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The only thing separating McCoy from the dizzyingly maw of the cosmos was a force field’s invisible current: a fallible, man-made thing of intangible promises that did little to reassure him of his safety from the chilling vacuum of space.
It was a damn good thing he had long lost his fear of space, along with so much else.
That heart-stopping terror of the void was gone, rubbed down to nothing like the engraved initials on an antique pocket watch he had owned a lifetime ago, once cut so deep and bright but now worn dull and illegible, without a name.
McCoy wished his losses had left him so calm as that, dumb as a pebble blunted by the sea. Splinters of worry still coldly pierced him through, as hard and irrefutable as the captain’s chair left unoccupied at the centre of the Enterprise’s half-repaired bridge. He shifted his weight in the wide seat, seeking some comfort in its authoritarian edges and wincing as his ass throbbed hotly in protest at the movement.
The cadet reds he was obliged to wear for another two days until commencement were tidy enough to pass muster through the Academy shuttle bay and spacedock, but McCoy was viscerally aware of the sordid evidence they concealed, of skin bruised and flushed beneath an hours-old film of sex and sweat. Only an impulse as reckless as that which had propelled McCoy through Pike’s every perverse command could have driven him this ridiculous step further into madness – not to a much needed shower, but to the bridge of the ship that was determined to take him away from his lover.
McCoy thumbed the control panel beneath his hand and set the chair swiveling away from the forward infinity of space. Looking behind at the science stations stripped of their broken pieces and bleeding a fresh flurry of disconnected wiring, he struggled to reconcile the aftermath of disaster with the promise of this bridge in its birth, back before it had all gone wrong. From this angle, it all looked one and the same.
‘What do you think?’
McCoy pretended to consider, arms crossed and hips leaning back against an unfinished console that spilled wires like guts across the sub-deck’s steel plates. ‘Very nice,’ he drawled. ‘It really brings out the colour of your ego.’
‘You think?’ Pike’s answering grin was boyishly pleased, stripping years of age and recent stress from his face. ‘I was hoping you’d say it amplifies my air of authority, but I suppose that will do.’
‘Your authority doesn’t need any help from the furniture.’
‘It might, if that’s going to be your attitude.’ His rebuke was toothless, distracted by the furniture in question though McCoy had to admit that the gleaming captain’s chair defied any simple notion of furnishing. Newly bolted to the exposed deck, it glowed ethereal white and smoldered purest black in stark contrast to the rest of the unfinished bridge.
And yes, the chair fit Pike as flawlessly as a fine leather glove. McCoy involuntarily sucked in a short breath, waited until Pike had experimentally swiveled about face before releasing a shaky sigh. The chair was concrete proof of a rank McCoy had seen as little more than stripes on a sleeve, a barrier he had scorned at worst and teasingly drawn out in the bedroom at best.
Bedding an earthbound captain was one thing, but McCoy was starting to suspect that a captain with a ship and a command was going to be a different challenge entirely.
McCoy dismissed the dismantled remains of the bridge stations with an impatient roll of his eyes. He had never placed his faith in machines and wasn’t about to start now, not when his own hands and heart had dragged him this far with far less visible carnage.
But even that conceit rang false in the privacy of his own mind. That was a hangover from the most fleeting delusion, when the crew of the Enterprise had finally stepped foot on solid ground again and the past that had cast him out seemed somehow within reach again. When Starfleet had offered short-term compassionate leave to the entire crew, he had leapt at the prospect of even a few days’ time to feel the honesty of Georgia grass beneath his bare feet, to reconnect with the Earth they had so very nearly lost.
Only there was more strangeness than familiarity to be found there. A delicate hand squeezing his fingers and a shyly uncertain smile that broke his heart made that good and decent land shift and slide against his retreating stride like an ill-fitting pair of boots.
Turning reluctantly back to gaping, electrified absence where a viewscreen should have been, McCoy forced himself to confront each distant star. They seemed as coldly remote here in space as they ever did on the ground.
‘Any reservations?’ Pike asked, eyes incisively narrowed but somehow kind. ‘About space?’
‘It’s getting easier.’ McCoy’s hands clenched into fists under his crossed arms. He wasn’t looking in the direction of the viewscreen, which suited him just fine.
‘She’s a good ship.’ Pike smiled reassuringly as he walked the parameter of the bridge, fingers tracing each control panel as he moved. ‘You can feel the strength in her… I know she’ll keep you safe.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ he huffed, staring disbelievingly as Pike paused at one of the few consoles with active power, palm pressed flat to its surface and eyes closed, an uncharacteristically serene smile gentling his normally sharp features. ‘Do you two need a moment?’
‘She’s warm,’ he murmured, eyes sliding open. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at the design, but you can feel the heat of the engines… all that power… come on, just put your hand here...’
McCoy hung back, lips tightening with an irrational jealousy. ‘Is this why you brought me up here? To fondle the damn ship?’
Pike glanced over his shoulder at him, searchingly slow before he smirked knowingly. ‘Actually, no,’ he said, letting his hand slip from the console as he walked back down to the bridge’s command level. ‘It wasn’t the ship I was intending to fondle at all.’
