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browngirlTitle: Had To Perish Twice, Part 1 of 2
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Rating: NC-17 with warnings.
Pairing: James T. Kirk/Dr. Leah McCoy; Chekov/Sulu and Spock/Uhura alluded to.
Summary: The story of the Situlan revolt, or, Jim sees murder in his Bones's pretty eyes.
Content Advisory: Violence, destruction, dubiously consensual sex, nonconsensual sex. Genderswap. Mirrorverse.
Acknowledgements:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mardia and spikeface for asking the questions that led to this story; graceandfire for inspiration; tigerbright for ethical and plotting advice; and lomedet.
Disclaimer: Neither the canon characters nor their settings belong to me.
Author's Note: This is a prequel to Part 6 of And Would Suffice, but you don't have to have read that to understand this.
Title from "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost.
He's surprised by how long it takes her, and kind of proud that she gets there in the end.
That's his Bones, after all. She knows how to open a man up so cleanly he barely bleeds, has access to hundreds of poisons and the anatomical secrets of several major races, but she only ever wants to put people back together, she even sulks when they die. The first week after Jim removes the chip from Joanna's arm he sees more smiles from Bones than he usually gets in six months; when her eyes shine and her cheek dimples like that he can't keep his hands off her, but her cheerfulness makes him so suspicious he doesn't keep her in his bed afterwards like usual, instead sends her to his shower and back to her quarters. She just glances at him, a smile tucked in the crease of her cheek, and all but bounces out of his quarters, night after endless night.
For a week he tosses and turns and stabs his pillows in sleepless frustration, while Dr. McCoy glows all over her fucking Medbay, which is six point nine-repeating days longer than it should've taken him to remember: this is his Bones. There's less threat in her than in her daughter, who'll at least giggle over private knife lessons when her Momma's back is turned, who exchanges angry words with a frisky boy and breaks his nose. Jim talks Bones down after that little nothing of a fight, laughs at her bitching and takes her to bed, and keeps her there, soft and warm in his arms for six hours of the best sleep he's had in eight days. He wakes up first and she's the same as ever, her hair a dark cloud on his pillow, her lips slack and eyebrows relaxed, her face smoothed and young and more innocent than Jim's ever been in his life.
So he pinches her arm, watching all the lines crinkle back into visibility as she wakes up, her eyebrows scrunching together as she blinks open hazy hazel eyes. He grins and kisses her hello, fucks her good morning as she grumbles at him until she moans. She's his Bones, and she's exactly the same, her brilliant mind and naked heart, grouchy and so harmless he keeps a fence of crew around her.
He can do that. He's the Captain and she's his Bones. When they reach Terra for a refit he lets her send Joanna and Chapel to Jellico Academy, kisses her while she cries and savors the bittersweet of her tears, and watches her start smiling again when she thinks no one's looking. The Empress and her Admirals send the Enterprise back out with a mandate to put down rebellions and expand the Empire's borders; Bones keeps on grousing and muttering and healing everyone Jim allows her to, and folds him in her soft arms no matter what she says. She's the perfect completion to his beautiful ship and his indomitable crew, and with her to fix him and fuck him and keep him warm Jim has everything he could need to conquer the galaxy.
He starts this mission by putting the Situlans back in their place, utterly destroying their planetary fleet for good measure, laughing along with Sulu at the glee Chekov takes in individually blowing up each minuscule fleeing shuttle. That night Bones tries to criticize Jim's strategy until he reminds her he's the Captain, and only a few bruises and kisses later she grumbles down to quiet, goes limp and falls asleep. However, in the morning he wakes up to the prickling feel of being observed, so he keeps his breathing even and cracks an eye.
The lights are at 50%, plenty of illumination to see Bones sit up beside him and hug herself with crossed arms, one hand cradling the bitten patch on her throat that kept throbbing so perfectly under his teeth. She looks at Jim, not warily, not hungrily, not diagnostically, though that's the closest to her current expression. Her mouth is shut, her eyebrows alert, her eyes slightly narrowed and blinking infrequently. She peers at him and he holds his slitted eye steady, doesn't blink, doesn't move as for the first time since Jim met her five years ago he feels the slightest twinge of danger from Dr. Leah McCoy.
She inhales, nostrils flaring as she closes her eyes, and turns away with a little headshake as if talking herself out of the plans shining through her face. It's taken five years and sending her daughter away for her to even let herself think it, but his little Bones has finally realized she's close enough to the Captain to try it, after all the time she's spent insisting she doesn't have it in her to end a life.
For long moments all Jim feels is amused pride. Everyone has murder in them, everyone has at least one thing they'll kill for, and finally his grumpy little angel of mercy turns out to be just like any other sentient. Eventually a sense of betrayal wells up, as Bones sits beside him breathing to calm herself, as his nerves begin to jangle and his body twitches towards action. For five years he's kept her as his CMO and his Woman both, he's never Agonized her, rarely shared her, kept her and her daughter safe. He should be livid at her ingratitude, Jim thinks, watching Bones frown as she stares at nothing, as she tentatively strokes the bitten bruise on her neck. She has absolutely no chance of reaching the knife beneath his pillow, and he would've felt her get up to retrieve her hypo from where he tossed her trousers, so she has to be unarmed right now. He could challenge her, he could take her, he could break her, but he doesn't lift a finger or an eyelash.
