Title: Winner Takes All (2/?)
Author: klmeri
Rating: R
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Pairing: eventual Kirk/Spock/McCoy; also S/Mc, K/S, K/Mc.
Warnings: slavery, dub-con
Summary: Mirror!verse, post first five-year mission. Two bitter rivals are at war over a prize possession.
Previous Part: 1
Or read at AO3

*laughs nervously* Okay, so I am really testing my boundaries of comfort with this fic. My brain vacillates between throwing me tempting lines and activating a very shrill Do Not Proceed! warning bell; it’s really sort of like being pulled in two different directions while helpless to take control of the situation. Therefore I make no promises, except that I will try my best not to freak out the readers (and myself) or produce a poor quality story. Good luck to us all!

Leonard is not surprised in the least to find a welcoming gift on his office desk. It’s even less surprising that the bottle of bourbon has a red bow with an attached card that says Welcome back, Bones in a familiar scrawl.

Kirk is fucking with him of course; well, maybe not entirely. While the bourbon could be poisoned, it isn’t Kirk’s style for killing a man. So Leonard is rather satisfied in the knowledge that he can crack open the bottle and pour a shot to commemorate the beginning of his first day back on the job. Jim—fuck it—Kirk, he means, is signaling the start of the game.

He knows good and well that Starfleet hasn’t suddenly remembered what an asset McCoy is to the Empire and voided his retirement status. It’s the Admiral’s doing; Kirk finally convinced enough people—or slept with enough assholes—to get McCoy dragged back from the depths of homey Georgia. What his once-lover-now-enemy fails to realize is that McCoy planned for this event. Extensively.

Starfleet Command is a party of vile, ruthless men who have destroyed any number of civilizations and conquered hundreds of worlds in the name of the Empire. These are men who sailed the stars and then retired their command gold for a job well-done; men whose lives are worth more in tactical positions of power than wasted on the battlefield until incompetency or death wins.

And they are puppets to another group of viler, more ruthless animals unmatched in the evil of their nature—the Emperor’s Council. Anyone with an ounce of self-preservation knows that the Council isn’t a bunch of slack-jawed old codgers that bow to the whim of the Emperor. The media plays upon the trivial matters such as where Councilman Y’Rasck beds his whores or which vacation planet one of the members just destroyed in a fit of rage; the subjugated (desperate) public eats it up with a spoon. In truth, however, the media sells only the stories approved by the Empire; and so those officers who enlist into service learn very quickly just how much of a fantasy they’ve been living in as civilians. The Council is the brilliance behind the intergalactic wars raging in every quadrant. They own every fucking piece of property in the Empire—in the name of the Emperor—despite what a man’s measly contract may say; every commoner, criminal, or vagabond is but a renter of the space he travels in and the air he breathes. He’s expendable, essentially, until otherwise notified.

When McCoy made that split-second decision to claim Spock for his own and drive James T. Kirk to unbridled revenge, he had to sell his last illusion of independence for protection. McCoy is a wing-man of maniacs, subject to their whims for biological warfare and selective torture. (Like CMO all over again but on a much, much larger scale.) He is on call for duty, at any hour of any day. If McCoy is in the process of treating a high-ranking official for a bout of gout and the message comes in to cut the fellow’s heart out, ice it and send it to his family, then McCoy does just that. Travel to the Beta Quadrant and euthanize an entire mining planet? He packs up a bag or two and Spock and heads out into space for three months. No questions asked; no orders refused. Three long years of “retirement” and no one but the selective few the wiser.

In return he is untouchable to Kirk, or any Starfleet official for that matter—and his slave Spock, as well. Until, that is, the Fleet drafted him back into service and his “protectors” (the contract owners of his soul) decided it was a good idea. So McCoy arrives in San Francisco with Spock in tow and has to make do with being so close to Admiral Kirk and the surprises that surely await them both. At least his rank has improved and McCoy can safely say he’s headed on the path to Surgeon General in several more years. He never was satisfied as an old country doctor, not with the type of medical advancements available for play in this era. Nor was McCoy much for power-mongering, except when it prevented sticky situations and kept his ass from being targeted by every dick in the medical field. Give him the comfort and excitement of running a department, allow him to choose who he beds, be able to feed his addictions and all’s well with the world. Perhaps throw in a patient or two for procedure practice when bored… What more should a man of Leonard McCoy’s profession want?