He stalked smoothly into McCoy’s sullen orbit, as close as his crossed arms would allow and rested steady, confident hands over his hips. ‘I should also point out,’ he added softly, ‘that the intent was less to fondle, and more to make you come so hard that you’ll forget we’re on a starship.’
Lust quaked hard through his spine, snaring the breath in his throat and twisting the angle of his hips all too easily into Pike’s hands. He closed his eyes, choked down an answering growl with a sharp shake of his head before daring to confront the anticipatory glint in Pike’s eyes. ‘What, right here?’ he sputtered.
‘No,’ Pike corrected with an incline of his head. ‘Over there.’
McCoy followed the direction of his sidelong gaze and groaned at the predictability of it all. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ he grumbled. ‘This isn’t your ship yet, and it’s crawling with engineers. What if someone–’
‘I’ve secured the doors, Leo. No one is going to interrupt us.’ Eyes narrowing to a harder squint, Pike kneaded his fingers into his hipbones, gave his body an unsubtle tug. ‘Come here.’
He didn’t know his own mind anymore, not well enough to withstand the pull of Pike’s quiet gravity these days. In the end, it had only taken one quiet command to swiftly shatter the professional distance he had fought so hard to maintain through the dual pressures of Pike’s physiotherapy and his own grueling appointments with Starfleet’s disciplinary board.
He had been the one to insist on that distance and Pike had agreed, all too quickly with a shadow of regret that McCoy knew hearkened back to some of their uglier exchanges during the Enterprise’s limping journey home. Control was coming easier to Pike with every milestone of his recovery but there was far more emotion to rein in than before, enough to bleed a man dry if they ever dared to let all their resentments loose in a hard and reckless fuck.
McCoy gingerly prodded the tender spot beneath his hair where Pike had slammed his head into the floor before tying him up, the ever-present doctor within him horrified to feel his cock stir at the echoing throb of pain. That sort of callous violence was not typical of their games, no matter how often McCoy had tested the limits of Pike’s precise control with every disobedience and sarcastic rebuke.
If only he had known that all it took was a medical crisis and endless weeks of tense self-denial. Every sir he had murmured without a sense of irony or play during those check-ups had been enough to make Pike’s pupils dilate with longing. In a futile effort to avoid pulling that Pavlovian trigger, McCoy had given Admiral a try, only to regret being the cause of the bitterness that inevitably clenched Pike’s jaw at the sound.
In the end, his only option had been to keep his mouth shut and give his lover no name at all. It was as though space had swept Chris away from him all over again.
Despite the tug of arousal that nearly set his hips canting towards Pike, McCoy squeezed his arms tighter across his chest. ‘Do I get a say in this, Captain?’
He asked lightly, almost playfully but Pike’s predatory smirk dropped dead at the question. ‘Of course you do,’ he said softly, the rugged edge of command stripped from his voice. His brow furrowed as he stared down into the narrow space between their bodies with an anxious twist to his mouth. ‘I haven’t been very good to you lately, have I?’
‘What?’ McCoy frowned, any pride or stubbornness already forgotten. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You never would.’ Fingers flexed and stroked over his hipbones, caught between holding him fast and nudging him away. ‘There’s been so little time for us lately,’ Pike murmured. ‘I spend more days out here at spacedock than I do planetside, and even then I’m stuck in one meeting after another…’
‘You still make time…’
‘And when I do it’s only for as long as it takes to tear your clothes off,’ he interrupted bitterly. ‘You deserve better than that…’
‘I suppose we could go on a tour of the rest of the ship instead,’ McCoy offered, letting his arms drop so he could fold his fingers around the backs of Pike’s hands on his hips. ‘Take a romantic stroll, hand-in-hand down to the mess… you could cook me a nice meal if you really want to impress me.’ He edged closer into the other man’s heat, barely brushed a kiss over the corner of his mouth. ‘Light a few candles, maybe?’
Pike tilted his head dubiously. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked, only half in jest.
‘Not really,’ he murmured. McCoy feathered his lips along the edge of Pike’s jaw to his ear. ‘Might spoil my appetite,’ he added in a whisper. From this close, he felt the shiver pass through Pike’s body and chased it down with trailing kisses along the side of his neck. The high collar of Pike’s uniform stopped him far too soon; McCoy brushed his knuckles up the centre of Pike’s lean torso and gently eased his collar open to the base of his neck, exposing a hidden horizon of skin that he greeted with a suckling bite that wrested a soft, stuttering moan from Pike’s throat.
‘You’re not making it any… ah, any easier to treat you right…’ Pike’s fingers curled into the curve of his ass, pulled their hips hard together. McCoy groaned softly into his shoulder at that first glancing brush of Pike’s erection against his own.
‘Then don’t bother trying,’ he suggested softly. He rolled his hips against Pike’s, drawing out the friction of hard flesh straining through their uniforms. ‘Do your worst,’ he dared, ‘and make sure you won’t be able to sit in that fancy chair of yours again without thinking about me every damn time.’
