Work Text:
Usually, when I woke up from being dead or whatever again, I felt like the nine little hells, everything aching all over in time with my throbbing head. This time, though--I felt fantastic. Things looked and smelled surprisingly sharp, everything glossy and hard-edged. Bones must have hit on some new drug combination--either that, or he’d finally decided my injuries weren’t my fault and had stopped holding out on the good stuff.
I opened my mouth to pay Bones a compliment, only to see him looming over me with a laser scalpel, aiming straight for my heart.
Constant assassination attempts have a way of honing reflexes, even for the semi-dead. I jumped off the biobed expecting to leave a few internal organs behind me--not that it would matter if I was all-dead in the next minute or two. Half-naked, weaponless, I still liked my chances against Bones, who owed his piss-poor combat skills to an overactive nervous system and a soft heart. He’d had my life in his hands a hundred times … if Bones was trying to take me out, it must be because they’d finally gotten to his family. That, or I’d fucked up so royally on Argareya that he’d decided a laser through the heart would be more merciful than whatever the Emperor had planned for me.
That’s why I gave him a few seconds to explain himself before disarming him and punching his nose through back of his head.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t attack. Instead, he let out a strangled “ Jim!” The scalpel clattered to the floor as his hands flopped to his sides and the blood drained from his face as I shoved him into the wall, the impact not really hurting at all, or at least not hurting me. I must have been high as a kite-- it felt more like a kiss than the full-body thump it should have. The noise of the scalpel, though--his shout--they bounced off the white walls, firing my nerves even as Bones cringed away.
“What’s the matter, Bones?” I kicked the scalpel across the room, in case of any sudden return of his courage. “Too squeamish to murder a conscious man?”
“A conscious--” He uncurled and ran a hand through his dark hair, looking more nonplussed than guilty. “For fuck’s sake, you weren’t unconscious, you were dead.”
I stood back-- shrugged. “So? That’s never stopped me before.”
“No, you were dead dead. Not just a stopped heart-- drained of blood. No brainwaves. Dead.” His gaze slid toward the scalpel. “I was just about to start the autopsy.”
At least that made sense. It was standard Imperial practice to execute doctors who’d let a senior officer die on their table, responsible or not.
“Convenient for you then, me being alive.” McCoy kept staring at me like I was a zombie or something. “In fact, I think you should thank me.”
I moved back in and wrapped a hand around his bare arm. I could feel the the twitch of muscles, the reverberation of nerves, the rush and call of his blood. It felt fucking amazing, and I expected my own pulse to quicken in response.
It didn’t. I turned my focus inward--no pulse, no heartbeat. I was dead dead, just like Bones said, but oh, my senses were very alive, and so was Bones. A scent rose off his skin, sweat and chemicals and pheromones, so very familiar, but not what it did to me. Desire flooded me, to taste, to consume. Consume? Where had that come from?
He must have seen it in my eyes, because I felt him tense and try to move. I grabbed his other arm; he started to struggle in earnest. It was easy to hold him--no effort at all.
The doubt in Bones’s dark eyes gave way to fear. Urgent craving rose in me and I realized that I had the strength to take whatever I wanted. I had the strength to keep whatever I wanted against all comers now.
If this was death, I was an idiot for fighting it for so long.
I rubbed my face against his, just to feel the texture of his skin, the sweat starting to bead at his temple. His bones were beautiful, and the soft, living flesh over them--I couldn’t resist a taste, sliding my tongue along the line of his jaw, feeling the heat of his breath coming out in little huffs through his parted lips.
Bones’s lips--I could have written a poem, if I were that type. Instead I just planned to make a meal of them before I moved on to other parts of his body. Metaphorical, of course, because I didn’t really want to eat him, or at least, I didn’t think I did. Because what I was going to do to him I was already planning to do more than once.
Bones, it seemed, had other ideas. He was wearing himself out trying to squirm out of my grip, probably getting some spectacular bruises in the process. It was fun to watch, to feel, so I let him keep struggling.
At last he stopped, out of breath, and I rewarded him by cupping a hand around the rigid heat between his thighs. He didn’t seem to find this reassuring-- though I did.
“Jim, what the fuck--” More struggling, more indignation, plenty like his usual self. “We had an agreement--”
I had to laugh. He couldn’t go anywhere; I had him pinned against the biobed with one hand, so I could do what I wanted with the other.