He almost has his desires, all except one. Except Jim.

And it’s that desire that makes McCoy so very angry. He was an idiot to become sexually involved with the Captain in the first place. They had an arrangement aboard the ship from that first day McCoy was brought in to replace a CMO who had mysteriously disappeared, whose body was never recovered. (Leonard knows how much Scotty enjoys watching a man roast, so the doctor has little doubt of what really happened to Boyce.) Kirk greeted him with a look that boded ill and, quite expectedly, made a midnight visit to McCoy’s quarters:

“Am I Captain of this ship?”

“We’ll see.” As the Captain exited, satisfied in a way he had probably anticipated, he told McCoy, “You can call me Jim.”

Kirk never showed repentance for his blatant desire to screw his CMO. Whether it was because McCoy defied the tradition and refused to let the Captain fuck him, or that Kirk just liked the idea of conquest, Leonard will never know. He almost asked once, in a lull between orgasms, but became distracted by the Orion that Kirk had brought for their bedroom games. The truth is simply that Jim eventually seduced McCoy—after a long three years of trying—into routine trysts and their partnership truly did grow to spectacular heights.

Then the end of the mission was approaching and Leonard was going to get screwed permanently…

He still wants Jim Kirk. Fiercely. He also hates the man with a passion bordering on obsessive. When he is coming in Spock’s mouth, he thinks about how Jim would touch the Vulcan in the middle of battle, run his hand over that stiff back with a possessiveness that made others envious. He imagines how Jim would have felt, in bed with the Vulcan, dominating and flat-palmed against the sheets as he thrusts. Leonard pretends he is Kirk, sometimes, during sex and later slices through his patients in a sick rage.

Kirk has destroyed Leonard in a way that shouldn’t be possible. He won’t repay the Admiral with any less enthusiasm.

Leonard leans over and presses the comm for his staff. “Retrieve Mr. Spock.”

Spock arrives within five minutes of the summons, and McCoy dismisses the man escorting him.

“Been enjoying yourself?”

“I have perused the data on a new strain of bacteria engineered to—”

Leonard grimaces and tells the Vulcan to shut up. “Look, I know you were going stir-crazy in Georgia without a lab and experiments to feed your brain, so I’ve arranged a position for you.”

Spock is calm and blank-faced as ever. “I give you my sincerest thanks, Doctor.”

“Well, I cannot have you moping about and I cannot keep you in Medical all the time; the staff thinks you’re here to screw over the minds of our top-priority patients or some such shit. It disturbs my work environment, and I need a focused team. I’m doing myself the favor, not you.”

“Understood.”

“One of the researchers for the Department Head in something-or-other—scientific, I’m sure, don’t worry—came in for a checkup.” McCoy grins. “Unfortunately, he had a strange mole on his arm that required amputation. He’s been decommissioned and you’ll take his place.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Leonard comes around his desk and places a soft kiss on those cold Vulcan lips. He runs a hand down Spock’s arm as he asks, “Have you received any communication from the Admiral?”

“No.”

“Would you tell me if you had, Spock?”

“Yes.”

“You’re very lucky, for a green-blooded hobgoblin. I believe you.”

Spock knows that McCoy has him monitored at all times; just as Spock knows that McCoy himself is monitored by Others. Vulcans aren’t stupid creatures, just rather selective on what information they choose to reveal. McCoy appreciates this.

“You can start immediately. Return here at 1800 hours.” Leonard then raises his finger as if he has just remembered a tiny detail. “Hold on a moment there, Spock.”

McCoy dips a hand into his coat pocket and pulls out a scalpel. “Don’t move, sweetheart. Wouldn’t want to accidentally damage your pretty ear; I won’t have time to fix it if I do.”

He runs his fingers through the hair just over the edge of Spock’s ear, gently pulls up a tuft and saws it off.

“There you go. Have fun now.”

Spock is released to his work, and McCoy returns to his desk. He removes the bow from Kirk’s gift and ties it around the lock of hair. The package is then placed meticulously into a small wooden box and casually handed it to a wide-eyed nurse with the instructions “Have this delivered to Admiral Kirk.”