He had never done well refusing his Chris anything; he had burned and crumbled beneath his first provocative word and touch back in Georgia and today had been no exception. Bound and breathless on his knees, begging into the leather beneath his lips, he would have agreed to anything Pike asked, soothed by sweat and closeness and a generous hand with the Saurian brandy to ease the ache afterwards.
Anything, except this impossible choice he now faced. To accept his commission on the Enterprise and stay at Jim’s side at such a high cost had made the heat beneath his skin spark and rebel against the very suggestion. It was all he could do to finish his drink and make his exit before he said something he might regret.
Except that retreating to the Enterprise, to her bridge and this chair was no exit at all. McCoy recognized his weakness in the cowardly way he was sinking down between its arms even now. He never could have hoped to stand at Pike’s side on this bridge as a senior medical officer without getting hard at the sight of this chair, at the memory of his fingers anchored to its gleaming edges while Pike’s hands groped freely over his body, closed possessively around his cock, teased fingers tantalizingly slow inside him…
The sound of the turbolift doors zipping open startled McCoy as harshly as though he had been engaged in the very acts still echoing in his mind. Pulse pounding in his throat, he peered around the back of the chair and felt his heart plummet stonily into his gut.
He knew he should stand up now that Jim – Captain Kirk, rather, space had stolen that familiarity along with so much else – was on the bridge, but the sight of his old friend hesitating just beyond the turbolift doors made him freeze in turn, shoulders tensing against the back of the chair. Jim had been stalking his way through this place like he had owned it from the very first, and seeing him stumble to a wary stop the moment he spotted McCoy made this wrong situation infinitely worse.
‘Sorry, Captain.’ Something ugly in McCoy couldn’t resist adding a hard edge to the title as he finally pushed to his feet. ‘I didn’t realize you were on board,’ he added unnecessarily, as if it explained anything about his presence here. ‘I’ll get out of your way, if you’ll excuse me...’
‘No.’ For all that Jim snapped the word out sharply, the syllable trailed off to a heavy silence that held McCoy at the precipice of attention and impatience. ‘No, wait…’
He waited, but Jim said nothing further, just stared down at him from the upper deck, full lips moving soundlessly around the awkward shape of his hesitation. McCoy cleared his throat, shifted his weight on the heels of his boots and winced as the movement drew out the lingering ache in his thighs.
‘Was that an order?’ he asked finally, tight and tense.
‘What?’ Jim stared blankly at him before shaking his head like a dog throwing off a nagging flea. ‘No, of course not…’
‘Then I’ll leave you to your bridge.’ Even this short spell of Jim’s proximity was proving too much for his frayed nerves. He had not been alone with Jim since that slow crawl back to Earth, for reasons that were becoming more compelling with every second that Jim’s gaze held him in place. There were questions in those sky-filled eyes that he couldn’t begin to answer, not with Pike’s fingerprints still smudged fresh and raw on his skin.
Self-preservation made him sketch a wide berth around Jim on his way to the turbolift; he kept his head down, so only had the briefest warning at the corner of his eye before Jim’s hand closed warm around the forward slouch of his shoulder.
‘How did this happen, Bones?’
He froze, forced his head upright but kept his eyes aimed at the blank white page of the turbolift door ahead. ‘You know the answer to that, Jim,’ he sighed. ‘You were pretty damn clear about where we stand now.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’ Jim’s huff of frustrated breath brushed dangerously close across the side of his face, heavy as a backhanded slap or a caress. ‘I mean, I thought… look, I was wrong, okay? I never should’ve said any of that…’
‘You said what you thought was right.’ Despite the tentative hope radiating from those fingers clasping him in place, McCoy felt a deeper chill of dread beneath it all, a brisk wind from a cliff’s edge that was far too close for comfort.
‘There was nothing right about the things I said to you.’ Jim’s hand faltered over the cloth of his uniform, like a brotherly pat on the shoulder gone sour before it even had a chance. ‘Bones… look at me. Please?’
He clenched his jaw, stared imploringly to the ceiling for some shred of strength and finding none there, forced himself to look Jim in the eye.
It was a mistake. He knew that the moment he glimpsed the tip of Jim’s tongue flicking nervously over his full lips. McCoy stared, swallowed tightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jim said softly. ‘I never should’ve taken you for granted like that. You’d done so much already and I had no right expecting anything more…’
‘You had every right, Jim.’ That wasn’t what he had meant to say, but the raw regret in Jim’s eyes made him feel horribly unworthy of the apology. ‘People like you deserve better.’
‘People like me?’ A doubtful furrow creased Jim’s brow, an insecurity that he hastened to smooth away.
‘You know,’ he sighed. ‘Brilliant smart-ass kids who save planets and become starship Captains before they’ve even graduated. You’re something special, and you deserve to have special folks backing you up, like that fast-talking Russian boy-genius or…’
‘Or you?’ A slow smile crept across Jim’s face the more he tried to explain himself, too damn sweet and dangerous. ‘There wouldn’t have been any planet saving if you hadn’t brought me on board in the first place.’
