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It just happens. Like gravity, like everything that’s inevitable - when they fall together, it’s a pressure that resolves itself in the sting of bites and the tang of sweat. Jim never asks why and Chris spares him useless platitudes, all you remind me of myself and you’re gonna go far. That’s the stuff of romance. That’s when you become a lost cause.
Neither of them is interested in losing.
~
It starts in one of those bars, two shuttle changes from the Academy, where trouble’s yours for the asking and the liquor is bitter and cheap. He’s there washing down his own problems – thoughts of sailing away, soon, soon will only get you so far – and doesn’t even see Jim until he follows Chris into the bathroom. Then, it’s just a kiss, serving to silence as much as convince. Jim doesn’t bother with a stall. He just crowds Chris against the wall, deals with his jeans, drops to his knees with a practiced grace. He slides his pink lips over Chris’ cock like it means nothing at all.
Later, Chris will wonder why he didn’t struggle, why he simply slid his hand into Jim’s hair, stroked at it whilst his hips fought against fucking the kid’s face. He’ll remember Jim smiling around his cock and swallowing every drop of his come. He will not dwell on what he could’ve said before he was zipped up and left alone, sagging against cold tiles. He will not regret it.
~
The problem is that Chris enjoys it.
He can’t turn Jim away when he stops by to talk, questioning about whatever assignment he’s finishing at the moment, or even just an anecdote another instructor’s glossed over and he wants to know more about. They very much do not talk about anything else that’s happened between them – and really, it’s barely happened enough to even warrant the discussion. Jim loves to learn, and Chris loves to teach, and their conversations are a mix of challenge and insight that he hasn’t experienced since his commission.
He thinks often of what Number One would make of James Kirk.
He tries not to think about whether she’d approve of everything else, though. Especially not now, when Jim caught him just before he was bound for home, waltzed in with a smile and a PADD full of theories, asked with a hint of smugness if Chris would bend me over your desk, sir in the same breath as he did the specifications of a starship’s nacelles. It sounds like a dare. Jim already knows how Chris feels about dares.
His red trousers hang from one leg, flapping obscenely with every slap of Chris’ hips against Jim’s ass. He clings to the edge of the desk with white knuckles and bites back whines as Chris sets a brutal pace, spurs himself on with thoughts of knocking those noises loose. He wants to hear Jim Kirk moan for him, and wants it all the more when Jim turns his head sideways on the table, enough to see a slit of blue and the curl of a smile, when Jim starts to shunt his hips backwards and meet Chris’ every thrust.
In the end, he corkscrews into the heat and comes in a violent rush, before flipping Jim over and sucking him down like it’s the answer to a question he’s just figured out.
Jim doesn’t moan but neither does he. That’s something, at least.
~
Chris is barely surprised when he comes home one night and finds Jim on his couch. There’s no blood on his face, but Chris can see his raised heckles from across the dim room.
He grabs a pair of beers, shucks his jacket.
“Did you fuck my dad?” Jim bites the words out and keeps his hands clenched over his knees. Pike holds back a sigh.
He settles in front of Jim, resting on the coffee table. He waits for the both of them to take a sip before he answers.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just trying to figure out why you let me do this,” he snarls. “Whether it’s the brain or the ass that’s doing my dad proud.”
“As I recall, Kirk, you were the one who started... this.”
Jim glares, pointed and poisonous. “And you haven’t finished it, so you’re really no better than me.”
That cuts too close to the bone for Chris’ liking and he decides to redirect the conversation with a stern look.
“Cut the melodrama. We both know why you’re here. What happened today was not your fault, Jim.”
The speed with which Jim’s demeanor changes should make Chris feel smug, probably, but between hunched shoulders and eyes that look so fucking lost he has no room for the feeling. The reports came in in the afternoon; shuttle failure, controlled crash, multiple injuries, some serious. One cadet at the helm with his constant co-pilot of bad-fucking-luck.
“Bones is never going to let me hear the end of this,” is a huffed laugh, as he bows his head. “He was so scared, they all were, I just promised them I’d get them down safely and I couldn’t even do that, fuck…”
He trails off, lost, and it’s all too natural to reach out, to tilt Jim’s chin back up, eye meeting eyes with a distant hope that the connection might grant some clarity.
“Not every day’s going to be a good day. And I can tell you, there aren’t too many cadets that could’ve put that bird down without killing someone.”
“Yay, no one died.” Jim mutters. “That’s fucking Medal of Valor material, right there.”
Chris shakes his head and crooks his finger enough that it guides Jim’s chin forward, until there’s barely a hair’s breath between the ends of their noses. He can’t miss the way Jim’s breath grows fast as he does it – he knows he’s doing the same, anyway.
“What do you want, James?” It’s deep and steady, coaxing. Jim’s eyes fall closed as his reply spills out.
“You know what I want.”
Chris does know. All too well.
~
Chris peels Jim out of his reds, and Jim does the same to his greys, leaves a trail of kisses across his collarbone and sucks at the bruises from the impact of the crash, just to hear him whimper. Jim is pliant but attentive. He nips at Chris’ lips and slips three lube soaked fingers into his own ass. He never lets his eyes wander.
By the time Chris settles himself against the headboard, it’s almost too much to watch Jim slide down over his cock, posting steadily but surely whilst his mouth falls open and his spine curves sinuously. There’s no attempts at quiet now, just a steady litany of please please please please sir that make Chris go harder with every word, needing to satiate Jim’s impossible want, needing to be deeper and closer and make sure he feels every inch.
“I’ll give you what you want. I’ll help you get there.” Chris wraps an arm around Jim’s shoulders, uses the leverage to force him down harder and draw his face in close.
It’s too easy, under the curtain of heat and friction, to tell Jim that he’s doing so well, that he’s so strong and smart and good, to team the words with the slide of his cock as Jim bucks and gasps. Chris tells him to touch himself and he does; Chris tells him to stop, to sit on his cock and wait, and he does.
Chris knows power. He’s had a carpet of galaxies at his feet and warp trail at his back and hundreds of souls, both a weight and a relief, all looking to him to pick a star, any star. They warn you about it. They try to teach you how to use it as a fuel instead of a rudder. There’s not use for it, in the end – if you misunderstand power, it will break you. Any captain knows this as truth.
But this is not power. It’s not control. Even as he presses bruises into Jim’s hips, grinds him downwards and hisses from the feel of him; even as Chris bites at the skin over a hammering heart and tells Jim that he should come, right now, for me; even when Jim does, on a long deep moan that could be a surrender… it’s not.
Power relies on submission. Jim Kirk does not submit. But that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of acceptance, and Chris likes to think, maybe, that they both have that here. That they can take what they need and trust they’ll be returned whole.
He’s going to be better than you is a scrape of a whisper that Chris pushes to the back of his mind. And it hardly matters, anyway, when Jim’s eyes lose their glaze and the moan turns into a wicked smile, rocking against Chris, still hard and hot inside him.
~
They trace each other’s scars and don’t ask where they came from. Chris will always keep enough coffee in the cupboard for two, and Jim will sometimes stay to drink it.
Understanding is tenuous. But they have it, and it’s enough.