Archive of Our Own

James T. Kirk is a proud man. He has to be, in his profession. He has to stalk and swagger and peacock, to pretend like he doesn't want to drive a dagger through every second man in the room. Not out of petty revenge or lust for power, mind you, but simply out of boredom. As much as it disgusts him, imperial galas, even if they are to celebrate the new proconsul, are nothing but a six hour dick-measuring contest.

But he grabs another glass of champagne from the tray of a scantily clad Captain's woman, empties it promptly, and saunters over to the buffet. The sleeves of his parade uniform are way too tight and warm around his arms, but even he is not quite bold enough to pull off his gold tunic at a formal event. Yet.

Like anyone else at this function, Kirk has his sights set. The councilman who leeched on him just a minute ago, until Kirk briskly told him that he has no interest in triduranium mines on Capella IV, was only looking for a naive strawman to place the blame on when the negotiations with the Capellians fail. He suppresses a scoff. He's not an idiot. He's not an idiot, and he has a seven inch scar along his upper thigh from a Capellian scalpel whip. Nothing in the universe is getting him back on that wretched planet. 

He's here for a better reason. But as much as he turns and looks around, he cannot quite make out Captain Pike's silver head anywhere in the auditorium swarming with officials. It makes him more nervous than it should, he realises. Fucking hell. It's only for Pike that he came. It's terribly rude of his next victim to not show up. He fumbles with his glass, then realises that he already emptied it, and refills it again. Fuck.

Someone calls his name. The tone is unmistakable, and Kirk realises that, if Pike does not show up, he will need a lot more alcohol to get through this night.

Captain Garrovick, boisterous as ever, very drunk, very easy to kill, is half-hanging around the neck of a captain's woman that looks so dissociated that Kirk half expects she’s high on pollen. He has stained the front of his shirt with deliciously red tulaberry wine. For a second, Kirk's fingers twitch towards his dagger. It would be so easy to dispatch him, here and now. The captain's chair could be his tomorrow. The front page of every Imperial newsletter would show him in the middle of a crowd with Garrovick at his feet as the idiot's blood mingles with tulaberry wine. It would be dramatic. It would be glorious. He would rise from first officer to captain of the Farragut in one simple strike.

The problem is, of course, that Kirk doesn't give a damn about the fucking Farragut . He has not killed Garrovick yet for only two reasons: one being that he'd be at the top of the hierarchy and the prime subject for any other murder attempts the second Garrovick's heavy body thuds to his knees. Secondly, because it would be too fucking easy. The man trusts him. Jim has the suspicion that Garrovick sees him as a kind of son - or a successor. He's easy to convince. In his heart, Jim knows that Garrovick is a coward who still thinks he can survive by giving out kindness. He disgusts Kirk. Killing him would be embarrassingly easy.

Still, he heeds the call. Teeth bared, sharp smile, he listens as Garrovick blubbers about some incident from their last mission - how Kirk, so heroic, made the decision to bait the cloud creature that sucked the red blood cells even from the marrow of the crewmen's bones. Kirk isn't proud of it. Tying a sedated crewman to a rock so that the ship can beam them up while the creature feasts on the limp body of a very promising engineer is not heroism. It's a pure waste of resources.

The man opposite to them (tall, grey streaks, Admiral, with a rather intimidating woman lurking behind him - definitely too smart to be killed) seems to think the same, because he just rolls his eyes and turns on his heel. His bodyguard follows him, sharp heels clicking on the tiled floor. The floors of the empire are tiled throughout. Blood so awfully stains the carpets. As she shoves a poor girl with a tray of champagne aside, Jim finally spots him.

His heart jolts. Pike.

Unmistakably Pike, he recognises as he hastily makes his excuses to Garrovick and follows in the bodyguard's trail. He’s been tracking the man for a year, since they saw each other at the last Imperial conference. The torn muscle in his shoulder from the siege on Shi'Kar seems to be healing nicely, from the way the captain of the flagship Enterprise squares his shoulders. He's turned his back to Jim, broad, gold command robes spanning his back. He laughs, entirely relaxed.

God, it wouldn't take much. A well-placed hit of Kirk's dagger, between the fifth and fourth rib, slightly angled upwards, and Pike would bleed out on the floor within a minute. A more forceful hit in the neck, nicely slotting between the disks of the spine and through the brain stem, would be even quicker, but it doesn't produce as impressive pictures.

But Pike also has company tonight. His arm rests around the waist of a tall, beautiful figure. Lucky asshole. She's pretty.

A dark, shimmering braid hangs down from a golden clasp, almost touching the small of her back. Strong shoulders, but a sinfully small waist. She’s dressed more conservatively than the other captains’ women, Jim notices. High neckline, long sleeves, a flowing skirt whose style he cannot pinpoint. Maybe Pike likes showing off his toys less brazenly than other captains. Maybe he likes to show off his possession - that only he gets to see what lies under that flowing dark silk. Kirk imagines it for a second - long, long legs, long sharp nails digging into his shoulders, that pretty waist in his hands-

At the sound of his halting footsteps, she turns around. Kirk's jaw and his glass drop to the floor at the same time.

Too late, he manages to right his expression - she - he has already raised a pointed Vulcan eyebrow and taxed Kirk's entire appearance with one devastating, unimpressed, cold stare.

Captain Pike's companion is not a Captain’s woman, not even any woman, so much is clear from the well-groomed beard and the Starfleet badge on his chest. He's a Vulcan. The Vulcan.

Fuck. If Kirk interprets Pike's arm around his waist correctly, killing him just got a hell of a lot more difficult.

At the sound of shattering glass, Pike has also turned around. Unlike the Vulcan beauty, his face immediately lights up in recognition.

"Commander Kirk, if I am correct?"

Kirk swallows hard and steps over. The glass crunches under his feet. Some poor girl has already come running to sweep up the shards with her bare hands. Showtime.

"Captain Pike. Sir. Glad to see your shoulder is healing well."

"Damn Vulcans," Pike laughs mirthlessly. "Should have known they wouldn't tell us they developed phasers that can break through our shields. Took Spock here to take the city. He's been so awfully useful."

The Vulcan - Spock - makes no motion. His face is perfectly blank, but his eyes are cold, old-fashioned steel bullets.

"We have not met," he says, voice melting at the edges. An untraceable shiver races down Kirk's spine.

Pike, luckily, takes the situation into his hands.

"First Officer James T. Kirk from the Farragut, meet my first officer, Mr. Spock."

"Charmed," Kirk says and stretches his hand out. Spock raises one of these perfect eyebrows. Then, slowly, after a second of hesitation, he steels himself and takes Jim's hand like the needy slut he apparently is. Kirk takes his time to give him a firm handshake. The second their skin brushes, Spock's blank face tenses as if in surprise, only for a split second. If Kirk had blinked, he would have missed it. He has to will himself not to grin. So that little rumour about Vulcans and their hands is true, too.