“Which agreement was that?” I snaked a hand under his shirt so I could feel the smooth skin of his belly, tender and warm over firm muscle. “The one where I let you be my CMO as long as you kept me from dying more than once a month? The one where I said I’d leave Spock instructions not to kill you, in case I ever stayed dead?” I slid my fingers under his uniform pants, just far enough to feel the brush of soft hairs. It was all I could not to throw him to the floor that instant. “Or the one where we agreed not to fuck so no one would ever think that’s how you got your position, so you wouldn’t spend all your time fending off knives instead of actually working?” I shouldn’t have grabbed his cock and stroked it, but I did. I’m only human. Or I used to be.
I think he nodded, though it was hard to say with his hair falling in his eyes and his back arching to try to get away from me. “That one, huh? Good, because that’s going to be easy to renegotiate.”
“God damn it, you horny asshole, be rational for once in your life.” He was squirming and I was letting him, because it was entertaining, all that muscle and will getting him nowhere.
“Sure. Give me a reason.”
All of a sudden, he reached a hand up and scratched his nails across the side of my neck, deep, deep enough to bleed. I winced out of habit, waiting for the pain. It never came. I touched the skin with my free hand, the one that wasn’t holding Bones, and then looked at it.
“No blood.”
“Yeah.” He was looking more grim than pissed off, and that more than anything got my attention. “Because you don’t have any. Something is seriously fucked up here, Jim. Assuming you are Jim, which I can’t be sure of at this point.”
“I wouldn’t let anybody else do this to you.” My hand was still gripping him and I was reluctant to move, even though he was looking more doctor than dinner, frowning at me and trying to fold his arms in the scant inches that were between our bodies. “Only me. Only me.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring. Now tell me what happened down on that planet.” I knew he was trying to calm me down and fend me off at the same time--Bones, always trying to manage the unmanageable. It was his job and the rest of the crew knew it, they pressed their every advantage and so did I. Well--I’d humor him. For the moment.
“Okay, but not here.” Here being the Morgue. Weirdly, my desire had eased as he stopped struggling; I still wanted him, badly, but I could wait. I knew now I would have him in the end. Besides, I was still captain. I needed to know the condition of my vessel. “Your office. Now.” I grabbed him by both shoulders, spun him around without much trouble, and gave him a push toward the door.
I was naked, of course, and I didn’t care, except that walking in front of me, he wouldn’t be able to admire the view. The cool, dry air of Sickbay felt amazing against my skin, everything just fucking amazing, but the bay was deserted, gamma shift by the way the lights were at thirty percent. I watched Bones’s broad shoulders and imagined pressing my whole weight down on him, on some warm beach in the humid air with nothing but sand underneath him, with his wrists tied to the posts of a rough-hewn bed in some mountain hut, in water, in sunlight--
Well, maybe not sunlight. The thought of it stirred something in me and it wasn’t pleasant.
I followed Bones into his office. The decor was straight Early Empire, wood and leather and overstuffed chairs that were about as home in space as he was. He made a beeline for the relative safety of his desk and I laughed and pushed him toward the sofa. He sat down with a weary huff, knowing he wasn’t going to like what I had to tell him.
Me, I felt light as a feather. It was coming back to me, what I’d done on that planet, and it was pure genius. Naturally.
“So,” he prompted. “Argareya.”
“Yeah. Interesting planet. The usual objections to Imperial domination--tribute rates are too high, we offer nothing but not kicking their asses, blah blah blah. I threatened to destroy them, of course.”
“Of course.” Bones was wearing his disapproving scowl. He didn’t like it when I acted like any other low-level thug with a big phaser bank. But there’d been no reason not to follow orders, so I’d played pretty and dumb and waited to see what would happen. It was always more fun that way, even if Bones didn’t think so.
“Trouble was, they were already dead.” That might have gotten a bigger scowl if hadn’t been sitting in front of him without a drop of blood in my veins. “That made the conventional threats pretty useless. But they were nervous about their secret getting out. Want to know what it was?”
“A recipe for the galaxy’s best pancakes?”
“A very convenient virus.” A simple answer that didn’t do justice to the full operatic story. I’d let the ruler’s daughter seduce me, and when she tried to take me hostage, I’d killed her. At least, I’d thought I’d killed her, sliding her beautiful jeweled dagger between her fragile ribs as she lay asleep. I’d waited for the gush of blood over the white sheets, but it hadn’t come. Instead, she’d opened bright, dark eyes and laughed. I’d known then we could do business together.