Jim lies there beside Bones, as she shuts her eyes and tips her head back, and wonders why he isn't strangling her before she can move against him. He killed her predecessor Xa with his bare hands for trying to poison him, he choked McGivers for betraying him and that Lester woman for trying to steal his ship, he knows the delicate feel of a woman's throat collapsing under his hands and he doesn't know why he isn't reaching for it now. He bargains for leniency with himself as he watches Bones push her fingers into her thick hair, tracks the weighted rise and fall of her breasts as she sighs, tells himself it would be enough to slam her into the wall and scare the mutiny out of her, but still he doesn't move a muscle. When she gives him a more familiar glance, all wariness and intimacy with a side of heat, all he wants is to roll her under him and feel the warm heft of her body as he sinks into her, every plush curve cushioning him as she tells him she hates him and wraps herself around him.
The prickle of danger dwindles like pins and needles fading. Jim counts five more breaths, as Bones drops her hands to her lap and closes her eyes again, until she heaves those juicy breasts with a deep sigh and turns to swing her sleek legs out of his bed.
Keeping up the sleepy act a little longer, Jim throws an arm across her waist and tugs, her ribs jerking under his hand as she gasps. "Who said you could get up?" he mumbles into the softness of her hip, and she quivers against his mouth.
"The chrono, Captain," she snaps like always, sanitizer-chapped hands clenching over his shoulders as he kisses up the tender little folds of her side. "Alpha shift starts in -- really -- oh--" as he licks along the curve of her breast and closes his mouth around her nipple. "Kirk, let go, for God's sake we've both got--"
"Bones, I know what time it is." Jim lifts his head, tugging her down so they're nose to nose. She throws a hand back to support herself as she frowns at him, eyebrows scrunched down, full bottom lip outthrust, and he searches her hazel eyes for that assessing look from before, for any hint of murderousness.
He only sees his Bones, confused and annoyed and warm against him, and he drags her down, mouthing the curves of her breasts as she whimpers curses at him, sucking roughly on her crinkling nipples until she's groaning and clutching at his hair. His pulse bangs a triumphant drumbeat in his chest and wrists and dick as he slides two fingers into her slick heat, as he thumbs her clit until she digs her sensible blunt nails into his shoulders; her hips jerk helplessly against his hand as he works her like he always knows how, as she arches and sobs and he drags a long shuddery orgasm out of her.
Eventually Bones whimpers and collapses onto the mattress, shaking under Jim, and he grins against her pounding pulse, tugging his fingers out. Her warm breasts quiver alongside his cheeks as she gasps, "Five minutes until we're late," her trembling hands reshape from clawing at his shoulders to shoving at them. Just before he'd bruise a reminder into her she adds, "Sir," thick and drawled and dripping with sarcasm.
Jim rests his chin on her breastbone, drapes his palm over her perked nipple and sucks her musk off his wet fingers, grinning wider at the dazed darkness in her eyes, then grabs her round hips and flips them both over. Her belly's as pillowy against his dick as her tits were around his face; he could fuck her, but it feels like time for a show of trust, so he shoves her down, advising, "Then you've got four to blow me." Bones squirms plushly down his legs, pushing her messy hair out of her narrowed eyes, and Jim nearly comes just from the laser heat of her glare.
To say nothing of the lush slide of her soft lips down his dick, the way her tongue ripples like she's cursing as she sucks. Jim digs his fingers into the mattress, braces his heels and hangs on as Bones works him fervently with her clever fingers and hot gorgeous mouth. She pulls out all the tricks he's taught her, twisting fingers and curling tongue, pushing down enough to swallow around him, like always convulsively gagging once before she can control it. "C'mon, Bones," he mutters before he realizes he's talking, and has to slam his eyes shut against the long fair smoothness of her back, scattered with the marks of his mouth, against the way her hair tumbles silkily over his belly as she sucks harder, bobbing steadily, nudging her knuckles below his balls. It's a struggle not to let her pull it out of him, to shove the orgasm back when faced with her familiar resentful huff and hot mobile mouth, but Jim always enjoys rising to the challenges Bones sets him. He snickers through gritted teeth, considers demanding she finger him and gasps as that image buffets his control with a wave of heat.
Instead he grips a fistful of hair just to annoy her, moans dramatically and fucks her face, squashing an indignant noise out of her as she digs those shallow fingernails into his thigh. He relishes the bright crescents of pain, the tingling sparks of her teeth now that she can't carefully keep them away, and best of all her muffled vibrating whimpers; every scrape pushes him back, every suck pulls him forward, and by the time Jim has to give it up with an actual honest, guttural groan as he comes, Alpha shift has definitely begun.
He lets go, shoving his eyes open to watch as Bones scrambles up coughing, her cheeks an inflamed red, and there's that murderous glint in her streaming eyes, underlying her usual mute fury. Flushed and sated, Jim slumps back against his pillows and smiles crookedly at her as she swipes her hand across her wet face, and thinks warmly that if she asked him for anything right now he'd give it to her. Anything except letting her go. "It's bad form for the CMO to be late for shift," Jim observes, his voice still a little cracked around the edges, and her eyes absolutely flare, solid rings of white around the hazel, before she flings herself off his bed.