McCoy snorted derisively. ‘Don’t try giving me any credit for that,’ he said. ‘The fine folks in Starfleet Command have made it perfectly clear there wasn’t anything remotely clever in it. I was just being stupid and selfish and…’
‘And what?’ The smile on Jim’s full lips softened, shifting tenor too quickly for McCoy to measure. ‘Why else would you have done it?’
The denials died on his tongue; his mouth was too dry for words. Then Jim’s lips were pressed against his own in a faintly wet and tentatively chaste kiss that crashed like a flood dragging him under.
‘Is it this?’ Jim hushed the question against his lips but was kissing him again before he could risk an answer, with a lot more fervour than that first careful brush of lips. The hand on his shoulder slid upward and curled around the nape of his neck, trailing a perfect distraction for the tongue slipping past his slack lips and meeting his own before McCoy could comprehend how his own hands had found Jim’s narrow hips and held on for dear life.
For a first kiss, it was far too familiar, far too easy to angle his head and open himself wider, inviting Jim to explore deeper. Jim hummed a soft approval and cupped the side of his face with his other hand, cradling his head and neck with an affection that made McCoy ache as though he hadn’t been touched in years rather than hours.
Remembering how recently he had been taken far more intimately than this drew Pike’s voice up from the back of his mind. But Kirk is another matter entirely… he had said, in the hush of a starship bunk bathed in sluggish starlight. It may not happen until we’re back on Earth, but trust me, he’s coming after you.
He shuddered and pushed stiffly back, his limbs too slow to act beyond his body’s baser instincts. ‘Jim…’
Jim stumbled back a half-step himself, all his confidence drained from a downcast face rapidly glowing red. ‘I know, I get it…’ His arms swung in half-gestures at his sides, hands clenching and unclenching at empty air. ‘I shouldn’t have even tried… it’s not like I forgot you were seeing someone before…’
McCoy stared, dumbfounded, struggling to remember a conversation that seemed to have happened a lifetime ago. There had scarcely been time to consider the consequences of Jim’s partial discovery after that second disastrous Kobayashi Maru, when the marks Jim had seen on his back were not so different from what he was hiding now. ‘Ah…’
‘But I don’t know where you and him stand now,’ Jim continued, rushing anxiously onward. ‘And I know I should’ve asked or tried to find out before… but I didn’t want to just in case… well, a lot has happened, hasn’t it? They’re shuffling around so many officers, so many people died… oh, shit.’ Jim’s eyes widened, his nervous little twitches mortified to stillness. ‘Bones, I’m so sorry, he’s not…’
‘He’s not dead, Jim, no.’ The answer dropped quick yet flat from his lips, too horrible a thought to let it linger on a second longer. ‘No, he’s… it’s complicated.’
Jim quirked a sad, defeated smile. ‘Said that before, didn’t you?’
‘Probably,’ he groaned, rolling his eyes at the awful mess he had made of the only decent relationships he’d had these last wretched years. He couldn’t remember the last time anything in his romantic life had been anything but complicated, and he was rapidly realizing that he had no one to blame but himself for what had once looked like plain old bad luck. He crossed his arms again, bracing up his aching chest before anything more incriminating spilled loose.
‘Hey…’ A look too much like pity softened Jim’s face. ‘Look… if you want me to walk away and never mention this again, I will. We can pretend this never happened.’
McCoy closed his eyes, found his thumb tracing his lower lip. There was no forgetting what Jim had tasted like.
‘But after everything that’s happened… I had to at least try.’ He heard Jim release a slow sigh. ‘Someone… his opinion means a lot to me, and he said I’d regret it if I didn’t try to act on the way I feel.’
Chris. McCoy gave his head a rapid, derisive shake. ‘So you just decided to spring up and kiss me because some other smart-ass told you to?’
‘I kissed you because I couldn’t help myself.’ When he dared to open his eyes again, the Jim who stared back seemed years older, both defiant and heartbreakingly resigned. ‘Actually, he said I should tell you how I feel first so I’m already messing this up but Bones…’ Jim sighed, shook his head. ‘I guess I thought you might already know, after all this time… I even thought you might…’ He cut himself off and stared at his feet, every loose thread of his unfinished thoughts hanging incomplete between them. ‘This person,’ he went on, hollowly enigmatic, ‘he said this could be worth fighting for, and I believe him… but I don’t want to fight you. I can let it go, if that’s what you really want.’
‘Why do I have a hard time believing that?’ He didn’t dare trust the raw throb of empathy that punched hard through his chest at the sight of Jim’s unhappiness. ‘Since when do you back down from anything?’
Jim’s mouth turned downward as he blinked rapidly at his feet. ‘Not if it means hurting you in the process,’ he said, barely above a mumble. ‘Not anymore.’
‘Damn it, kid.’ Protecting Jim had become habit such a long time ago that instinct more than self-preservation or sense made him pull his friend into a tight hug. He sighed into Jim’s hair as he felt his arms close tight around his ribcage, further constricting his heart. ‘Think I can’t take care of myself after all this time?’
