on the answer McCoy chose to give.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

There were two voices in McCoy's head:

There was the voice that was him, that let him sprawl and fuck and take the risks that came as easy as breathing to him. That was the voice that chanted the names of bones, organs, muscles in glee when there was a significant injury for him to heal. That was the voice that liked the taste of blood.

The other voice was something separate it felt like at times: cautious, considering, assessing risks and factors and outcomes without ceasing. It woke him up at night sometimes with how damn loud it could get, counting out the possibilities and potential consequences. That was the voice he'd only ignored on one significant occasion - much to his own chagrin. It was the voice of a mindful parent, keeping safe eyes open for gators while the child swam in the river.

Right now, both voices were in accord. Blue Kirk would still turn on him given the chance. But he was coming over to McCoy's side of the fucking fence. McCoy could afford to give him a little bit, a chance to taste what McCoy gave so freely to Jocelyn.

But the kid's timing was shit. He wouldn't appreciate a physical display at the moment - and that was how McCoy and Jocelyn best communicated.

And so he considered his answer, rolled it around in his mouth with another swallow of his drink. It took different forms. Jocelyn got one thing and his pet nurses each got something different, too. It'd look different with this one, McCoy was willing to bet. But it all came down to one thing in the end.

"Belonging."

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

There were few more alluring things McCoy could have said. Few things that Kirk's native suspicion would want to roll over for, despite not really knowing what the word meant. Not in any real sense. Because along with the conscious distrust of both man and concept was the vast, untapped reality that it was exactly what Kirk needed. What he longed for, and this world had never given him but a taste of.

He swallowed, face naked for an instant with something like longing before it was covered again. In a sense, he was part of McCoy's collection already. In another, he was on the cusp of choosing to be. As long as he could make himself believe it was a choice, and reciprocal.

Of course he knew none of this--just a little jolt of something he couldn't place.

[sharpestscalpel.livejournal.com]

It felt sweet to be right. He'd been watching, seen that flash of naked longing. It was what he'd been gambling on and everything was coming up with his fucking number.

McCoy wouldn't push the moment.

"I figure you need a little more meat on you before heading to the goddamn gym - and before those cocksuckers get a good look at you. Wouldn't want them to be all underestimating my good work."

He gestured towards the console.

"Your computer access is fine, I checked it the fuck out myself. Spend some time catching up."

McCoy himself retrieved a book, sprawled on his bed, and read. He was aware of Kirk but gave no sign of it.

[behnd-blueyes.livejournal.com]

It took Kirk a moment to collect himself and move. As if waiting for the other shoe, disbelieving that he now had computer access and McCoy was just going to... read.

He avoided swaying as he rose, though his head was feeling it, and made his way to the terminal. As with the replicator, his codes were operational. But Starfleet was used to sudden, unexcused absences, and any alliances he'd had had been severed, so there wasn't much of a personal nature to see. You didn't leave calling cards, especially linked to Pike's latest example. Unless, of course, you were a Rigellian prince. Assholes.

And the news was scarce. No word about Pike or Spock, though Kirk confirmed that Uhura was in charge now, that Chekov had been bumped up, and various personnel shifts had resulted in the scramble. Apparently that fucker Leslie was doing his job, but Kirk had never considered it more than a stepping stone anyway so decided not to give a rat's ass.

But his name, rank and accounts were still active, waiting, as if he'd just stepped out on shore leave. For months. It was a strange oversight on Spock's part, and Kirk had to assume McCoy was right. There was something between those two, something that went beyond political alliance and possibly beyond the loyalty a dog owed its master. Something that had distracted his attention from fully cleaning up the mess.

There was more Kirk wanted to know, of course, but if you were clever enough almost everything left a trail. And Kirk wasn't about to go snooping for dirt on McCoy's own terminal without some pretty sure safeguards. He'd just have to wait. He glanced over at the man, wondering what he could have done. Wondering what it was he had, that his little life fell around him like it did. That such a sick fuck wasn't either dead or running the place. And maybe that was the secret he'd found--how to live in the middle.