She still waits until she's in his shower to shout, "Go to Hell!", so that's when he finally lets himself laugh. However, instead of muttered curses or one of those entertaining rants, Jim hears her puzzled, "What the--" just before a soft thud, nearly lost under the pattering, raises wary prickles on the back of his neck. He's on his feet before the low whirr fully registers, but he reaches the shower as the last wisps of light from a transporter beam curl into nothingness amid the falling water, the sponge Bones uses lying on the floor.
Some suicidally audacious asshole just snatched his Bones right out of his quarters. Jim's reflexive grab catches nothing but water streaming over his hands, and all he hears is his own snarl echoing in the empty shower. After too many moments he shuts it off and pivots back to his room, forcing himself to move through the red haze, to think through his pounding fury. Bones sounded surprised, and Jim knows she's a terrible liar, but she's already shown hidden depths this morning, could she have managed to act after all? As he jerks on his pants, Jim slams his hand into the wall comm and growls, "Security, report."
"Captain!" Jim turns away from the screen as he fastens his fly, but he doesn't have to see Sulu to hear the ruffled edge to her usually smooth voice. "There have been three unauthorized transports -- no, four, five, six reports of unauthorized transports off the ship--"
"Add the CMO to the list. From my quarters." Jim shoves down the howl in the back of his head -- Bones, they took my Bones, they took her-- pulling on his vest as he continues, "Log locations, times, and identities of those kidnapped, and comm the XO." Jim barely hears Sulu's 'aye' before he smacks the panel again. "Kirk to Engineering. Scotty!" he shouts. "Who's taking my crew?"
"I'm tracing the signal now, Captain!" Behind Scotty's harried face, Chekov crowds into view, curly hair all messed up and gold shirt missing, his scowling head floating pale and pissed-off above his black undershirt. "They tried to take Lieutenant Chekov here, pulled him right out of his uniform."
"How'd they fail, Mr. Chekov?" Jim wiggles his feet into his boots, careful of the knives, holding his head and shoulders steady. Scotty glances leftwards, rolling his eyes and jittering, and Jim dismisses him with a nod, letting Chekov take the screen.
"My Agonizer, Captain." Chekov lifts his chin, distracted from being angry by a chance to show off. "I was able to act before the beam constrained me. I shattered it on the floor, releasing EMP that disrupted transport."
"Lad, you're lucky it reversed," Scotty puts in from offscreen. "It might've disrupted you instead."
"And you would stand still and let yourself be taken?" Chekov snaps, back to pissed off. A text window pops up onscreen, Sulu reporting from Security that the number of abducted crewmembers is up to eleven.
Scotty charges back into view, almost nose-to-nose with Chekov. "I'd wait to see the bastard's face directly, so I could smash it in and have his guts for a phaser belt!"
That's nice, but it's not getting them closer to the culprit, to getting Bones back. Jim snarls and they both glance at him. "Gentlemen, enough. The agent responsible has abducted eleven members of the Enterprise crew, including Dr. McCoy." Their eyes widen. "Trace those signals, Mr. Scott. Mr. Chekov, help Engineering determine how transport was effected through our shields. Kirk out."
Jim straps on his main dagger, knots his sash, and picks up his handheld comm just as it goes off. This caller's Spock, goatee just about bristling. Jim didn't see Uhura on the list of kidnapped crew, but he nods in greeting anyway, and Spock reports, "Captain, Lt. Commander Uhura has been the victim of a long-range attack and attempted abduction."
"I'm glad to hear she's still aboard." Jim sets off down the hall, moving fast, one hand on his Agonizer in case he starts to feel a transport tingle and just for the comfort of gripping something that causes pain. "That's more than I can say for my CMO."
"So we heard in Medbay," Spock answers, and Jim notices the white, brightly-lit ceiling framing his sleek head. "At the inception of transport I surmised that an electromagnetic pulse might disrupt the beam before the Lieutenant Commander dematerialized, so I destroyed my portable Agonizer to create one."
"Chekov had the same idea." The turbolift opens for Jim. "I'll have to tell him he thinks like a Vulcan," which doesn't fail to be funny, even now.
A blinking text message draws Jim's attention from Spock's raised eyebrow, and he reads Scotty's 'Transp Dest: Situla Secunda, W Hem, NW Reg' as he listens to Spock report, "My plan was largely successful, but for the loss of three fingers of her left hand."
"That's a pity, they're pretty fingers." Anger simmering low in his belly, Jim notes with a grim lack of surprise that four of the rebellious territories lie on the Western Hemisphere's Northwestern landmass. "What does Dr. M'Benga say?"
"His current prognosis is twenty-seven days to complete regeneration. As Uhura retains use of her dominant hand, she will be stabilized enough to return to the Bridge in approximately thirty-two minutes."
It took just six to abduct eleven crew. "I need her now, Spock. Put me through and head to the Bridge."
"Yes, Captain." Spock passes his comm to Uhura, who looks remarkably impassive for someone abruptly robbed of half her left hand, fine beads of sweat along her hairline the only cracks in her smooth lovely mask.
Jim occasionally wonders if Spock gives her lessons in Vulcan control, or if they're fucking because she doesn't need them. "I hope you hadn't just painted those fingernails."
Uhura's eyes narrow, but then she likes being annoyed at Jim. "Thank you for your concern, Captain. Your orders?"