‘Shouldn’t have to.’ Jim’s quiet reply vibrated against his collarbone and sank deep into that raw and hollow space in McCoy’s chest, filling his heart with more than that overexerted organ of his could bear.
When he gently coaxed Jim’s face away from his shoulder, he knew the danger he tempted by daring to look Jim in the eye again. That risk, realized in the kiss he helplessly pressed to Jim’s beautifully plush lips, was tempered by sadness and spite and three years of repressed lust that burned past it all and pushed him deeper into the welcoming warmth of Jim’s mouth. All hesitations abandoned, he explored every inner contour of Jim he could find with his tongue, stroking the high point of his cheekbone with his thumb as their brotherly embrace slipped its original intentions and loosened into far more intimate touches.
It was Jim who finally broke the kiss, lips dropping lightly upon the corner of his mouth, his cheek, the underside of his jaw.
‘You taste like you’ve been drinking, Bones,’ he teased, nipped at his earlobe.
McCoy squeezed his eyes shut, frozen and horrified but overwhelmingly relieved that he had accepted that brandy, given all the demands Pike had made of his mouth. Far better that Jim tasted alcohol rather than the more sordid things that had crossed his tongue hours ago.
Jim nuzzled his way to his ear and groped his hand past his hip, closing firm over his ass and stirring a shameful ache of arousal beneath his skin. Saurian brandy was good for covering some sins, but the hand-shaped bruises throbbing beneath Jim’s fingers left little room for misunderstanding.
‘You’re not leaving that on.’
McCoy swatted Pike’s hands away from his uniform tunic. ‘This is risky enough as it is, damn it,’ he hissed, blushing furiously at Pike’s leering smirk.
‘In the highly unlikely event that someone overrides my security clearance, I think this much is already a dead giveaway.’ He grabbed McCoy’s naked buttocks in both hands, tugging him into the space between his splayed thighs at the edge of the chair. ‘If anyone’s going to catch us, you should at least do them the courtesy of a proper show.’ Pike leaned in and trailed his tongue delicately along McCoy’s freely bobbing cock, shivering a rush of daring deep into his belly.
‘How’s this, then.’ He tugged at the fastenings of his tunic, letting it fall open around the snug undershirt beneath. ‘I take all this off – for you, not some random pervert
engineer – if you keep everything on.’
Pike tilted his head. ‘That… might get in the way of my plans,’ he ventured uncertainly.
‘I don’t think so.’ His tunic landed on the deck with a soft thump, followed by a hastily shucked undershirt. Now fully naked, McCoy dropped to his knees and slid his hands up cloth-covered thighs to fondle the obvious bulge of Pike’s erection. ‘If you get to indulge your dirty fantasy here, then so do I, Captain.’
Jim was mouthing eagerly over his neck now, all his earlier shyness seemingly swept away by a hungered rush of lips and tongue that battered at the trepidation holding his desire hostage. He still had rope burns seared around his wrists, among other incriminating signs that would no doubt mark him as something used and unworthy in Jim’s eyes.
He grabbed at Jim’s busy hands, dragged them away from the loosening cloth of his uniform. ‘Come here,’ he urged in a rasping voice, tripping cautiously backward and tugging Jim with him until the backs of his knees hit the Captain’s chair. McCoy let himself drop heavily into the seat, using his own momentum to pull Jim down after him until he landed with a breathless laugh in his lap.
‘Here?’ he asked, bright and disbelieving. ‘You really are a kinky bastard.’
‘You don’t know the half of it, kid.’ Already relaxing into their changed position, McCoy drew Jim down for another sloppy kiss, his fingers tangling into tousled blond hair. So long as they stayed like this Jim could only undress him so far, nowhere near enough to reveal anything incriminating beneath the uniform.
And Jim was so much closer to hand like this, with his thighs spread wide across his lap, so poised and powerful. McCoy let his touch wander over the offering of Jim’s body, worshipfully slow but fearless of the vulnerable inseam that lead to the obscene ridge of arousal straining the cloth between his legs. He took in the heavy heat of Jim with the full grasp of his hand, drinking in the ragged moan that Jim poured into his mouth, confidence growing with his own knowledge of how it felt to be in his position, spread open to his lover’s every whim.
’Get up here…’ Pike’s normally commanding voice was breathless with arousal. He fumbled blindly for McCoy’s hands, his shoulders, any handhold of him that might hear his need for closeness.
Reluctantly, he let Pike slip free of his mouth and rose from his knees, giving Pike an anticipatory smirk as he climbed astride him in the captain’s chair. The heavy cloth of Pike’s uniform rasped across his naked skin, grazing the inner stretch of his thighs and gathering into folds between McCoy’s fingers as he pinned Pike back into the depths of the chair for a greedy kiss. Pike’s head craned back to receive him, a deceptive show of submission that blinded McCoy to anything other than the slick slide of his tongue between Pike’s willing lips, at least until fingers nudged precisely behind his balls, finding the sensitive shelter of his perineum laid open to touch.