"I assume your Vulcan is the Vulcan?" he asks, only to see Pike preen. His arm around Spock's waist tightens. Spock doesn't even make an indication that he noticed it.

"I am," Spock says very calmly. "And although Pike is my captain, I can speak for myself."

"I didn't mean to-"

Pike interrupts him before he can say something stupid. "He's the first Vulcan in the Fleet, Kirk. But after last year, he won't stay the last one. Pointy-eared smartasses have no choice left after this one blew up their Academy. If they want to study-" He raises his glass with a dirty grin. "-join Starfleet!"

Spock doesn't join in on the toast. Instead, he only knits his hands behind his back. "It will be a good opportunity to gain resources on Vulcan. The Empire's reputation was severely damaged during the siege."

"Hold on." Kirk needs a second. "Are you saying you blew up the Vulcan Science Academy?"

"I believe that this is what I said, yes." Spock doesn't blink. Maybe Vulcans don't blink. "I filled the ventilation system with easily explosive coradite gas. It only took one guard to light a cigarette." He makes an expression that resembles a smile so closely that it has the hair on the back of Kirk's neck standing up. "It bound quite a lot of their resources. The rest were textbook manouvers, nothing particular. Of course, there was resistance, but they were… dealt with."

A flash of surprisingly sharp teeth.

"But you’re a Vulcan."

Again, no blink. "I am. Shi'Kar is the place of my birth."

"Then did you not-"

Spock gently tilts his head to the side. "I prefer to work on my own, Commander. Captain Pike understands that." He blinks up at Pike with something that Kirk can only describe as saccharine reverence. "If he gives me free rein, the Vulcans will soon adore us."

"I prefer them as they are now," the dark-haired admiral next to Pike grumbles. Spock is drawing in more and more attention. "We've got them scared shitless. If the proconsul-"

"We Vulcans do not feel fear."

His voice cuts through the noise without even rising in volume. Kirk is vaguely aware that he should say something, anything, to get Pike's attention and finally veer him discreetly away to somewhere they can speak about Kirk's transfer to the flagship, but - Spock is speaking and he cannot bring himself to leave. The Vulcan takes a sip from his dark red wine (Kirk does not think about how gorgeous that mouth would be filled with blood, he does not), licks his lips and displays his filed-to-a-point double canine teeth.

"It is no use scaring the inhabitants of Shi'Kar," he says very pointedly in the direction of the dark-haired admiral. "Or why do you think the VSA kept their improved phaser weapon a secret? Not out of petty jealousy, I assure you. Because they were gearing up to protect themselves against our attack. Fear makes people harbor secrets. They grow protective. If you make someone afraid, you make them an enemy."

"So you do not deny that Vulcans feel fear?" Kirk blurts out, and finally (finally!) Spock's slitted pupils fix on him. Something like a pleasantly surprised air flits across his brow.

"No," he says slowly. "I do not deny it. But feelings - fear, love, passion, envy, curiosity - cloud our mind from efficiency. Rationality is the Vulcan way. You Terran's pitiful lack of knowledge of Vulcan philosophy is not my fault nor my responsibility to rectify."

Pike's arm around Spock's waist tightens ever so slightly. In a much softer tone, Spock immediately adds: "On the other hand, I have a great admiration for Terran thinkers. Kant, of course, has merits. I find Machiavelli useful."

Kirk rifles through his mental library for literally anything he can impress Spock with. The seconds expand as his brain runs. Spock is about to turn his gaze away from him when Kirk blurts out, "So what do you think? Is it better to be loved or to be feared?"

He is aware of the dirty look it earns him from Pike. Kirk is playing with his favorite toy. It’s so childish it becomes deadly. Spock does not seem to mind. When he turns fully towards Kirk, his long braid lazily swishes across his back.

"To be loved, of course," he says serenely.

"Curious answer for a Vulcan."

"Not in the slightest." Spock empties his glass and folds his long, spindly fingers behind his back. "We are much more detached from your humanoid emotions than you are, Commander. It allows us to analyse them. And one thing very quickly recognised about your most illogical feeling is that love is always stronger than fear."

"I didn't think you would be a romantic, Mr. Spock."

"Wrong again." He does not seem offended. His eyes linger on Kirk like he’s undressing him. Or skinning him alive. "There is little romance in this feeling. It proclaims itself as imperative. It immobilises you. It drives you to the most impossible acts of self-destruction. You humans live under a tyranny of love, Kirk."

"Does the proconsul have to fear love?" Kirk laughs. Some of the admirals join in. Bootlickers. All praise the proconsul. May he reign until someone drives a dagger through his spine.

"He does." Again, that voice. It has the same beauty as a freshly whetted knife. "You have forgotten one of the things that gave your species so much. Amor vincit omnia."

"Love conquers everything." Pike is now giving him an outright pissed look, but that doesn't matter, because Spock gives him the same faint eyebrow raise of approval.

"You have read Vergil?"

"The Aeneid."

"Then you should know better. If even at the dawn of your Terran civilisation, someone could identify this one principle for what it is, I would have expected that you retained it. From the human mother putting her fear aside to throw herself between her babe and the hungry wolf to the resistance against the first eugenics council, you have displayed that love defeats your worst fears."

Pike scoffs so loud that Spock is obligated to turn to him. "So? What of that? You want me to serenade the Vulcans with some Roman poetry the next time we meet them? Your philosophy is entertaining, Spock, but it’s no Imperial strategy."

"I maintain my thoughts on the matter, Captain," Spock says without flinching. Pike could have him whipped. But instead, Spock just bats his eyes exactly once and adds: "Allow me to enlighten you."

"By all means."

"Commander Kirk, you have trained under Admiral Kodos, have you not?"

The sudden attention startles Kirk. For a second, he’s unsure whether Spock even meant him.

The punch is low, but it hits the mark. Jim feels the silence sag between them until he gets his brain back online. He forces himself to square his jaw.

"I have."

Spock looks almost thankful. "Then tell me, Commander. How many people did you see that begged the executioners to eliminate them instead of their loved ones? Their wives? Their children? How many who tried in vain to hide their family members, even if they knew that it was not permitted on pain of death?"

Kirk blinks. "Many," he says briskly. He does not think of the Riley family and their seven children.

"And tell me, Commander," Spock prowls on, "when the supplies ran out - when entire villages were hiding in the hills, fighting over rats - how long did it take them until they realised they could eat the very people they tried to protect? How long until the brittle body of a starved loved one started looking like a piece of meat?"