At last, Bones stopped looking like he wanted to crawl through a ventilation shaft to safety. The crazy son of a bitch had always been in it for the exploration.
“Virus, huh? One that consumes your blood?”
“Yeah, and makes you immortal. Well, the next best thing. You don’t need oxygen or food. Your cells can’t be compromised by disease or age. And if you destroy one, it regenerates.” I didn’t bother trying not to sound smug.
“And you just go on your merry way, violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics?”
“Oh, I still need to feed.” I could taste the word on my lips; just saying it brought back the desire again. “Just not on regular food.”
“What, then?” He looked at me like I was about to deliver the punchline to a bad joke.
“Blood.”
Even though I was trying to keep my tone light, I wasn’t expecting laughter. Bones had a dry laugh; deep and hoarse, close to bitter, but I liked it, as long as it wasn’t directed at me. Not that I’d tell him that, though of course he knew. After all, we’d had an agreement, unspoken underpinnings and all.
“Jim,” he said with a final cough, wiping a hand over his face, “you really had me going there. Trying to make me think you’re a vampire--for fuck’s sake, what do I look like?”
I wanted to tell him like something delicious, something warm and moist and sweet and full of blood, something I want to have and have again. But it was easier to show him.
I smacked my comm badge. “Scotty?”
“ Scott here, captain.”
“Meet me in Dr. McCoy’s office in Sickbay.” I smiled at Bones, whose eyebrows drew together in bafflement, and added, “Bring restraints.” Really just to fuck with Bones, and also because I knew Scotty would have some at hand.
“What are you going to do, Jim?” he asked, suspicious but not fearful, because there were lines I didn’t cross with him. I didn’t make him watch torture or executions, for instance, because it made him whiny and nauseated. But I didn’t spoil him, either, because it wouldn’t help him in the end; not when it was something important, and this? This was something important.
Scotty showed up a minute later, a bit out of breath, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a set of well-worn leather-and-chain restraints in the other, an expression of cheerful anticipation on his face.
“How can I help, captain?” He held the restraints up like he’d fished them out of some loch. He was a man of simple and (outside of Engineering) mostly carnal pleasures and I didn’t have the heart to disappoint him.
“Restrain Dr. McCoy. I have a little demonstration for him, and I don’t want him making a fuss.”
“Jim, you can’t--” Pure disbelief kept Bones docile long enough for Scotty to snap on the cuffs. By the time he clapped the second set onto Bones’s ankles he’d moved on to spluttering indignation, but it was too late. He wasn’t trussed up, but if he tried to move off the sofa he’d end up in a heap on the floor.
I didn’t know which was hotter, the leather cuffs around his wrists or the way his red lips parted in shock. Maybe I’d become too predictable; change was good. Change was exciting.
Scotty stood there with folded arms and a leer, clearly wondering if he’d be allowed to get his hands on Bones, unaware he himself was the main attraction, for now at least. I clasped his shoulders and spun him around easily, so that Bones could get a clear view when I tugged down the collar of Scotty’s uniform shirt.
A hint of something more than lechery dawned in Scotty’s eyes. I wasn’t in the habit of killing or fucking my senior staff; I’d picked them for talent, not connections or sexual abilities, and talent tended to stay put. Loyalty was another matter, but Scotty loved the Enterprise down to her last stem bolt, and I left him alone in Engineering with his toys and his strange games.
“Don’t worry, Scotty,” I said. “If it hurts, it won’t be for long.” I heard a clank from Bones’s direction but kept my eyes locked on Scotty’s, getting hot at the thought that Bones was a helpless witness, hotter at the scent rising from Scotty’s skin. Scotty’s eyes went glassy, his body still but vibrating faintly in my grip.
“Yes, captain.” His voice sounded hollow, drugged. Holy fuck, did I have that power, too? Better and better. That meant I wouldn’t even need chains with Bones, but oh, I liked them, liked having this effortless control. All those years of hard work and paranoia and plotting and now it was this easy just to reach out and take what I wanted.
My lips fastened on Scotty’s neck and he groaned. Bones exploded with a snap of metal, fell back into the leather embrace of his sofa, making me wish he were naked, that we were all naked, because fuck this was overwhelming and I couldn’t get enough of it.
“Jim, don’t!” Bones was frightened. Good.