He shuddered at the unexpected stimulation, broke their kiss and panted wantonly over Pike’s smirking mouth as those fingertips intimately tested the territory between his legs. ‘Chris…’
‘Pocket, your right,’ Pike murmured incongruously. The dance of his fingers over the tight surface of his hole did little to help McCoy’s fumbling comprehension. ‘Lube,’ he added, rewarding him with a suckling bite to his lower lip as he moaned his agreement and sent a hand rummaging into said pocket.
‘Had this all figured out, didn’t you?’ He pressed the small sachet into Pike’s waiting hand with a raised eyebrow that Pike lazily returned.
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’ A low purr hummed over Pike’s lips, vibrated against McCoy’s breathless gasp as he nudged a slicked finger past the rim of his opening. ‘Any other complaints?’
His fingers tightened their grip on Pike’s shoulders as his body shifted, silently bracing and begging for more. ‘None at all, sir.’
The pad of his thumb rubbed firm and insistent over the shape of Jim’s cock straining through cloth, heart pounding fast at the privilege of having this breathtakingly beautiful and brilliant man literally dropped in his lap. His hand itched to slide inside and touch skin to skin; each little noise Jim slipped into his mouth as they kissed accelerated McCoy’s every reckless urge to greedily take Jim apart and taste every shining piece of him.
He told himself it was chivalry rather than fear that made him reach for the fastenings at Jim’s collar rather than dive impatiently into his pants, even if his groping fingers made callously swift work of spreading open his red outer tunic to expose the frustrating layer of undershirt covering Jim’s chest. A low growl filled his throat and flavoured their kiss as he scrabbled at the thin fabric, blindly seeking a hem and tugging up until he felt warm skin in place of synthetic fibres. He pushed his hands hungrily over the bared planes of Jim’s chest and back, gratified to feel his responsive little fidgets, the quickening of his breath.
‘Fuck, Bones…’ Jim pulled back, gasping for air and staring down at him with wide eyes and flushed cheeks, his hair rumpled by McCoy’s fingers and his uniform in complete disarray from the waist up. ‘Can’t believe I wasted the last three years not kissing you sooner,’ he said, flashing a flirtatious grin that swiftly untangled the knot of guilt twisted into his gut by Jim’s words. He ignored the comment entirely and shoved Jim’s shirt further up as he craned his head forward, hiding his reactions in the shelter of his bared chest.
His open mouth blindly mapped Jim’s partially bared torso as his hands moved downward, rapidly growing addicted to the impossible smoothness of his skin. Three years of furtive glances had long familiarized him with Jim’s body but never could have prepared him for the reality of flawless flesh slipping past his lips. He lavished precise attentions over his clavicle, a hardened pectoral, dragged the flat of his tongue over the nipple as his hand finally slid past Jim’s waistband and found his cock fully hard and waiting for him.
Jim moaned beautifully at that first glancing touch and tugged none too gently at McCoy’s uniform, pulling his tunic completely open with alarming speed. ‘Not yet,’ he rasped urgently, nudging Jim away with his one free hand. ‘Just let me touch you first…’
‘But I want you now,’ Jim complained, though he obeyed all the same, much to McCoy’s temporary relief. The more he could control the pace of his own disrobing, the better.
‘You’ve done your apologizing,’ he said soothingly, drawing Jim out of his trousers and brushing a kiss over his other nipple. ‘This is mine.’
Pike lifted his head away from McCoy’s chest, eyebrow arching a question at McCoy’s sharp hiss of discomfort.
‘Still sensitive,’ he admitted tightly, feeling his face grow hot as Pike smirked.
‘That was over a week ago,’ he pointed out wryly. His splayed hand coasted up McCoy’s ribcage until the pad of his thumb was within reach of his peaked nipple.
‘Sure doesn’t feel like it.’ This time, when Pike’s thumb teased over the sensitive flesh, he didn’t bother to repress his low groan of arousal at the distant twinge of pain and the memories it contained.
‘Guess I was a bit too rough with you that time.’ Pike dipped his head into McCoy’s chest and flicked his tongue lightly over the opposite nipple, his thumb still teasing at the first. Each touch was perfectly delicate but drew out a lingering ache that made his dick throb against Pike’s abdomen and his ass squeeze around the fingers held inside him. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle…’
‘Don’t you dare,’ he growled, his breath stuttering in his throat as the brush of Pike’s thumb twisted into a sharp pinch. McCoy shuddered and arched into the sensation, his hands scrabbling for a tighter hold on Pike’s shoulders as he bore down hard on Pike’s fingers, seeking the same intensity of feeling both inside and out.
Dark eyelashes shivered as the enticingly open shape of Jim’s lips moaned at the circling of McCoy’s thumb over the smooth head of his cock. He brushed his thumb over the damp slit, repeated the caress tantalizingly slow as Jim whimpered loudly and writhed in his lap.