Kirk really wishes he had drunken more alcohol. "Incidents of cannibalism were sparse," he hears himself say. "They were taken as the very last resort after all other supplies had run out. However, we suspect that many cases went unreported." 

He tastes half-burnt, half-raw flesh at the tip of his tongue. Unreported was easy. It was easy if you didn't know them.

"Fascinating," Spock says. His head snaps into an inquisitive tilt. "So many supplies. And yet, the love for the other human being remained stronger than your natural fear of death. At least, until there was literally nothing else to eat anymore but each other.  And tell me, Commander - after all these weeks, what did you feel when you saw the first Imperial ships land? The first containers of rations descend on parachutes? Enlighten me. I feel so little."

"Relief," Kirk stammers, and then shocked, adds: "Gratitude."

His stomach has tied itself into a knot. He tells himself that it was the hors d'oeuvre. Dropping him like a gnawed off bone, Spock turns to Pike. "Do you see, Captain? Despite the failings of the Imperial administration that led to the situation, Commander Kirk felt nothing but gratitude towards the Empire. He entered Starfleet merely two years after the incident. I am confident in saying that, if we are to offer Shi'Kar assistance in rebuilding the damage - scholarships for young Vulcans to enter Starfleet to complete their studies - housing - in no less than ten years, Vulcan will be a full member of the Empire."

Pike does not look convinced. "And for what?" he murmurs. "So that they can build more of those fucking phasers that almost burned my arm off?"

"Oh no." By now, Spock is aware that he has a crowd. He still doesn't raise his voice. Maybe he enjoys that the people are leaning, leering, nudging to hear him talk. "We can simply not offer them an alternative. Their Vulcan is Empire now. We build their homes. We run their schools. We offer them universities. If we give them all that, their greatest fear will be us leaving the planet again." The same not-smile curls his lips inside the neat frame of his beard. "We will have a stronghold just because the Vulcans will love their comfortable life so much. And every time they think of disagreeing, we do not even have to attack, but only to retreat. Revoke scholarships. Suspend electricity coverage." He passes a smug look around the crowd gathered around him and raises his glass. "The Empire giveth and the Empire taketh away."

Kirk has found his prize. Unfortunately, the same prize is about to turn away, tugged by Pike's goddamn hand around his pretty, pretty waist. He flicks his pointy ear like a dismayed cat, his entire frame only barely constrained feline elegance and strength. Kirk wants those claws in his flesh.

"You've claimed to have read Machiavelli, but you disagree with him," he blurts out, maybe too loud. In an instant, Spock whips around. He almost looks offended, a surprised glimmer like a shard of broken glass in his eyes. Kirk has to bite back a grin. What a good girl.

"Pardon?" That damn eyebrow again.

"Your understanding of Machiavelli seems to be to make the people dependent on the love and benevolence of their ruler. That loving subjects are also obedient and grateful. You do not agree with him on the ruler as a person who needs to be feared."

"You have a wonderful talent for summarising the obvious, Commander." Spock's tone is icy. God, he’s pretty when he's angry. No wonder Pike never lets him off his leash.

Kirk wets his lips before his thoughts can run away with him at the thought of that. "Do you not agree with Machiavelli that a ruler needs to be feared as well as loved? So that fear of punishment inspires obedience?"

When Spock weighs his head, his heavy, dark braid swings languidly to the side. "Maybe in the interim," he says, eyes fixed on Kirk, pupils drawn to almost a vertical line. "But you still misunderstand me, Commander. For a stable leadership, I do not seek obedience. I'd argue for adoration."

"Enlighten me?"

At the repetition of his phrase, Spock inhales sharply. It somewhat morbidly reminds Kirk of the face of a jaguar when it scents blood.

"Allow me a little thought experiment, Commander Kirk. I have read quite a bit of your Terran history, but please, do correct me if I am in the wrong."

"Certainly." Pike is staring daggers at him, but Jim is not about to stop.

"If I remember correctly, ancient Egypt stood as a realm for several thousand years, a time span only few other earth kingdoms rivaled. Now, Commander Kirk, is it not that the pharaohs claimed to be at level with their gods, and that they would join them as family members in the afterlife?"

"True."

"Ah." Spock takes another sip from his glass. His teeth are surprisingly sharp, and he scrapes them over the glass rim of the glass just because he can. It makes no difference, the hair at the back of Kirk's neck is already standing up as it is. He hesitates a second, as if to savor the taste of the wine. "And then, in the dismal swamps of your medieval Europe, what did the kings and queens of the British Empire claim their power to be? What was it, the Divine Right of Kings?"

"Your classes on Terran history have been extensive, I see."

The Vulcan does what must be an eyeroll for the Vulcans.

"It amused me immensely," he says, the wine slipping languidly off his tongue. "So much potential wasted battling over stretches of entirely worthless land, fought over imaginary lines on a sheet of paper. It is no wonder your species lagged behind in developing the warp drive. Your species is illogical, Commander Kirk, but I cannot deny that it is entertaining. Where was I?"

"The Divine Right of Kings."

"Ah." Too late Kirk realises that he just threw Spock a bone. "Such a good listener, Commander. You see, I differ from Machiavelli in thinking that a ruler needs to follow the human example of balancing the benevolent and strict sides of his nature. In the end, he is still like his subjects - a human, or humanoid, like them. But total obedience - adoration - I think for that a ruler needs to transcend these categories. Machiavelli of course could not think of it - he was far too deeply infatuated with the idea of a Christian god, as so many of you humanoids are with your deities. But you see, Kirk, adoration is the basis for power. People question rulers, people kill beloved kings. But who dares dethrone a god?"

Kirk can hear the fabric rustling in the ensuing silence, and Spock looks far too much like a cat who fell headfirst into the cream to deny that this was exactly his goal.

His captain, on the other hand, looks like he would much rather whisk Spock away and keep him confined to his cabin for a week, far away from all golden blood-stained commanders who have the audacity to have read more than one book. His hand more fiercely grabs Spock's waist, but Spock pats it away, and Kirk fucking preens . 

"Given all that," he teases on, "the strategy of the Empire must sound rather counterproductive to you, Commander. Do we not mostly rely on fear?"

"Evidently." Spock says it as if people haven't been killed for less. His back is ramrod straight now, not a single curve remaining in his body. Pike's hand on his waist looks more and more out of place. "I do believe that the Empire is undermining itself with its strategy of destruction. Wherever we bring new territory under control, rebellions spring up. We burn everything down, and in reward, we get a thousand little wildfires that need to be managed, and we attack them with more fire."

An expression of frustration flits across his face, but then he seems to realise that he is in a room full of admirals who make their living by burning and killing, and he smoothes himself again, morphs back into his softer stance like a snake that ravels himself into a new shape.