I couldn’t stop; Scotty didn’t want me to, and I owed this to him for being such a good-natured little henchman.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Jim,” Bones called out, desperate and shocked, though you’d have thought three years with me would have shock-proofed him. “I believe you.”
It was as easy as biting into an apple. My teeth slid into Scotty’s carotid and my hand to the front of his trousers, caressing. He sighed, and relaxed against me, and it was almost sweet, his thoughts floating around me light as soap bubbles, giddy, dirty, and strangely innocent. I thought fondly of my alien princess, how she’d taken my blood virginity, fucking me with her lips while I fucked her with my cock, giving a gift and taking one at the same time.
Easy, so easy just to float that way, and so hard to stop. Just a taste, I promised myself. Just enough to show Bones I meant business, so I could get what I really wanted: Bones naked and pliant--
No. Bones fighting me with all the strength in his splendid muscles, and losing. It was only because of that that I was able to detach. The wound was clean and Scotty was very, very happy.
“Ahhh,” he sighed, like he was the one who’d just finished a fine meal. “You’re a marvel, sir. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” I patted him on the ass, tasting copper and whiskey and feeling collegial. “Now shove off, okay? The doctor and I have business to discuss.”
He cast a regretful glance at Bones. “Always willing and able to help, captain. Those manacles were all I had at a moment’s notice, but if you give me a little advance warning--I’ve got some corbidium cuffs that attach to any surface, and can be synchronized to tighten on the--”
“‘S okay.” I liked Scotty, but I didn’t want him getting the idea that Bones was anybody’s but mine. “Bye.”
He nodded, and the door swished shut, and Bones was left alone, staring at me like the world had gone crazy. He had beautiful eyes, something I would rather have died than tell him, especially in those words. But I liked looking at them, the way they changed in the light, the way they hid nothing. Right now, they showed me that he understood exactly how powerful I’d become, how I could literally feast on the blood of my enemies. How I could reward my allies.
“No,” he said, liked I’d already asked him the question, Which one do you plan to be? Because his body was betraying him. His eyes were grave and sad, but he was hard, and he was helpless. No need to pour on the magic vampire charm; he was already--
“Mine,” I said, tasting the word, and laid a hand against his cheek. He jerked and bucked against the manacles and I slid the hand down, feeling the slight sweat breaking out on his neck, sliding my hand into the deep V of the neck of his uniform. Enhanced senses, too; I’d made the bargain of the century.
“No,” he said again, more forcefully, as if it mattered.
“Yes. This works on every level. I can hypnotize people into doing my bidding, kill the ones I don’t need, and fuck the ones I want.” I let my hand graze his nipple, so he knew which category he fell into.
He hissed through his teeth. “You’re possessed. This--condition or infection or whatever it is, it’s taken you over. You’re not you any more.”
“Oh, really?” Now I slipped my hand up under the hem of his shirt, driving him crazy from the other direction. He was irresistible to play with, especially when his erection contradicted his disapproving pout. “What part doesn’t seem like me? The horniness? The ambition? The sheer, uncomplicated genius?”
I felt his gut muscles clench under my hand. “The fact that you’ve forgotten why we don’t fuck, for one.”
“Oh, that.” It went all the way back to when I found out my CMO was hotter than a couple of trinary star systems and a soft touch to boot, a man who practiced medicine for its own sake instead of for the convenient access to neurotoxins. He was weak and skilled and inconvenient and I liked him, because he saw through my shit and thought I was worth talking to anyway. He didn’t give a flying fuck that I was the fleet’s youngest captain; I could have been God’s favorite first cousin and he still would have rolled his eyes when I stripped off my shirt and drank bloodwine out of a Klingon skull (at a formal dinner, in front of guests). If that had been all, it would have been enough for friendship, or at least for non-fucking, non-backstabbing truce, but his incredible tenacity in sticking up for the most wrong-headed things fascinated me. That focus, that passion that went right through to his bones--Bones was all depth, no surface, and it was a spectacle, and fucking attractive to boot.
And so I kept my CMO close, and that level of intimacy came with a price. We weren’t related, he wasn’t rich or connected, so everyone would look for an explanation. We could be friends, or we could be fucking, and if it were the latter then people would know his ass was for sale. A captain’s man, for now, but a whore by definition, and expected to fall face-first in front of whoever managed to assassinate me. So I made the strategic decision not to fuck him, because somebody (Spock, most likely) paid the laundry to find out whose DNA landed where, and as much as it tortured me to imagine those dark eyes looking up at me from the vicinity of my cock, the ugly truth was that I hated to think of Pike or any other visiting admiral taking turns with him, before, during or after my untimely death.