Jim stops the lift and thumbs the scrambler on his comm; the link wavers for a second, Uhura's image briefly fuzzing into static as the lift's recording is blocked. "So far it looks like a Situlan faction is behind this." He waits for her nod to confirm their connection is back up. "They took my CMO, Quartermaster, and Transporter Chief, and made attempts on my Navigator and Comm Officer. Someone aboard told them who to hit, and where."
Uhura nods again. "They may have evacuated their spy among the abductions. I'll have my staff check the missing crew's consoles, fingerprint and voiceprint message records. The CMO included?" Her voice goes a little sly.
Something twists in Jim's chest. "Yes." Which is why he needs to know. "Meanwhile, I have a job just for you. The spy might still be onboard to report on whatever chaos they hoped to cause. I need a program to catch any further unauthorized communications between anyone on the ship and Situla Secunda, and I want you to monitor it. You can do that from your quarters, but report any findings only to me."
"Yes, Captain. Then I have calls to make." Jim nods dismissal, and she cuts the connection, allowing the flood of text reports to scroll unimpeded across his comm screen. He thumbs off the jammer, re-starts the list, and reads until he reaches the Bridge: no more abductions reported, no goods lifted, all decks buzzing, updates from Chekov and Scotty, and a message via Communications from the Situlan rebels, claiming responsibility and listing demands.
"I thought we wiped them off this dirtball," Jim mutters as he slumps into his chair, calling up the message on the arm display. It's from the same stupid rebel group, or at least enough of a remnant to use the same message relays. In the wake of some recent pandemic, the tottering Situlan government lost control of a broad swath of their territories, whose coalition declared themselves the true government and coincidentally free of the Empire. Jim incinerated all the rebel locations given by the Situlan Council, after he slagged all their ships, but here the rebels are again, demanding that the Enterprise leave orbit immediately or they'll kill one hostage every ninety minutes. He doesn't much care if the Council had him blast a few other vermin while they were at it, but he's a little irritated that even with an Imperial warship helping they couldn't competently clear up the main infestation. Not to mention, now these assholes have taken his Bones. We will repatriate your people to the Empire in an exchange of prisoners at a later date, the message concludes. Whether alive or as corpses is your choice.
Idiots. Jim would just as soon trace the message to its source and destroy them from orbit, hostages and all; he'd rather see his crew dead, no matter how valuable, than reduced to goods for barter. Except for Bones. They took his Bones, and by the time he's done with them they'll long for the mercy of a phaser blast.
"T'Amair, tell the so-called 'True Situlans' that the Enterprise will leave orbit in eighty minutes," Jim orders his stand-in Comm officer; behind him, he can feel Spock's eyebrow raise like a change in barometric pressure. "Now hail the actual Situlan government."
In short order, five members of the Council appear on the viewscreen, drowsy and hastily robed, their orange faces blanching yellow when Jim tersely explains what their supposedly-destroyed rebels have gotten up to now. They apologize at tedious length, waving their hands in choreographed dismay, and Jim lets himself slump in his chair under the stream of asskissing and nebulosities, lets his eyes visibly glaze as he remembers Bones carrying on about the Situlan pandemic. She wanted to go waste time helping, but Spock skimmed a couple of reports and estimated the Situlan losses were within acceptable limits, and Jim wasn't about to risk her or his ship. He thinks about his CMO's pleading face, her dark hair mussing under his hands, until the youngest Councilmember present dips her shiny red chignon as she murmurs, "Perhaps with Imperial aid we might have stemmed the Kastra Fever outbreak earlier, and retained a greater hold over the disaffected territories--"
That's what Jim's been waiting for, and at least two of her fellows realize it, slanting their amber eyes towards her rather than him as he inclines his head. "Perhaps an Imperial Planetary Governor might be instrumental in organizing your disordered internal affairs," he purrs, and watches five Councilmouths drop open. Holding up a hand before they start another round of whining and begging, he continues, "Not that I give a flying fuck about your internal planetary affairs, except as they affect my ship and crew." Such as Bones, Jim thinks, letting his fury chill his voice. "Which right now they do." He sits up now, watching the Councilmembers stare at him in horror, the one with shiny red hair wilting like a blowtorched flower. "You're already going to regret allowing your territories the luxury of disaffection, especially when Her Imperial Majesty learns of what happened here, and you will regret it so much more if the slightest harm has come to any of my abducted crewmembers."
A quick gesture and T'Amair cuts the connection just as Scotty hails the Bridge. "I have them, Captain!" he announces, and Jim throws the map he sends up on the screen. It shows a small archipelago off the Northwest Coast, offshore to two of the rebel territories, a little flock of islets with one of the more eastward highlighted in forcefield red. Aneida, he reads, and the name already sounds doomed.
Jim exhales, watching the pieces falling into place, and bounces out of his seat. Spock inhales, a precise query in a breath; Jim grins, still facing the viewscreen as he answers, "Don't worry, Spock, by the time we're done here it won't actually matter when we go."
"Yes, Captain." Spock steps forward as Jim steps away.
Jim cracks his neck and heads for the helm. "Sulu, ten of your best shots and two of your biggest guys to Transporter Room One." Jim smacks Sulu's shoulder, the thunk of hand on flesh louder than her pissy little huff, and turns towards the corridor doors. "Tell them to bring their multi-level phasers. Mr. Spock, you have the Bridge."
A chorus of 'Aye's behind him, Jim heads out to retrieve his Bones and his crew.