Jim is not buying it.

"Tell me then," he asks, "what you think of our new Proconsul? Surely you have suggestions for him to improve his strategy."

It's dangerous to even say it, and Jim knows it, but in this moment, when Spock's eyes fix on him and those beautiful slitted pupils expand a little, he could not care less about waking up tomorrow with a pro-consul dagger in his chest. Spock considers for a moment.

"I am not a politician, nor a tactical officer like you," he says then, tactfully and tentatively. "I am a scientist. You must therefore know that I work with only facts, not possibilities. All I think about Proconsul Komack's course of action is based on the data I have about similar efforts taken on by, undoubtedly, weaker and less intelligent men than he. There may be a margin that allows that Komack, due to his-" he wets his lips and almost rolls his eyes "-larger intellect and more fierce leadership might not bring about the same results. These are the possibilities with which you may concern yourself, Commander. I, as a scientist, not a tactician, can only work with what I know."

The Empire propaganda rolls so smoothly off his tongue, yet it’s clear to Kirk (and, unfortunately, to everyone around them) that Spock thinks the proconsul is a brute and a moron.

Kirk's question follows promptly: "Then what do you know? Do you not approve of his strategy?"

"Of what strategy?" Spock hisses. His cheeks have become a shade darker, maybe due to the wine. He is deadly. He is gorgeous. "Assuming the role of proconsul and immediately executing all the former board members to replace them with lackeys that will only parrot his words instead of informing his decisions with a diversity of opinions? Having the former proconsul's wife and children murdered in their beds lest they came to think of avenging their father and husband? Reversing the former board's policy on Andorian cobalt mining that appeased the mining revolts and trade blockades, knowing that this would lead to another, more violent miner's uprising? He knew the policy had supporters in the Imperial council. Now half the house has turned against him as a man who prefers chaos over order."

"Is that the kind of man you think him to be?"

"I think," Spock says, eyes locked like phaser beams on Kirk, "that Komack is a man who has just set fire to his own house. Mark my words. He will be dead within two months."

With a sharp hiss, Pike bites back a gasp. It's the only sound that alerts Jim that Pike is still there, clinging to Spock's arm. Still, Pike is correct. The formerly admiring or curious eyes undressing Spock have turned into staring or fondling daggers. No matter how pretty Pike's girl is, she should be careful about predicting murder like this.

"Spock," Pike says, quiet but too calm, "I'd like to introduce you to some people."

"Is that nece-"

"Yes." Pike's tone leaves no alternative but obeying, and Spock does, begrudgingly, in an instant.

"Of course, Captain," he murmurs, tilting his head. "Forgive me. Your human customs of decorum still sometimes escape me. I thank you for reminding me."

The second he looks at Kirk again, the saccharine melts right off his face, peels and drops at his feet. He fixes Kirk with his gaze. "If you will excuse us, Commander."

Before he can even finish the sentence, Pike has dragged him away.

Kirk doesn't think about it. He does not. He finds Garrovick completely shitfaced in a corner and beams him back to the ship. He drinks. He drinks a lot. He talks to admirals and commanders and captains and captain's women about the daily bread of killing, looting, conquering and burning. He flirts and he drinks. He fucks another Commander in a bathroom and gulps the stale taste of semen down with more wine.

He doesn't stop thinking about Spock.

Two months and a day later, Kirk wakes up to the holo news that Proconsul Komack had his throat slit in his sleep.

The killer, his secretary, had been bribed by a now disbanding gaggle of councilmen, who, in turn, have started ganging up on each other. It's good that he is on the other side of the galaxy right now. Councilman Veres, the man who was so eager to talk to him about mining exploits, has been shot in his own limousine. The news flash across the screen at a rapid speed, channels contradicting each other depending on which senator owns which news station.

Kirk stares a little at the pictures of Kormack's limp corpse. His head has fallen to the side, the wound on his throat opening like a gaping second mouth, drooling with blood. Komack's last expression was one of complete disbelief.

He gives Spock a call.

The damned Vulcan picks up immediately. He’s seated at his desk, fringe pristinely in place, his hair combed back into his braid. Jim entertains the thought that he would have loved to surprise Spock in a more private moment, with his hair undone or maybe the top button of his uniform open.

"Commander," he says simply. Even the speaker doesn’t take away that barely concealed sharpness of his voice, like a blade hidden under velvet.

Kirk leans back in his chair. "You were a day off."

"You continue to be irritating."

Kirk can't help laughing. "Pike gave you hell that evening, didn't he? He didn't look amused."

An almost-smile curls the sharp edges of Spock's mouth. "He was not. Captain Pike and I have a longstanding agreement - I get to keep my unorthodox opinion and he gets my scientific skill. He occasionally forgets about it. Thankfully, I know to appease him."

"I can see why he wouldn't like you proclaiming murder of the second-highest official of the Empire."

"No. Especially not if my prediction was accurate."

"Almost accurate."

Spock breathes out loudly through his nose. "Given the fact that the reports had to be written first and given that the timezone on Terra in which the murder happened is not synchronous with-"

"Bah bah bah," Kirk tuts. "You said two months. Under two months. That was incorrect."

"Barely."

He lets it go. It's not the aim to fight with Spock. You should never anger a pretty girl if you want to go out with her.

"Tell me, is the Empire already looking for you?" he says instead. "I wouldn’t be sitting around answering calls if I was the guy proclaiming the proconsul's murder two months in advance."

Spock tilts his head a little. "The thought had occurred to me. Thankfully, we are currently on a deep space assignment, far away from Terra. And Captain Pike has agreed to vouch that I was with him at the time of the murder. All the time."

Jim swallows hard at the picture that conjures up in his mind. The way Pike got possessive over Spock at the gala spoke volumes. Or did it?

"I am not a captain's woman, if you entertained that thought," Spock says, and Jim flinches so hard his knee hits the underside of the table.

"I didn’t-"

"It was a perfectly reasonable assumption to make," Spock says benignly. "I did not need my telepathic skills to deduce this from the behavior of you and Pike."

"I am perfectly aware that you’re a scientist and a commander in your own right, Mr. Spock."

The Vulcan just makes a sound somewhere between a purr and a chuckle and leans back in his chair. His face is as smug as a cat's.

"Still you entertain the idea that I obey Captain Pike's every whim, on and off the bridge. Tell me, Commander, have you a woman on your ship?"

"Will you kill her if I tell you?"

Spock checks his nails. "Undecided."

Jim's throat has gone very dry. He shouldn't say anything. He should not. But there is a strange magnetism about the way Spock looks at him, leers at him with those dark cat eyes.