“I’m immortal,” I said to him finally. “I’m also incredibly dangerous, with or without phaser. That changes things, don’t you think?”
“Not from my point of view. Excuse me if I don’t want to get involved with some creature that just had his teeth in the jugular of his chief engineer.” He tried to raise a hand to his face, felt the manacle tug, and panicked ever so slightly.
“Oh, you’re already involved. You know my secret, and you’ve watched me feed. And I’m going to need your--” I struggled a little over the word. “I’m going to need your help. There are minor drawbacks that come with the benefits.”
“Oh? Like being twice as insane and four times as reckless as usual?” I’ve gotten good at reading the non-verbal signs of panic, and Bones was broadcasting all of them--dilated pupils, rigid posture, restlessness--but he was putting on a good show, like the poor windmill-tilting son of a bitch he was.
“No, more mundane than that. Light sensitivity, a tendency to get sunburned. Well, to shrivel to a crisp, if you must know. Nothing that a doctor of your caliber can’t handle, with total patient confidentiality, of course. And,” I said, stroking a finger along the steel-tight flexor of his inner thigh, “with the right incentive.”
“That’s not an incentive, that’s a threat.” His lips twisted into something like a sneer, something he’d never dared even in his more reckless moments with his flesh-and-blood captain. It was contempt, the last thing I expected and the surest way to piss me off. Bones might be able to bench more than me and drink more than me and hold me up to his weird standards, but he sure as fuck didn’t get to look down on me just because he had a beating heart.
“No, this is a threat.” I grabbed his wrist and twisted, pulling it up to his face so he could see the manacle around it, feel the steel in my flesh, ten times stronger than the chain. I leaned in close, cool breath in his ear. Everything about me felt cold, so cold, and he radiated heat.
“You’ll do what I want,” I whispered. “You will.”
There was nothing warm about the eyes he turned on me then. “Using the vampire whammy already? That pretty much proves my point. Because if Jim Fucking Kirk were in this room he’d be able to make me see reason, or seduce me, or both. And he sure as shit wouldn’t have to resort to cheap parlor tricks.” He clanked the chains, heavy with irony. “Is this what Jim would want? His body worn like a costume by some alien microbe? His ship turned into a haunted house?”
Anger rose in me, white and hot, and I had a vision of him, pale faced and glassy eyed, lying on the thick carpet. I had to be careful, that much I knew: death was as easy now as a slap in the face, as tantalizing as a sweating glass of white wine. But just as fast there rose something like--not sympathy, because no one could accuse me of that.
I didn’t want to kill Bones; I wanted him to understand, to know what it felt like to walk invincible, to be the most dangerous thing in a ship full of dangerous people, every life like tissue paper to a match except mine. Every life something for me to drink down and forget.
Except his. I could admit it, because now I got to decide. Like a god. Like God.
“I’m going to fix you,” I said, inspired.
He got what I meant right away, and now he began to really panic--not half-hearted maidenly tugs at his bonds, but serious, full-scale fighting against mortal peril.
“No!” he shouted and pitched forward, began crawling toward the wall comm, and I let him, because it was fascinating, seeing him on his knees. Just shy of his goal I reached out a lazy hand and pulled him away, rolling him on his back, tangled in chains and still fighting, wild and desperate, eyes begging for what his mouth wouldn’t.
“I’m going to make you perfect.”
“By taking away my humanity?” It wasn’t death he was afraid of, now.
“Well, yeah.” I held him to the floor with one hand against his pounding heart and let the other caress the side of his face. “Nobody’s really perfect. But you could be. Such great raw material, if that inconvenient little heart weren’t in the way. Plus, the way you look--it could take random recombination thousands of years to come up with something like this again. Don’t you think we owe it to the universe to keep it around as long as possible?”
I could see the No flaming in his eyes. It would have been easy to use the vampire mojo, narcotize him into submission, but I wanted him fully present--whether he thanked me or cursed me in the end, he wouldn’t be able to deny me.
I gripped his shoulders, controlling him easily. I wondered whether my hands felt like flesh or steel. I was halfway to his throat when a better idea occurred to me. The neck was easy, ordinary, but this occasion called for something special.
The second my hand landed on his belt buckle, he shouted and started to buck frantically. I congratulated myself on a good choice.