As he proceeds down to the Isolation facility, Leonard leans against the inside wall of the elevator, smiles and strokes his scar.

Kirk is fed up with the daily Board meeting. As the pompous ass across the room drones on about the conditions for hostile takeover in a tiny sector of a quadrant no one should really give a damn about (Kirk certainly doesn’t), his mind starts to drift. He wonders if Bones liked the bottle of vintage liquor. It is, after all, the man’s preferred choice of drink. He recalls licking the taste of bourbon from McCoy’s mouth on more than one occasion. No other person can carry that scent like a cologne the way the doctor does.

It makes him hard, and fucking Admiral Morrow beside him chuckles and smirks knowingly. If Kirk weren’t in the company of so many witnesses, he’d smash the man’s teeth in for that kind of leer and set his officer dogs to rip the unfortunate soul to shreds. But Admiral Kirk doesn’t have that sort of (manic) loyalty at his disposal; he isn’t Captain to a band of thugs and butchers who appreciate an order for bloodshed. The kind of obedience here is shallow and fleeting. If Kirk is in favor this week, he has the control any man would envy; if the Admiral is on the shit-list—as he is as often as not—then the days are all work and no play and full of a lot of throat-cutting until he’s won a momentary respect from his colleagues. It’s positive Hell for a man not used to sharing his spoils of war.

Accepting the advancement into the Admiralty was a poor choice for a man like Kirk, and he knows it. There was little else to be done, at the time, to cement his position once faced with such a terrible loss of warfare (his precious toy). Just thinking of the circumstances—in that second month before the Enterprise faced a change of Captaincy—makes the fury boil in his veins. That bitch Moreau, whom he gave his protection under coveted title of Captain’s Woman, is long-dead but she still has a way of making him suffer from whatever pitch-hot Hell she burns in. It was cunning to be sure. She plotted, schemed and almost succeeded in destroying him entirely. While he retains his life, he forfeited a device which no other Imperial Captain had. He lost his imminent rise to Emperor and his security in one fell-swoop. Men still fear him, no doubt, and linger over the string of his enemies’ unnerving disappearances. They do not know better, and Kirk won’t inform them otherwise. So he has that margin of control through the past but eventually someone will wise up to the fact that Kirk doesn’t dispose of his troubles as tidily as he used to. They’ll catch him, one day, in the dark and with nothing but his hands for defense and a cold certainty of demise.

“Admiral, Sir.”

A woman disturbs into his thoughts. He forgives her instantly as she leans over, licks her lips, presenting her goods, and then a small box.

“For me?” he asks with a grin.

“Yes, Admiral. Special delivery.”

His fingers stroke the wood of the box as he eyes her long legs. “I can see that. Name?”

“Lieutenant-Commander Greeves, Sir.”

Kirk runs a hand up the back of her short skirt and tells her, “Give your information to my secretary.” He winks and dismisses her.

A smile still plays about his lips as he turns to his companion and says, “Open this for me.”

“Oh but it’s addressed to you, Kirk. I’d rather not.”

“Open it, Morrow,” he warns, “or we’ll all be discussing your involvement in the Romulans’ request for pardon.”

Morrow jerks the box over and flips off the lid. When he pulls out the contents, Kirk snatches it from him.

“Disgusting,” the man murmurs, wiping his hands on his pants. Kirk ignores him and fingers the lock of hair. For it’s exactly as he remembers—black, rough-textured and lightly scented of the spicy Vulcan incense that Spock prefers.

So that’s how McCoy wants to play?

Kirk imagines the day he will have that Vulcan flesh bruising under his hands again; yes, and he’ll alternate between forcing McCoy to watch and peeling the skin off the doctor’s fingers for touching what doesn’t belong to him. Now it is only a little matter of strategy—which he excels at—and a few inquiries to the right people.

Leonard McCoy can flaunt Spock all he pleases. When the deal’s done, James T. Kirk shall be the winner who takes all.

Next Part

Related Posts:

• Winner Takes All (7/7) – from September 1, 2010
• Winner Takes All (6/7) – from September 1, 2010
• Ah, God-damn it! – from August 31, 2010
• Winner Takes All (5/?) – from August 31, 2010
• Winner Takes All (4/?) – from August 30, 2010