"I do," he says then, shakily. "Not officially, of course. I’m still only a Commander. We don’t have the same privileges. But we’ve kept this arrangement for about a year now, and once I’m a captain, I plan to do the paperwork."

"What is her name?"

"Marlena," he says, and he doesn't even think about using a fake name. Spock would probably be insulted about being so gracelessly lied to. "Promising scientist. Specialises in xenobotany. Poisons, invasive species, crop failures, the entire palette. Gorgeous brain, gorgeous legs. She likes having extra money to put into her projects. I like coming home to a warmed bed."

He hopes it sounds as smug as he wants it to sound. Spock makes no reaction.

"And you treat her well, I do hope?" His tone is sharper now, but he is still fixed on his nails. Only now Kirk notices that they’ve been filed to points. He swallows hard. "I do. Our relationship is mutually beneficial. I have no reason to be unnecessarily cruel to her."

"Good," Spock says simply, and finally Jim's shoulders relax. "I have seen the way in which Pike treats some of his lovers, or how other captains behave towards their women. I would not go forward in allying with you if I knew you were a brute."

"You don’t approve of captains disciplining their attendants?"

Spock sighs. "I thought our discussion on Machiavelli had made my standpoint on senseless cruelty quite clear, Kirk. Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me."

Jim lets that simmer for a second. The Vulcan is mighty tight-lipped for someone who serves a captain known for having a special proclivity towards barring the exits of buildings before he burns them down.

"But you still serve Captain Pike. If I understand correctly, he takes to disciplining his... attendants more strictly than many other officials. Yet you seem to have made an intimate arrangement with him."

Spock's gorgeous eyes finally move from his nails to the camera of his monitor, eyebrow raised. "Why do you ask?"

"I just like a man who puts his money where his mouth is. Do you not resent Pike for that, as you call it, senseless cruelty?"

He half hopes Spock will say "yes." It would be so refreshing to hear someone actually say what they think, after learning time and time again how to wash the Empire propaganda out of every sentence. It annoys Jim tremendously.

But Spock is too smart for that. Instead, he tilts his head and the light catches in his oil-dark hair.

"It would be illogical to resent another man for breaking a code of morals I have constructed for myself," he says then. "Unlike Captain Pike, I do not attempt to drill my ideology into anyone's head. Especially into heads that are ill-equipped to grasp it. Do I believe that Pike's strategy of publicly humiliating and punishing his faulty attendants is somehow linked to the almost bi-weekly assassination attempts on him? Yes. Am I aware that his strategy of fear results in crewmembers keeping faults, mistakes, or broken engines a secret until the problem cannot be covered up anymore, resulting in technical difficulties, delayed information, and a constant overestimation of the ship's abilities? All because they are afraid of the punishment? Absolutely."

Kirk is a bit stunned. He should report this. This is insubordination. Mutiny, probably. Pike should have this man shot.

But Spock just sits there, fingers neatly folded under his well-groomed chin, as if nothing in the world could hurt him. He blinks innocently and his blue eyeshadow shimmers.

"Yet, I must admit that I find no particular advantage in alerting the captain to these misgivings. His outrage would no doubt lower the efficiency of the Enterprise far more than the current climate of fear already does. I care little for the sentimental feelings of injustice or hurt befalling the human crew members - really, Kirk, your species cries with so little provocation - and I have no desire for the Captain's chair. Should I remove Captain Pike to enhance the efficiency of the ship, I would be the next in line to a position I neither desire nor see any benefit in. Thus, I protect his life from whatever captain's woman tries to kill him this week. He knows that, if he were to remove me, he would be dead within days."

"You're foretelling murder again."

"I'm the only one Captain Pike can let into his bed without ending up with a dagger down his throat."

The quip comes back so quickly that it lashes Kirk across the face. The image it conjures is no less pleasant and sickening. Pike, a brute and an idiot, with his arm around Spock's pretty waist, his mouth on her pretty throat-

He swats the thought away. Spock makes a sound that is almost like a chuckle.

"Of course, for myself, I stick to my own rules, Commander," he says, almost amused. "My arrangement with Captain Pike allows both of us to take other lovers as well. We are professional about this."

"And do you treat them well?" Kirk flings Spock's own phrase back at him. It’s a cheap move. Spock knows it. Kirk knows it. Still, Spock complies. He seems to get a sick sort of satisfaction out of knowing that Kirk thinks about him. It makes Kirk's mouth a little dry.

"You do remember our conversation, do you not? I prefer my attendants loyal. Adoring. His biggest fear should be that I lose interest in him. He's worked so hard to gain my attention, he's listened so, so well-"

"He?"

"It is not forbidden, only uncommon." His eyes flick up at Kirk for a millisecond before he lowers his dark lashes again. "I have my preferences, and Pike does not meet them. My men should be virile, blond, and simple. A healthy body, strong shoulders, and a good shape. I tend to pick some out at the line-up for the physical and see which ones suit my tastes. But yes." He takes a tiny pause in which he fixes Kirk again with his dark, unglittering eyes. "I do treat them so well that they do not wish to leave. I prefer to be loved, not feared."

"Romantic."

"Desperate men fuck better. Scared men ‘play it safe’." His ear flicks. "I dislike safe . Of course, Pike sometimes makes them leave, he's old-fashioned and possessive, but replacements are easily found."

He sounds more miffed at that than Jim expected. Of course he would be, if Pike takes his toys away.

"Why do you not apply to a different ship?" he asks, before he can stop himself. "If you have such a disregard for Pike's method of leadership. Under a different captain, you would have more freedom. And I can’t fathom any ship turning the Vulcan savant down."

I would kill Garrovick in a heartbeat if I get her, he thinks. He bites it back.

"The way you did?" Spock asks, razorsharp, and it snaps him right back into reality.

"How do you know?"

"That you applied to the Enterprise?" He sounds almost insluted. "Not too difficult to find out. You applied several times, during the Academy, on your second assignment, and now in the position of tactical officer. Yet you were rejected. I can imagine cruising the fringes of trade routes on a vessel like the Farragut can be quite tiring for an ambitious man like you."

There is something lurking at the back of his throat. It reminds Kirk of a stalking animal, or a snake lying in wait, ready to unhinge its jaw over an oblivious victim. He decides to play along. It may end with Spock's teeth in his throat. He likes that thought a little too much.

"I have to admit that I'm stuck in the same trap as you," he chuckles. "I'm bored to death playing right hand man to Garrovick, but if I stab him with a cheese knife, I get the chair, and the only thing that changes is that I see the fucking interplanetary tariff station from a slightly different angle. The Enterprise is a fine ship, finest in the Fleet. Who wouldn't want to serve on her?"

"Yet you are on the track to become a captain." Spock's voice is very low, almost conversational. It's so jarringly fake.