The effort of pulling his pants down made me wish, briefly, that I’d asked Scotty to stay, but when Bones was half-naked I was glad it was for my eyes alone. To complete the picture I ripped his shirt open, easy as tearing paper.
I hadn’t seen him naked since the Academy, and even then only in flashes; unlike other varieties of Imperial service, a starship provides disappointingly few opportunities for nudity. It was as if I’d never seen a naked body before; he was that perfect, long-limbed and golden-skinned, chest heaving and blood flushing his face, coursing through those delicious veins, the thickest and juiciest pulsing, irresistibly, in the tender place between his thigh and groin.
If my heart had been anything more than a paperweight, it would have been in my throat. Desire wasn’t just a physical feeling anymore; it came from all over me, a lust like I’d never felt, the anticipation almost painful, except that I knew I was seconds from getting what I’d always wanted. All I’d ever wanted.
He wasn’t hard any more, the blood being needed elsewhere to try to save his mortal life. I could fix that. I could fix everything.
I knelt in front of him, happy to worship between his thighs. The feel, the scent of him was intoxicating, overwhelmingly delicious; it was lucky I couldn’t pass out. When I touched his cock he shivered and closed his eyes, whimpered a little, deep in his chest.
“You want this don’t you?” I whispered. “You’ve always wanted it, just as much as me.”
“ No.” He gasped, but his cock came alive under my hands, proving him a liar.
“ Yes. From now on, it’s always yes.” I took him in my mouth and he keened, clawing at the leather under his hands, straining at the leather around his wrists--dead, all as dead as my mouth, my hands, but I was still able to do this to a living body.
Nothing had ever felt as good as his cock in my mouth. It swelled to infinity, until it blotted out every other thought. For the moment, I even forgot about the pulsing femoral artery, close enough to brush with my cheek.
I ran a finger along the tender flesh of his inner thigh. It was warm, so warm, and I wished I had a few thousand years to enjoy him this way first, but being a captain means making the tough decisions. I needed him with me. Too much power without counterbalance could be its own kind of weakness. And purged of some of his stranger ideas--compassion and mercy and trust--he’d be magnificent. Worth keeping not just for a tour of duty or two, but for a lifetime. An endless lifetime.
I looked up at him from somewhere behind his own cock, caught and held his beautiful, desperate eyes.
“It’s now, Bones. Say goodbye to all this.”
“You’re going to regret it,” he said in an urgent whisper.
“I’m pretty sure I won’t.” I stroked the underside of his cock and he responded with his whole body, spine arching, stomach muscles clenching. “Besides, you wouldn’t want me to stop this, would you?” I went down on him again, enjoying it with every one of my heightened senses, committing it to memory. I teased without mercy, hoping to make him beg, keeping the pressure just shy of what it would take to send him over the edge. I seemed to be falling into his thoughts, a jumble of fear and doubt and anger. In his mind he was pleading with me, hoping I’d see reason, but this was reason, the most sensible thing I’d ever done.
I could tell how close he was to coming, how desperately he wanted it to be over, and for that very reason I kept the pressure of my lips light, my tongue just kissing the head of his cock. I gave him one last, regretful stroke from balls to tip before I pulled off and kissed my way to the pulsing artery in his thigh that carried the sweet blood directly from his heart. I hadn’t been in this business long enough to develop personal tastes, but the thought of the volume and pressure of blood, saturated with oxygen for eager cells, made me hungrier than I’d ever been for food. Fuck food, fuck water, fuck life--fuck everything but this, though I wasn’t going to forget about the actual fucking. But first--
My teeth sank in before I knew what was happening, one hand under Bones’s heavy thigh, holding it firm, the other wrapping around his cock, stroking in rhythm as I drew his blood into me. Oh but it was sweet--iron singing on my tongue, warm flesh filling my hands, Bones’s guttural cries nothing more than background music as I spoke, wordlessly, directly to his body. His brain might still be trying to fight me, but I was calling every blood cell to me, taking him inside me, consuming him, honest with myself at last about what I wanted from him.
Everything. Not just his life, but everything.
As he started to weaken, I gripped his cock tighter, making him stay with me, stay present. I thought I knew all there was to know about pleasure--including how hypoxia and fear could heighten it--but this was something new for us both.