Link to Part 2
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Rating: NC-17 with warnings.
Pairing: James T. Kirk/Dr. Leah McCoy; Chekov/Sulu and Spock/Uhura alluded to.
Summary: The story of the Situlan revolt, or, Jim sees murder in his Bones's pretty eyes.
Content Advisory: Violence, destruction, dubiously consensual sex, nonconsensual sex. Genderswap. Mirrorverse.
Acknowledgements:
mardia and spikeface for asking the questions that led to this story; graceandfire for inspiration; tigerbright for ethical and plotting advice; and lomedet.Disclaimer: Neither the canon characters nor their settings belong to me.
Author's Note: This is a prequel to Part 6 of And Would Suffice, but you don't have to have read that to understand this.
Title from "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost.
He's surprised by how long it takes her, and kind of proud that she gets there in the end.
That's his Bones, after all. She knows how to open a man up so cleanly he barely bleeds, has access to hundreds of poisons and the anatomical secrets of several major races, but she only ever wants to put people back together, she even sulks when they die. The first week after Jim removes the chip from Joanna's arm he sees more smiles from Bones than he usually gets in six months; when her eyes shine and her cheek dimples like that he can't keep his hands off her, but her cheerfulness makes him so suspicious he doesn't keep her in his bed afterwards like usual, instead sends her to his shower and back to her quarters. She just glances at him, a smile tucked in the crease of her cheek, and all but bounces out of his quarters, night after endless night.
For a week he tosses and turns and stabs his pillows in sleepless frustration, while Dr. McCoy glows all over her fucking Medbay, which is six point nine-repeating days longer than it should've taken him to remember: this is his Bones. There's less threat in her than in her daughter, who'll at least giggle over private knife lessons when her Momma's back is turned, who exchanges angry words with a frisky boy and breaks his nose. Jim talks Bones down after that little nothing of a fight, laughs at her bitching and takes her to bed, and keeps her there, soft and warm in his arms for six hours of the best sleep he's had in eight days. He wakes up first and she's the same as ever, her hair a dark cloud on his pillow, her lips slack and eyebrows relaxed, her face smoothed and young and more innocent than Jim's ever been in his life.
So he pinches her arm, watching all the lines crinkle back into visibility as she wakes up, her eyebrows scrunching together as she blinks open hazy hazel eyes. He grins and kisses her hello, fucks her good morning as she grumbles at him until she moans. She's his Bones, and she's exactly the same, her brilliant mind and naked heart, grouchy and so harmless he keeps a fence of crew around her.
He can do that. He's the Captain and she's his Bones. When they reach Terra for a refit he lets her send Joanna and Chapel to Jellico Academy, kisses her while she cries and savors the bittersweet of her tears, and watches her start smiling again when she thinks no one's looking. The Empress and her Admirals send the Enterprise back out with a mandate to put down rebellions and expand the Empire's borders; Bones keeps on grousing and muttering and healing everyone Jim allows her to, and folds him in her soft arms no matter what she says. She's the perfect completion to his beautiful ship and his indomitable crew, and with her to fix him and fuck him and keep him warm Jim has everything he could need to conquer the galaxy.
He starts this mission by putting the Situlans back in their place, utterly destroying their planetary fleet for good measure, laughing along with Sulu at the glee Chekov takes in individually blowing up each minuscule fleeing shuttle. That night Bones tries to criticize Jim's strategy until he reminds her he's the Captain, and only a few bruises and kisses later she grumbles down to quiet, goes limp and falls asleep. However, in the morning he wakes up to the prickling feel of being observed, so he keeps his breathing even and cracks an eye.
The lights are at 50%, plenty of illumination to see Bones sit up beside him and hug herself with crossed arms, one hand cradling the bitten patch on her throat that kept throbbing so perfectly under his teeth. She looks at Jim, not warily, not hungrily, not diagnostically, though that's the closest to her current expression. Her mouth is shut, her eyebrows alert, her eyes slightly narrowed and blinking infrequently. She peers at him and he holds his slitted eye steady, doesn't blink, doesn't move as for the first time since Jim met her five years ago he feels the slightest twinge of danger from Dr. Leah McCoy.
She inhales, nostrils flaring as she closes her eyes, and turns away with a little headshake as if talking herself out of the plans shining through her face. It's taken five years and sending her daughter away for her to even let herself think it, but his little Bones has finally realized she's close enough to the Captain to try it, after all the time she's spent insisting she doesn't have it in her to end a life.
For long moments all Jim feels is amused pride. Everyone has murder in them, everyone has at least one thing they'll kill for, and finally his grumpy little angel of mercy turns out to be just like any other sentient. Eventually a sense of betrayal wells up, as Bones sits beside him breathing to calm herself, as his nerves begin to jangle and his body twitches towards action. For five years he's kept her as his CMO and his Woman both, he's never Agonized her, rarely shared her, kept her and her daughter safe. He should be livid at her ingratitude, Jim thinks, watching Bones frown as she stares at nothing, as she tentatively strokes the bitten bruise on her neck. She has absolutely no chance of reaching the knife beneath his pillow, and he would've felt her get up to retrieve her hypo from where he tossed her trousers, so she has to be unarmed right now. He could challenge her, he could take her, he could break her, but he doesn't lift a finger or an eyelash.