"Yes."

"The Enterprise does have a captain."

"I’m perfectly aware of that."

"Hm." Spock has leant forward, seemingly playing with his pointed nails again. The hairs at the back of Jim's neck are standing up.

"How unfortunate," Spock sighs. "In my professional opinion, you would make a good figure as a captain. You might make admiral one day. You're smart, you know when to keep your mouth shut, when to take action and when it is better to just lean back. I assume you know rather well how to quickly rise through the ranks, do you not?"

The question lies on the tip of Spock's tongue like the dagger in Kirk's holster. Ready. Welcoming. Begging to be used.

Kirk swallows, then says "Yes."

Spock, and Kirk is rather sure of it, purrs .

"It’s a shame the Enterprise is fully staffed at the moment," Kirk wagers. "I’ll make sure to apply for the same position again when you're short of a tactical officer. Who knows, maybe service on such a ship would put me in a more favorable position for a captaincy."

"Surely." Spock tilts his head. "In the event, I would recommend you to Captain Pike. I would love to see how you can command the men, Kirk."

He lets that sentence hang there before he leans back in his chair, seemingly musing.

"Let me predict a third death," he says languidly, pulling his long braid over his shoulder. "Within two weeks, the Enterprise will be stationed at K7 for shore leave, where many of the crew will undoubtedly attend the tribble-baiting events. I know for a fact that our tactical officer, Commander O'Sullivan, is a gambling man, and that he has a hard time keeping his temper at bay at such events, especially when he is drunk. Incidents have occurred before."

Kirk wishes he hadn't worn his sleeveless uniform. It must be awfully evident that his entire body is covered in goosebumps now.

"One would have to make sure the man does not have access to alcohol," he says, slowly. "For his own health and safety."

"Of course. Especially since a Klingon ship is stationed at the same time." Spock runs his long fingers over his braid, the strands shimmering like the scales of a giant snake. "Ah, yes, the Klingons. Quick to draw in a fight, aren't they? We should really keep an eye on Mr. O'Sullivan. There might be-" (and here he snaps his fingers so hard that Kirk feels a shiver race down his spine) "-an accident."

They finish the conversation like they just had a normal chat between two people who met at a gala and stayed in touch. Jim's head spins. He tries to finish some reports. He goes to the gym to practice his combat skills - throwing a man on the ground, hand gripping his head in place, knee between his shoulders, dagger through the brain stem, through the heart, through the femoral artery, dagger in, and out, and in-

He refuses dinner with Garrovick and his new woman. Marlena briefly pokes in as he’s eating his sad, replicated pasta. She's wearing the yet skimpiest version of her blue uniform and her hair loose the way she knows Kirk likes. He sends her away. He shouldn’t, he knows that, but still he does.

He watches the news again, Komack's limp body in the corner of his office. He thinks about Pike. And then he thinks about Spock. The barely concealed plot. The ease with which Spock spoke of circumventing the laws of the empire. The men.

He cannot stop thinking about the men. Virile, blond, simple. Good posture. Strong arms. He wonders whether Spock has more than one attendant – Garrovick likes to have two women, to constantly pit them against each other. Kirk is quite satisfied with Marlena alone. But Spock? A possessive Vulcan?

Does Spock invite more than one to his bed? Do they join him and Pike? Does Spock prefer to take them, or does he allow them to enter his body? Kirk can't imagine it, and yet -

Spock's nonchalance, his calmness. His pretty, long hair, spilling over the pillows. His waist. Strong hands around his waist, back arching off the mattress like a beautiful woman. To see that Vulcan composure and smugness still standing, maybe even increasing when she has her long legs over a strong, blond, adoring man's shoulders, or to see it peel and break when he is just feeling so good, pretty, smart mouth open, bent in half and just taking it and then-

Kirk comes on his fingers far quicker than usual. It should worry him. It doesn't.

Ryan O'Sullivan dies in a corridor on K7 with a Klingon bootknife between his ribs. He bleeds out remarkably quickly. Apparently, whatever other drunk visitor of the tribble-baiting who was enraged at O'Sullivan's outburst had a very lucky hand, and hit just the right angle on an artery. In the medical log, McCoy chooses not to include that the man must have been knocked out by a Vulcan nerve pinch when the incident occurred. The Klingons deny all responsibility. A few phaser blasts fly back and forth. A Klingon dies. Nothing out of the ordinary happens.

The Enterprise is short of a tactical officer for only two days.

Spock was correct in saying that Captain Pike is possessive, in his own, old-fashioned way. He takes kindly to Kirk for the first two weeks, after Kirk has, quietly and unflinchlingly, endured the rounds of humiliation, questioning, and the agoniser booth that he knows are meant to break him. He bears it with a teeth-gritting sort of obedience that alerts to Pike that this man can stand much more than is offered to him. This wakens his curiosity. The young man who replaces his tactical officer is smart, brazen, and does not seem to be phased by Pike pouring out his initial "your life means nothing on this ship and if you disobey me, you will die slowly and painfully" monologue. He's well-liked and immediately strikes up a friendship with the ship's surgeon. He bests everyone but Pike at the gym. He keeps his back ramrod straight, his console neat, and a smug little grin on his face at all times. It seems to grow wider the more often he is struck.

He has gotten permission to bring his woman aboard, and that monetarily calms Pike.

Sure, the fact that a man prefers women or is taken has never bothered Spock - especially not when the man in question is so much his type as James T. Kirk is -, but he has made a habit of staying away from them when the woman in question is also on board. Not out of curtesy. Spock is simply terribly annoyed with being caught up in domestic squabbles. And Pike hopes that Ms Monreau's dagger laced with Zetarian wolfsbane poison is enough incentive for Spock to stay away from Kirk.

Of course, Pike underestimates him again.

He doesn't notice it at first. Spock is his usual self - prim and taut, controlled and ruthless, whether he is bending over the science station or holding an agoniser over the nerve points of a careless ensign. He braids his hair neatly, arrives at Pike's chamber on time and swallows tightly around Pike's cock.

Pike does not question where that sudden obedience comes from. He accepts it, mostly because Spock becomes all the more pliant when he allows him to attend his chess matches with Commander Kirk. Maybe the lashing he was given after causing such a stir at the gala finally taught him  better manners, Pike thinks. 

It would make keeping a Vulcan in his train even more prestigious. Pike is usually a lover of women - but something about breaking that perfect Vulcan compsure again and again, undoing centuries of pride and superiority complexes until his FO moans like a woman - it does something to Pike. And letting Spock play chess with a pretty boy will keep her entertained, at least.

Pike decides not to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. He leans back in his office chair, slides his cock into Spock's mouth and doesn't think about the teeth.