He was passing the point of no return now, and I was still drinking him in, urging him onward with lazy strokes even as I felt his flesh cool beneath my lips. I knew how to pick the moment the same way I knew when to give the order for a phaser volley, not too close and not too far away, just at the perfect moment to bring about annihilation. I gripped the base of his cock and jerked, relentless, as I sank my teeth in deeper, sending a stabbing pain up Bones’s thigh and into his heart as orgasm tore through his body. I spared a glance from his agonized face to watch him come, admiring, regretful--vampires, you see, don’t ejaculate, and whether we can come is debatable but irrelevant. There was more than enough pleasure in this life, never more than in this very moment, as I watched Bones’s beautiful face grow pale and still.
The Argareyans get really tedious with the rules--there are dozens of them, and a lot of pomp and ass-kissing and things I find deeply boring. But they do know how to run a blood-based economy, and it comes down to this: if you take a little from your victims, they live and fight off the virus and you can feed from them again. Take a lot, and the greedy virus consumes what’s left over, and they die. Take it all--the virus takes refuge in their cells, and now you have another vampire mouth to feed. Of course, that’s all wrapped up in balance and harmony of worlds and boring shit that’s unworthy of a planet full of killers, but so few people can face what they really are.
If Bones had been alive, I knew what he’d tell me: to leave him dead so he’d never have to wake up as a creature occupying his own body. But it was too late for that. Before I slid back up onto the sofa, I licked the last drops of blood, mixed with come, from his thigh. His body was limp, chest motionless, and he was still hotter than sin, which I guess made me a necrophiliac. Well, both of us, really.
I curled at his side and studied his face, not wanting to miss the moment when he came back to life. Minutes flowed by, hours maybe, enough that the tiniest doubt started to creep in, and then--I saw his eyelashes flutter, the first sliver of amber--
And then his hand shot out and grabbed me by the throat.
“Good,” I rasped, trying not to struggle. “Impressive. It took me a couple of hours to--”
“You fucking son of a bitch.” He was getting to his feet, still crushing my windpipe, which would have been painful or dangerous if I’d been able to feel pain or danger. His eyes glowed with some weird, wolfish light, and I could feel the merciless strength in his arm.
“Baby steps, now. You’ll want to rest for a while, and then feed. I bet Chapel would like to see you like this, all naked and--”
He gave a strangled cry, something like a snarl, and threw me against his desk, where I landed hard enough to smash the ugly souvenir glass he’d gotten on Media Zeta. A few seconds later he had his foot on my chest and I was looking up into his very pissed-off face. Somehow he’d broken the chains that held the manacles together, and they dangled from his wrists.
“God damn you. If you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you. Maybe I’ll try--” he looked wildly around, like it was my office and not his and there’d be a cache of ornamental weapons on the wall. “Maybe I’ll try anyway. Cut you to pieces and see if they reassemble, if that’s even possible when they’re floating in space.”
“Oh, big man,” I said, and grunted when he pressed the heel of his booth against my sternum. He couldn’t crush the non-existent breath out of me, but old habits die hard. “You couldn’t beat me when you were alive, what makes you think you can now?”
“Because I’m mad as hell.” That with a sharp kick to my side. I could still feel, but it wasn’t painful. Still, however, not a great feeling. “You fucking arrogant asshole. I only ever asked you for two things--to keep my alive and at least a foot away from your dick. You. Couldn’t. Do. Either.”
Now the kicking was just getting annoying. I grabbed his booted foot and yanked away from his body, an old hand-to-hand trick. He didn’t fall over like I expected, but he budged enough for me to roll out from under his foot and back to my feet.
That was better. We were the same height, and I had ten times his training, which made it hard to explain when he backhanded me and sent me sprawling toward the sofa. Still no pain, but a distinct ringing in my ears.
“Like you were doing anything with that miserable life of yours.” I tried to keep him focused on my words while I looked for an advantage. The chains on his wrists made pretty good weapons, and he seemed to have grown in mass. “You’d be pulling teeth on some dirtball of a garrison planet if it weren’t for me. At least I take an interest in your career.”
With that, I lunged at his midsection, not because I expected him to really be able to hurt me but because I didn’t want to give the impression of getting my ass handed to me. Plus, I thought it would be fun. Instead, I bounced off him as if he were a tightly stretched trampoline. He caught me on the rebound, grabbed my shoulders, spun me around, and put me in a headlock.
“ Career. Is that all this is to you? Another way to step all over people and annoy the fuck out of them at the same time?”