‘Fuck… so good…’ He sucked in a startled gasp as McCoy smoothed his slicked thumb down the underside of his cock before returning to the head and repeating the motion. ‘Ah…’
Jim doubled over, pressing his brow into McCoy’s shoulder and panting hot gusts across his neck, soothed by a hard drag of his tongue and – McCoy gasped and bucked beneath Jim’s weight, startled as teeth bit down into his throat. His hand faltered as Jim’s lips closed around his skin and sucked hard, drawing out his own low groan as his cock pulsed impossibly harder in the confines of his trousers.
‘Like that, don’t you?’ Jim murmured, lips brushing over skin that already stung with a rising bruise. Eyes squeezed shut, McCoy bit back any further incriminating noises but then Jim wrenched his head back by the hair and dove in again, biting and suckling at the bared sacrifice of his neck.
‘Jim…’ He bit back his own words, embarrassed at the desperate plea in his voice and overtaken by the feral timbre of Jim’s growl against his throat.
‘Yeah, thought you might…’ McCoy’s useless hands were knocked out of the way as Jim reached down between their bodies and tugged his trousers open as easily as he had his tunic. He couldn’t help but whimper in relief as his erection finally sprung loose of the constricting fabric and found more satisfying confinement in Jim’s fingers. ‘Gonna make you feel so good…’
McCoy shivered at the intensity of Jim’s words, both a promise and a threat underlined by the teeth that snared his gasping lips and devoured his moans.
McCoy squeezed his eyes shut as he was penetrated again, both to contain the lust quaking through his very blood and to shut out the view that now stretched before him. Even so, he could feel that endless field of stars hovering just beyond the viewscreen, haunting the inside of his eyelids. Instinct urged him backward, stirred Pike’s cock inside him and awakened sparks of light at the base of his spine. He squirmed into the sensation, moaned as Pike’s arms wrapped around him from behind and held him tight enough to still his movements.
‘Open your eyes,’ he hushed behind his ear. The sleeve of Pike’s uniform chafed across his naked chest as his hand rose to gently clasp his neck, fingertips firm beneath his jaw. ‘Go on, have a look…’
‘Why should I?’ he muttered stubbornly, restlessly shifting within Pike’s arms.
‘Because I know you want nothing more than to ride my cock,’ he whispered, tongue flicking briefly over the edge of his ear. ‘And I’m not letting you do that until you open your eyes.’
‘Open your eyes, Bones…’
McCoy snapped his eyes open on a sharp gasp, startled to see Jim staring into him so blue and close. That intent gaze was nearly one stimulus too many, overwhelming as the heated, silken slide of Jim’s cock alongside his own within the grasp of their joined hands.
‘That’s better…’ Jim grinned, dove in to claim another biting kiss. ‘Want to watch you like this,’ he murmured, leaning brow to brow as his fingers closed tighter around McCoy’s hand, driving the pace of their mutual pleasure. ‘See what you look like when you come…’
’Do you see it now?’ Fingers trailed his straining muscles as fluidly as the rise and fall of McCoy’s body, a dizzying contrast to the hand that remained firm beneath his jaw, forcing his gaze straight ahead. ‘How breathtaking it is?’
‘Don’t think… it’s space… doing that…’ Speaking was a struggle, every downward slide nudging Pike’s cock over his prostate and making the stars blur before his eyes. ‘Damn it, Chris,’ McCoy growled, fingers clenching white-knuckled over the arms of the chair. ‘Touch me already…’
‘Come for me, Bones…’ Jim’s every attention was fixed on his face, eyes glassy with lust as his fingers traced the panting shape of his mouth. Impulsively, unthinkingly, McCoy licked greedily at Jim’s fingers, took the two nearest into his mouth with a muffled moan.
‘Fuck…’ Jim hushed, eyes narrowing to a hauntingly familiar squint. ‘Is this what you want? My fingers fucking that gorgeous mouth of yours…?’ His fingers moved, sliding wetly past his lips, and McCoy closed his eyes, so close…
A low chuckle cooled the sweat on the back of his neck. ‘Isn’t my cock enough for you, beautiful?’ His fingers dragged lightly across his skin, shoulder to navel to inner thigh and nowhere near what he so desperately needed.
‘Isn’t asking nicely enough for you?’ He slipped the hold of Pike’s hand around his neck in a backward roll of his head and smudged his lips over the closest skin they could reach, catching the faint rasp of Pike’s jaw. ‘Touch my cock,’ he pleaded, low and lush enough to make his lover moan. ‘Make me come, darling… please…’
‘Yes… so hot, Bones…’ Jim clawed fingers soaked with his orgasm up the heaving length of his torso, scrambling at skin and riding furiously towards his own release. The slick evidence on Jim’s hand and the harsh overstimulation of Jim’s erection against his own softening cock confirmed that he had come, but the aftershocks of his pleasure were racked with guilt. His climax thrummed confusedly beneath his skin, equally contained in Pike’s echo and Jim’s touch with an uncertainty that made him flush with shame.
His ragged nerves cringed from contemplating that possibility further; far better to cradle Jim’s face in both hands and draw him down into a sloppily grateful kiss. He lapped deep into Jim’s mouth, murmured foolishly heartfelt endearments against his lips until Jim shuddered with a wordless whine that vibrated against his mouth and the friction of their bodies grew slick with Jim’s orgasm.