The Enterprise is a splendid ship. Kirk realises that the second he steps off the landing padd. Her hallways wind in perfect curves , her doors swish open without the faintest sound of creaking. Her shields have been reinforced against the Vulcan tri-lasers. Her phasers can take out an entire planet. She is deadly, and she is beautiful, and unfortunately, that is exactly Kirk's type. He's wanted her for as long as he can think of - now the want becomes a need.

Unfortunately, Spock still holds him back.

It wouldn't be hard to drive a dagger through Pike's back, really - Kirk has thought about it. Thought about it a lot. He's glad that Spock is the only telepath on the ship, so he can allow himself to fantasise merrily about eating this man's heart raw everytime he tugs at Spock's arms, shirt, braid on the bridge. It's a classic display of power, he knows that. Almost animal. Unfortunately, it is also effective.

He wonders whether Pike notices Spock's tells the way Kirk does - the way Spock stiffens and his pupils shrink and his lips curl into a predator-like, pre-reform snarl whenever Pike puts his grubby hands on him - or whether Pike notices and just does not care. He wouldn't put either past the man. In the first case, Pike is an idiot. In the other, he is a brute.

They play chess again. It's the only time between shifts that they can talk to each other alone - but of course not freely. They find their way around it.

Kirk has just moved his rook on the same level as Spock's king, directly in his line of sight.

"Checkmate."

Spock doesn't even blink. In a single move, he moves his queen on the same level, between Jim's white rook and Spock's red king.

Jim looks at him. "What the fuck?"

"Pardon?"

"Don't pretend you didn't notice. You could have made the same move with your bishop. Your queen was on the way to trap my king. You could have won in two steps if you had used your bishop. Now I will have to take out your queen, and then I'm one step away from your king and he can take out my rook."

"Ah." Spock shrugs all innocently. "This observation must have escaped me."

"Don't fucking lie to me. You play mental four dimensional chess the second you look at a board. Why do you put your queen in danger so I can't kill your king?"

The word kill escapes him too easily. Spock pretends not to notice. Instead, he bats his eyelashes at Kirk.

"Calm yourself," he drawls. "We are barely twenty minutes into the game. Are you this impatient, Commander?"

"I don't like being played with. "

"Shall I enlighten you?" Spock's white fingers dance over the board, and he doesn't wait until Jim nods. "My queen here still needs the king. If I let your rook take him out now, I will have lost. I see no sense in letting you win now."

"You would be willing to put your queen between your king and my rook?"

"At this point, yes." Spock's tone has become much sharper. When he sees Kirk's jaw clench and his dagger hand flex, his eyes soften in interest. "You act very protectively about my queen."

"She's the most precious figure on the field."

"She's nothing without the king."

Spock leans back and taxes Jim with only thinly veiled interest, like appraising a pretty new dagger in a store front. "Be patient. If you map out a strategy, you can strike at my king at the right time. But I refuse to indulge your impulsive stabbing at shadows."

"You seem to forget that you are playing with me, not against me." His voice is a little louder than it should be. "You cannot finish this game without me."

"Indeed I cannot." Spock has gently lifted Kirk's rook off the field and rolls it between his fingers. "I just hope you will be able to appreciate my strategy. You need to be prepared to strike at the right time. That is how chess works."

He puts the rook back down where it was, then moves his queen forward. Out of the way of Kirk's rook. It's completely nonsensical. Petty, even. Jim looks at him with equal measures of confusion and anger.

"I think you're supposed to say checkmate, Commander."

"What the fuck are you doing?", he says, again, significantly more angry this time.

"I am giving you the satisfaction of winning the game."

Spock snips his fingers against the figure of the Queen, who tumbles right off the board. "You may have her, too. You are right - she's the most precious trophy in this game."

Kirk rises to his feet so fast that the chair behind him slides over the floor with a sharp creak. His arms tremble, his jaw is locked in tension. His hand twitches towards his dagger in reflex. He's angry, he realises. Furious, actually.

Spock doesn't seem impressed. Instead, he uncrosses his long legs and leans back in his chair.

"But please, let us talk of more pleasant things. Would you care to join me for a private glass of Vulcan cypress wine? I saved some bottles before we raided Shi'Karr."

A strand of hair falls out of his perfect hairdo as he flicks his head. It is not a coincidence. Neither is the way his long finger lingers over the line of his collar, nail only millimeters above the skin. It must be a Pike-free evening. Can't this Vulcan go 24 hours without luring a pretty, blonde, simple man into his bed?

They haven't gone that far yet. Kirk is hellbent on getting close to Pike, and fucking the captain's woman is not beneficial to that. Spock doesn't want Pike to get suspicious. Not that he hasn't propositioned Kirk plenty. Kirk finds a perverse pleasure in leaving the Vulcan who usually gets whatever he wants hanging.

Right now though, Kirk wants to slam his head onto the desk. Instead, he lunges across the table to grab Spock by the collar of his uniform and drag him out of his chair.

Spock doesn't gasp or snarl. He doesn't even flinch, but something in his eyes lights up the second Kirk pulls him half across this table, until their face are mere inches away from each other and he can smell the earthy spice of Spock's cologne. Kirk cannot pinpoint whether it's the glint of lust or triumph, but in this moment, he does not care.

"When I fuck you," he says, strained and low, breath hot and angry on Spock's face, "it will be over the captain's desk."

Spock, being the petty bitch he is, retaliates almost immediately. Of course - pretty women like him are not used to not getting what they want. He wants Kirk - Kirk refuses. He shall regret it bitterly. Spock is a loving queen, but not a merciful one.

 Only a week later, Kirk stomps down the corridor to Spock's quarters in barely contained frustration. He still didn't get to slot a dagger between Pike's ribs. Instead, he has to witness how Spock's waist gets grabbed by Pike on the bridge, or, in one case, how his hand landed on Spock's rear with a resounding smack. Only Spock's warning glance kept Kirk from leaping over the navigating console and shooting the man then and there. It is agonising, the way Pike fiddles with what, in Kirk's mind, is already rightfully his - the control panels of the Enterprise , the leans of the captain's chair, the clasp on Spock's shoulder.

If he was captain, Kirk thinks begrudgingly, he would never touch his woman like that. His woman is his jewel. His beautiful, polished, favourite knife that no one is allowed to get their grubby hands on.

His woman, Marlena, however, hasn't frequented his bed in the last week. That is a new development. Kirk was optimistic that Spock's approach - bestowing lavish gifts on Marlena, telling her how much he appreciates her efforts, how lovely she looks - but to no avail. Almost since Marlena has set foot on the Enterprise , she has become more reclusive. He wonders whether another science department beauty has something to do with that. He'll ask him. Spock is usually more talkative over chess, and even he might get convinced that depriving Kirk of even that method to relieve his frustration can only do harm. He feels like a tight-wound trigger on an antique gun.