Now he was the one whispering in my ear, the one with the hard body pressed against mine. It should have been hot, but instead I was getting the barest nagging doubt.
Among the Argareyans’ rules was a lot of crap about how and when to make another vampire. There were laws about proximity of relationships, frequency and timing of feeding, physical and psychological states. I’d assumed I’d gotten done by the best, but if I was the best, and Bones was already pretty damn strong to begin with--
I might have made a vampire that I, the strongest fucking thing on the ship, was actually weaker than. Shit.
“Hey, Bones,” I said prying at his fingers, trying to be deliberate. “What’s done is done. You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. You don’t need to sleep now, have I mentioned that? Well, actually you kind of go into a coma for a few--”
He tightened the crook of his elbow against my throat--no danger, but no fun. The fun was against my ass and showing no signs of getting hard, though the way he was manhandling me it would have been at least polite.
“You know what they say about vampires?” I could feel his cold breath in my ear, like the air of space. “That they have no souls. Well, you never had one to begin with. Of course it wouldn’t matter to you, not being able to walk in the sunlight, to feel your heartbeat in your chest, have kids--” His voice choked a little. Still soft, under all that hard flesh.
“You wanted kids, huh? I never knew that.” He just grunted, and tightened his grip. “But, see, you don’t need anything or anybody else now. We have each other.”
At that, he gave a roar of pure rage and shoved me away, not with as much force as he was capable of, but as if he couldn’t stand touching me any more.
“You don’t have anything, Kirk. And the stupid part is, it was all unnecessary. I would have helped you in the end, because this is the best of a bunch of shit-poor choices, and because I thought I could trust you with this one fucking thing. Not to ruin my life. Not to take away the little bit that belongs to me.” His eyes blazed--shit, I was right, he was perfect. And perfectly able to get along without me.
Out of habit, I rubbed my neck. The skin didn’t even feel warm where he’d touched me.
“So what can I say--sorry?”
He shook his head. “Nothing you could say would be worth listening to. If there was any conversation tonight, it was between you and your ego. Now get out.”
“You need to know about care and feeding and all that,” I said, not moving toward the door. “There are rules, you know.”
He smiled, and it was terrifying. “No, there aren’t. Not any more.” He pointed at the door and I had no choice but to walk out, not turning my back on him.
I’d never been afraid of anything on my own ship, but that night I slept with the lights on, alone.
+++++
He got off the ship at the next starbase. I didn’t try to stop him because--as he never tired of reminding me--I couldn’t. Where he went after that, I have no idea. I lost track of the ‘Fleet tracer chip on Thettalos IV, where it’s easy enough to procure illegal surgery, transport, and whatever else you want. The Empire’s reach is broad, but the reach of gold and latinum is broader, and he had half of what had been in my private vault clinking in his pockets. It was a gift, in spite of what he told himself--immortality is great, but it’s not everything, and I worried about him, I really did.
I had to tell Spock about my--condition. He took it philosophically, seeing the logic in my decision and appreciating the potential of my new powers, even as I appreciated the fact that his touch telepathy didn’t work on me any longer.
There’s some inconvenience, for sure. Because of all the fuss with the contact lenses and nano sun blockers--not to mention the inconvenience of having to sit through endless dinners without touching the food--I don’t go down with landing parties unless it’s critical. On the other hand, I have a nice little harem of willing and eager blood donors, Scotty chief among them. He’s happily incorporated sanguiphilia into his repertoire, and there’s nothing he likes better as a reward for a job well done than me sinking my teeth into his carotid. He’d love to jerk off while I do it, but I’m saving that--saving that for Bones, my first and only.
On the whole, I'm still pleased with my decision. I’ve drunk poison and taken spears in the back and laughed like the scary motherfucker I am. The whole Fleet is buzzing about what kind of new tech I have. Admiral Cartwright’s offered me a large chunk of his huge fortune to let him in on the secret, which of course I won’t. He doesn’t know that, though, so I’ve asked him to help me find information on supply chains of human blood and blood synthesizers. They’re a lot easier to search for across the galaxy than a vampire with a conscience.
I have no doubt that Bones and I will meet again. The universe isn’t that big, given an eternity, and immortality can be lonely--my friends the Argareyans told me that. But Bones is worth the wait. If I’m very good and very lucky, he’ll find a way to cure his “sickness,” to turn mortal again. And then I’ll have the pleasure of turning him back.
Because I’m that kind of asshole, and I know what I want.