Jim lies there beside Bones, as she shuts her eyes and tips her head back, and wonders why he isn't strangling her before she can move against him. He killed her predecessor Xa with his bare hands for trying to poison him, he choked McGivers for betraying him and that Lester woman for trying to steal his ship, he knows the delicate feel of a woman's throat collapsing under his hands and he doesn't know why he isn't reaching for it now. He bargains for leniency with himself as he watches Bones push her fingers into her thick hair, tracks the weighted rise and fall of her breasts as she sighs, tells himself it would be enough to slam her into the wall and scare the mutiny out of her, but still he doesn't move a muscle. When she gives him a more familiar glance, all wariness and intimacy with a side of heat, all he wants is to roll her under him and feel the warm heft of her body as he sinks into her, every plush curve cushioning him as she tells him she hates him and wraps herself around him.
The prickle of danger dwindles like pins and needles fading. Jim counts five more breaths, as Bones drops her hands to her lap and closes her eyes again, until she heaves those juicy breasts with a deep sigh and turns to swing her sleek legs out of his bed.
Keeping up the sleepy act a little longer, Jim throws an arm across her waist and tugs, her ribs jerking under his hand as she gasps. "Who said you could get up?" he mumbles into the softness of her hip, and she quivers against his mouth.
"The chrono, Captain," she snaps like always, sanitizer-chapped hands clenching over his shoulders as he kisses up the tender little folds of her side. "Alpha shift starts in -- really -- oh--" as he licks along the curve of her breast and closes his mouth around her nipple. "Kirk, let go, for God's sake we've both got--"
"Bones, I know what time it is." Jim lifts his head, tugging her down so they're nose to nose. She throws a hand back to support herself as she frowns at him, eyebrows scrunched down, full bottom lip outthrust, and he searches her hazel eyes for that assessing look from before, for any hint of murderousness.
He only sees his Bones, confused and annoyed and warm against him, and he drags her down, mouthing the curves of her breasts as she whimpers curses at him, sucking roughly on her crinkling nipples until she's groaning and clutching at his hair. His pulse bangs a triumphant drumbeat in his chest and wrists and dick as he slides two fingers into her slick heat, as he thumbs her clit until she digs her sensible blunt nails into his shoulders; her hips jerk helplessly against his hand as he works her like he always knows how, as she arches and sobs and he drags a long shuddery orgasm out of her.
Eventually Bones whimpers and collapses onto the mattress, shaking under Jim, and he grins against her pounding pulse, tugging his fingers out. Her warm breasts quiver alongside his cheeks as she gasps, "Five minutes until we're late," her trembling hands reshape from clawing at his shoulders to shoving at them. Just before he'd bruise a reminder into her she adds, "Sir," thick and drawled and dripping with sarcasm.
Jim rests his chin on her breastbone, drapes his palm over her perked nipple and sucks her musk off his wet fingers, grinning wider at the dazed darkness in her eyes, then grabs her round hips and flips them both over. Her belly's as pillowy against his dick as her tits were around his face; he could fuck her, but it feels like time for a show of trust, so he shoves her down, advising, "Then you've got four to blow me." Bones squirms plushly down his legs, pushing her messy hair out of her narrowed eyes, and Jim nearly comes just from the laser heat of her glare.
To say nothing of the lush slide of her soft lips down his dick, the way her tongue ripples like she's cursing as she sucks. Jim digs his fingers into the mattress, braces his heels and hangs on as Bones works him fervently with her clever fingers and hot gorgeous mouth. She pulls out all the tricks he's taught her, twisting fingers and curling tongue, pushing down enough to swallow around him, like always convulsively gagging once before she can control it. "C'mon, Bones," he mutters before he realizes he's talking, and has to slam his eyes shut against the long fair smoothness of her back, scattered with the marks of his mouth, against the way her hair tumbles silkily over his belly as she sucks harder, bobbing steadily, nudging her knuckles below his balls. It's a struggle not to let her pull it out of him, to shove the orgasm back when faced with her familiar resentful huff and hot mobile mouth, but Jim always enjoys rising to the challenges Bones sets him. He snickers through gritted teeth, considers demanding she finger him and gasps as that image buffets his control with a wave of heat.
Instead he grips a fistful of hair just to annoy her, moans dramatically and fucks her face, squashing an indignant noise out of her as she digs those shallow fingernails into his thigh. He relishes the bright crescents of pain, the tingling sparks of her teeth now that she can't carefully keep them away, and best of all her muffled vibrating whimpers; every scrape pushes him back, every suck pulls him forward, and by the time Jim has to give it up with an actual honest, guttural groan as he comes, Alpha shift has definitely begun.
He lets go, shoving his eyes open to watch as Bones scrambles up coughing, her cheeks an inflamed red, and there's that murderous glint in her streaming eyes, underlying her usual mute fury. Flushed and sated, Jim slumps back against his pillows and smiles crookedly at her as she swipes her hand across her wet face, and thinks warmly that if she asked him for anything right now he'd give it to her. Anything except letting her go. "It's bad form for the CMO to be late for shift," Jim observes, his voice still a little cracked around the edges, and her eyes absolutely flare, solid rings of white around the hazel, before she flings herself off his bed.