They slumped together in a tangled silence of uneven breaths broken by the churning worries rapidly filling McCoy’s mind. Pike still held an indelible place in the mess of his anxieties but he forced himself to push that aside for the moment; Chris had wanted this, had laughed dirty and low when his hand and lewd suggestions had wrested Jim’s name from his lips only hours ago. This possibility had been an open if complicated fact between them, but Jim… Jim knew nothing of it, nothing of his Chris, nothing of the history layered beneath the marks Jim had added to his skin.
Regret swelled sickly within him as he forced himself to meet Jim’s eye, a tide of guilt that rushed away when Jim blinked up at him with a disarmingly boyish smile.
‘Wow,’ he breathed eloquently, and despite himself McCoy grinned bashfully back.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed softly. He brushed a thumb over the infectious shape of Jim’s mouth, that smile that made regret seem like a damn stupid feeling. Not when Jim was this happy, happier than he had seen him in far too long.
‘I knew we’d be awesome together,’ he beamed cheerfully. ‘And just think about it, you and me on this ship… we really need to do this again sometime,’ he added with a waggle of his eyebrows.
And as simple as that, McCoy’s heart twisted again. Somehow, he doubted Jim had noticed that deployment request left unsigned at HQ. ‘Command might have something to say about that,’ he muttered evasively. ‘Don’t think they were too pleased about me sneaking you on board.’
‘It’s already taken care of,’ Jim replied breezily. ‘Pike said he’d handle it personally.’
His shoulders stiffened, repressing muscles threatening to twitch to attention. ‘Did he now.’
‘Don’t worry, he’s not as scary as he lets on,’ Jim confided with a wink. ‘I’m sure there’ll be nothing to it. Slap on the wrist type stuff, you know?’
Beneath what remained of his uniform, McCoy’s skin burned hot. ‘Yeah,’ he breathed. ‘Yeah, I know.’ He pressed his lips tight together to let the topic ebb harmlessly away, but also to draw out the subtle ache of his overexerted mouth. It was impossible to distinguish the bruising of Pike’s cock from the biting of Jim’s teeth; the two impressions bled together on his lips, damnably inseparable.
‘Even if Pike can sweep my antics under the rug…’ he exhaled slowly, at a loss for words, ‘I just don’t know, Jim.’
‘Don’t know what?’ Some of his tension seemed to have finally bled through Jim’s enthusiasm; he sat up slightly in his lap, fixed him with a confused squint. ‘Bones…?’
‘I… don’t know if I can go back out there.’ Even if he wasn’t ready to explain about Chris just yet, he had to confess something of his burden, if only in its least significant part. ‘You know what I’m like, I was never sure I had it in me to serve on a starship in the first place and once we were out there during that mess…’
‘You were amazing,’ Jim interrupted fervently. ‘Never mind anything I said…’
McCoy shook his head. ‘It’s nothing you said, Jim.’ He couldn’t resist the need to keep touching Jim as he fumbled to explain, fingers reverent over his face, his hair. ‘It’s… there are dangers out there that I can’t do anything to prevent or heal, and when those things hit the people I care about…’ That was dancing too close to the real heart of his hesitation; he frowned, reconsidered. ‘And I’m shit at taking orders. Who knows how insubordinate I could get in five years…’
He glanced sidelong at Jim, found his head bowed and his expression blank. ‘You understand, don’t you?’ He ducked his head, trying to draw Jim’s gaze away from the downward direction of their joined hands. He was completely unresponsive, fixated on the tiniest movement of his fingertip over the ring on McCoy’s smallest finger. ‘Jim?’
‘Hmn?’ He glanced up, a startled flicker of dark eyelashes. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed absently, staring back down at his hand. ‘Yeah, think I’m starting to…’
Something suddenly paranoid in McCoy, an instinct coming far too late, made him squeeze Jim’s hand tighter, clasp their fingers closer together until the glint of his ring disappeared between their joined palms. ‘I just need time to think,’ he murmured apologetically, already floundering beneath a fresh wave of guilt that crashed in all directions.
‘About us?’ Despite the forced indifference of the question, the timid uncertainty in Jim’s voice beneath the bravado made McCoy ache.
‘What do you think of space now?’
McCoy stirred tiredly at the damp brush of lips over the back of his neck, leaned heavier into the embrace of Pike’s body as he considered the starfield stretching before his eyes. It was a view fit for poets and philosophers but he was neither of those things so he settled for bringing Pike’s wrist up to his mouth for a kiss. ‘I think it’ll do just fine, darling.’
With a sigh at all his failures, he held Jim tighter into his chest and buried a kiss at the crown of his hair. ‘About everything,’ he murmured. As he gazed past the curve of Jim’s shoulder to that place where a solid viewscreen should have been instead of empty energy, his heart clenched to find the void of space staring back with something of its old terror restored, unfathomably beautiful and light-years beyond his grasp.