She still waits until she's in his shower to shout, "Go to Hell!", so that's when he finally lets himself laugh. However, instead of muttered curses or one of those entertaining rants, Jim hears her puzzled, "What the--" just before a soft thud, nearly lost under the pattering, raises wary prickles on the back of his neck. He's on his feet before the low whirr fully registers, but he reaches the shower as the last wisps of light from a transporter beam curl into nothingness amid the falling water, the sponge Bones uses lying on the floor.
Some suicidally audacious asshole just snatched his Bones right out of his quarters. Jim's reflexive grab catches nothing but water streaming over his hands, and all he hears is his own snarl echoing in the empty shower. After too many moments he shuts it off and pivots back to his room, forcing himself to move through the red haze, to think through his pounding fury. Bones sounded surprised, and Jim knows she's a terrible liar, but she's already shown hidden depths this morning, could she have managed to act after all? As he jerks on his pants, Jim slams his hand into the wall comm and growls, "Security, report."
"Captain!" Jim turns away from the screen as he fastens his fly, but he doesn't have to see Sulu to hear the ruffled edge to her usually smooth voice. "There have been three unauthorized transports -- no, four, five, six reports of unauthorized transports off the ship--"
"Add the CMO to the list. From my quarters." Jim shoves down the howl in the back of his head -- Bones, they took my Bones, they took her-- pulling on his vest as he continues, "Log locations, times, and identities of those kidnapped, and comm the XO." Jim barely hears Sulu's 'aye' before he smacks the panel again. "Kirk to Engineering. Scotty!" he shouts. "Who's taking my crew?"
"I'm tracing the signal now, Captain!" Behind Scotty's harried face, Chekov crowds into view, curly hair all messed up and gold shirt missing, his scowling head floating pale and pissed-off above his black undershirt. "They tried to take Lieutenant Chekov here, pulled him right out of his uniform."
"How'd they fail, Mr. Chekov?" Jim wiggles his feet into his boots, careful of the knives, holding his head and shoulders steady. Scotty glances leftwards, rolling his eyes and jittering, and Jim dismisses him with a nod, letting Chekov take the screen.
"My Agonizer, Captain." Chekov lifts his chin, distracted from being angry by a chance to show off. "I was able to act before the beam constrained me. I shattered it on the floor, releasing EMP that disrupted transport."
"Lad, you're lucky it reversed," Scotty puts in from offscreen. "It might've disrupted you instead."
"And you would stand still and let yourself be taken?" Chekov snaps, back to pissed off. A text window pops up onscreen, Sulu reporting from Security that the number of abducted crewmembers is up to eleven.
Scotty charges back into view, almost nose-to-nose with Chekov. "I'd wait to see the bastard's face directly, so I could smash it in and have his guts for a phaser belt!"
That's nice, but it's not getting them closer to the culprit, to getting Bones back. Jim snarls and they both glance at him. "Gentlemen, enough. The agent responsible has abducted eleven members of the Enterprise crew, including Dr. McCoy." Their eyes widen. "Trace those signals, Mr. Scott. Mr. Chekov, help Engineering determine how transport was effected through our shields. Kirk out."
Jim straps on his main dagger, knots his sash, and picks up his handheld comm just as it goes off. This caller's Spock, goatee just about bristling. Jim didn't see Uhura on the list of kidnapped crew, but he nods in greeting anyway, and Spock reports, "Captain, Lt. Commander Uhura has been the victim of a long-range attack and attempted abduction."
"I'm glad to hear she's still aboard." Jim sets off down the hall, moving fast, one hand on his Agonizer in case he starts to feel a transport tingle and just for the comfort of gripping something that causes pain. "That's more than I can say for my CMO."
"So we heard in Medbay," Spock answers, and Jim notices the white, brightly-lit ceiling framing his sleek head. "At the inception of transport I surmised that an electromagnetic pulse might disrupt the beam before the Lieutenant Commander dematerialized, so I destroyed my portable Agonizer to create one."
"Chekov had the same idea." The turbolift opens for Jim. "I'll have to tell him he thinks like a Vulcan," which doesn't fail to be funny, even now.
A blinking text message draws Jim's attention from Spock's raised eyebrow, and he reads Scotty's 'Transp Dest: Situla Secunda, W Hem, NW Reg' as he listens to Spock report, "My plan was largely successful, but for the loss of three fingers of her left hand."
"That's a pity, they're pretty fingers." Anger simmering low in his belly, Jim notes with a grim lack of surprise that four of the rebellious territories lie on the Western Hemisphere's Northwestern landmass. "What does Dr. M'Benga say?"
"His current prognosis is twenty-seven days to complete regeneration. As Uhura retains use of her dominant hand, she will be stabilized enough to return to the Bridge in approximately thirty-two minutes."
It took just six to abduct eleven crew. "I need her now, Spock. Put me through and head to the Bridge."
"Yes, Captain." Spock passes his comm to Uhura, who looks remarkably impassive for someone abruptly robbed of half her left hand, fine beads of sweat along her hairline the only cracks in her smooth lovely mask.
Jim occasionally wonders if Spock gives her lessons in Vulcan control, or if they're fucking because she doesn't need them. "I hope you hadn't just painted those fingernails."
Uhura's eyes narrow, but then she likes being annoyed at Jim. "Thank you for your concern, Captain. Your orders?"
Jim stops the lift and thumbs the scrambler on his comm; the link wavers for a second, Uhura's image briefly fuzzing into static as the lift's recording is blocked. "So far it looks like a Situlan faction is behind this." He waits for her nod to confirm their connection is back up. "They took my CMO, Quartermaster, and Transporter Chief, and made attempts on my Navigator and Comm Officer. Someone aboard told them who to hit, and where."
Uhura nods again. "They may have evacuated their spy among the abductions. I'll have my staff check the missing crew's consoles, fingerprint and voiceprint message records. The CMO included?" Her voice goes a little sly.
Something twists in Jim's chest. "Yes." Which is why he needs to know. "Meanwhile, I have a job just for you. The spy might still be onboard to report on whatever chaos they hoped to cause. I need a program to catch any further unauthorized communications between anyone on the ship and Situla Secunda, and I want you to monitor it. You can do that from your quarters, but report any findings only to me."
"Yes, Captain. Then I have calls to make." Jim nods dismissal, and she cuts the connection, allowing the flood of text reports to scroll unimpeded across his comm screen. He thumbs off the jammer, re-starts the list, and reads until he reaches the Bridge: no more abductions reported, no goods lifted, all decks buzzing, updates from Chekov and Scotty, and a message via Communications from the Situlan rebels, claiming responsibility and listing demands.
"I thought we wiped them off this dirtball," Jim mutters as he slumps into his chair, calling up the message on the arm display. It's from the same stupid rebel group, or at least enough of a remnant to use the same message relays. In the wake of some recent pandemic, the tottering Situlan government lost control of a broad swath of their territories, whose coalition declared themselves the true government and coincidentally free of the Empire. Jim incinerated all the rebel locations given by the Situlan Council, after he slagged all their ships, but here the rebels are again, demanding that the Enterprise leave orbit immediately or they'll kill one hostage every ninety minutes. He doesn't much care if the Council had him blast a few other vermin while they were at it, but he's a little irritated that even with an Imperial warship helping they couldn't competently clear up the main infestation. Not to mention, now these assholes have taken his Bones. We will repatriate your people to the Empire in an exchange of prisoners at a later date, the message concludes. Whether alive or as corpses is your choice.
Idiots. Jim would just as soon trace the message to its source and destroy them from orbit, hostages and all; he'd rather see his crew dead, no matter how valuable, than reduced to goods for barter. Except for Bones. They took his Bones, and by the time he's done with them they'll long for the mercy of a phaser blast.
"T'Amair, tell the so-called 'True Situlans' that the Enterprise will leave orbit in eighty minutes," Jim orders his stand-in Comm officer; behind him, he can feel Spock's eyebrow raise like a change in barometric pressure. "Now hail the actual Situlan government."
In short order, five members of the Council appear on the viewscreen, drowsy and hastily robed, their orange faces blanching yellow when Jim tersely explains what their supposedly-destroyed rebels have gotten up to now. They apologize at tedious length, waving their hands in choreographed dismay, and Jim lets himself slump in his chair under the stream of asskissing and nebulosities, lets his eyes visibly glaze as he remembers Bones carrying on about the Situlan pandemic. She wanted to go waste time helping, but Spock skimmed a couple of reports and estimated the Situlan losses were within acceptable limits, and Jim wasn't about to risk her or his ship. He thinks about his CMO's pleading face, her dark hair mussing under his hands, until the youngest Councilmember present dips her shiny red chignon as she murmurs, "Perhaps with Imperial aid we might have stemmed the Kastra Fever outbreak earlier, and retained a greater hold over the disaffected territories--"
That's what Jim's been waiting for, and at least two of her fellows realize it, slanting their amber eyes towards her rather than him as he inclines his head. "Perhaps an Imperial Planetary Governor might be instrumental in organizing your disordered internal affairs," he purrs, and watches five Councilmouths drop open. Holding up a hand before they start another round of whining and begging, he continues, "Not that I give a flying fuck about your internal planetary affairs, except as they affect my ship and crew." Such as Bones, Jim thinks, letting his fury chill his voice. "Which right now they do." He sits up now, watching the Councilmembers stare at him in horror, the one with shiny red hair wilting like a blowtorched flower. "You're already going to regret allowing your territories the luxury of disaffection, especially when Her Imperial Majesty learns of what happened here, and you will regret it so much more if the slightest harm has come to any of my abducted crewmembers."
A quick gesture and T'Amair cuts the connection just as Scotty hails the Bridge. "I have them, Captain!" he announces, and Jim throws the map he sends up on the screen. It shows a small archipelago off the Northwest Coast, offshore to two of the rebel territories, a little flock of islets with one of the more eastward highlighted in forcefield red. Aneida, he reads, and the name already sounds doomed.
Jim exhales, watching the pieces falling into place, and bounces out of his seat. Spock inhales, a precise query in a breath; Jim grins, still facing the viewscreen as he answers, "Don't worry, Spock, by the time we're done here it won't actually matter when we go."
"Yes, Captain." Spock steps forward as Jim steps away.
Jim cracks his neck and heads for the helm. "Sulu, ten of your best shots and two of your biggest guys to Transporter Room One." Jim smacks Sulu's shoulder, the thunk of hand on flesh louder than her pissy little huff, and turns towards the corridor doors. "Tell them to bring their multi-level phasers. Mr. Spock, you have the Bridge."
A chorus of 'Aye's behind him, Jim heads out to retrieve his Bones and his crew.