He's alone on the corridor when he reaches Spock's door. His first officer's quarters and the captain's share a bathroom, but Spock has made sure to soundproof his room (he says, so that he can meditate in complete silence, with only his heartbeat as ambient noise. Pike says that it's so no one else hears him moan. In reality it is so that Spock can merrily muse about murder with Kirk without Pike overhearing a single word.)

He has noticed that as a pattern among the crew - none of them, except for Pike and Spock's throng of simple, handsome men, seem to want to be near him for too long. More than once, Kirk has observed how Sulu's shoulders untense and Uhura breathes a relieved sigh as soon as Spock has left the bridge. He still wonders why. Sure, Spock is dangerous and chilling, and the air at the back of Jim's neck stands up every time those slitted cat pupils fix on him with cold interest. But that doesn't keep him away from Spock.

He'll have to ask him about that as well, he decides. Maybe Spock will be a little less docile, a little more menacing, when Pike isn't around to keep him in check.

The door slides open before he can even press the bell. That is odd. Spock has reinforcements even on his usual door lock. Something prickles at the bottom of Kirk's spine. His hand drifts towards his phaser. Something is off.

And then, the second he takes one step into the room, he sees the image of his nightmares.

Spock is sitting on the table on which they usually play chess, facing towards the door, long, bare legs spread and bent around the back of one Captain Christopher Pike, who looks absolutely ridiculous with his pants rucked down to his upper thighs, his bare ass jutting out from under the hem of his command tunic, and rutting into Spock without any discernible rhythm. His frame blocks most of Spock, but from the legs and arms and bare shoulders, Kirk is pretty sure that Spock is entirely nude. The dim light catches on his flushed skin and the clasps in his braid. The chessboard lies discarded on the floor, pieces strewn around it.

Pike's red face buries itself in the crook of Spock's neck  as Spock leans his head back and lets out a luxurious moan. His hand moves to the back of Pike's head as Pike reaches for a human kiss, and with a look of barely concealed disdain, Spock grabs his hair and shoves him back to sucking bruises into his beautiful neck. Pike's hands grab his waist tighter as he lets out a groan. Then Spock's ankles cross behind Pike's back and he pulls him closer, deeper inside him and gasps at the stretch.

His eyes stay wide open.

Jim has frozen in place. His heart, the only muscle in his body that is still moving, hammers into his ribs. He wants to yell, or drop something, or run away, or cut Pike into a hundred tiny pieces and roast them over a lab burner. But the second his hand itches a millimetre towards his phaser, Spock grabs Pike's hair tighter and keens "oh, don't, Captain , don't-" with a voice Kirk has only ever imagined with a hand in his own pants, and he obeys. Pike, uncharacteristically too, obeys, and ceases sucking on Spock's neck like a slimeworm.

Almost benignly, Spock's rough sandpaper tongue scrapes over the shell of Pike's ear. Pike groans.

"That's what I like to hear. Say it."

"You," Spock keens perfectly, "you are my captain, only you-"

His eyes, unblinking, stay fixed on Kirk.

That evening, Kirk shatters a priceless Vonda crystal beaker on the wall of his cabin. It breaks into a thousand pieces. Kirk couldn't give a shit. Spock is fucking Pike. Spock is still fucking Pike, even though Pike should have been dead for weeks now, dead and gone and tossed out of the airlock to explode into frozen human crystals in the cold of space. He should be dead and his chair should be empty, or better yet, filled with Kirk, and Kirk with a pretty, genius, ruthless Vulcan in his lap.

He's stopped pretending like he doesn't want Spock. Moreso, the very same nicht he met Spock at the conference, he read up anything he could find on Vulcan biology in the ship's computer's, and he has been pestering Bones non stop, just to imagine what a nice, wet Vulcan sheath would feel like. Just a general Vulcan's sheath. Then a pretty Vulcan woman's sheath. Then Spock's.

He is desirable to any captain. A brilliant first officer, a ruthless tactitcian, a genius scientist. His precision is unhindered by hesitation or moral qualms. He's a man one could burn down empires with. And she's beautiful. Beautiful and cold and sharp, like the kiss of a blade on Kirk's tongue. Maybe he should have fucked Spock that evening in his quarters, preferably on his biggest strap, because then Spock would never again even consider Pike's measly little dick as an option -

And that is where it clicks.

Kirk stands in the middle of his spartanically decorated cabin (he didn't bother unpacking the display daggers and the few framed pictures, because he stupidly thought he'd move quarters soon), and he realises that he's been fooled all along.

Such a good listener, Commander.

His worst fear should be that I lose interest in him. Virile, blonde, simple. I'd argue for adoration.

Desperate men fuck better.

And then, without knowing why, Kirk starts laughing. Oh, of course. What a clever girl.

The day Spock finally allows him to kill Pike, Kirk struts the hallways of the Enterprise like a bride groom. The metal and silicone of her inner walls shimmer under his hands, smooth like silk. The doors of the turbolift open beautifully for him. He can feel the touch of Spock's mind lingering on his.

They hadn't done that before, but apparently, Spock deemed it too dangerous to even talk alou of these things and pulled Kirk into a ready room two minutes before their shift ended. (Kirk thought for a second that he'd die. It made him a little wet.)

But instead of showing his long fingers into Kirk's pants, Spock pressed them to his face, pried Kirk's defences open like it was nothing and only planted in three sentences. Tonight. 1500 hours. My cabin. When Spock lifted his hands again, his pupils were blown wide, almost round, and his fingers were shaking. Apparently, he also cannot wait.

The touch of Spock's mind lingers like a lipstick mark. Kirk can barely concentrate throughout dinner. Bones tells him something about Cygnian respitatory diseases and he doesn't listen. It's a shame - he does like Bones, enough to give him a stupid nickname (nicknames aren't good. They make you grow closer to the person. They linger over the obituary. They make it harder to eat them.)

But he can be rude to Bones tonight. Tomorrow, he will be Bones' captain. Tomorrow, he'll eat at the high table, with the ship's prettiest woman by his side.

The pretty woman who he has kept in the belief that he would do anything to please her (he would. As much as he is aware of the fear of rejection Spock has dripfed into him, he cannot make it undone.)

Spock opens the door to his cabin in a long, flowing Vulcan robe that pools at his feet. His hair is still pinned up, but the braid is held together by a simple tie at the bottom and a emerald-studded comb at the top. His lips turn into an almost smile when he sees Kirk.

"So obedient," he says quietly. "And so punctual."

Without waiting for an answer, he pulls Kirk inside. The door swishes closed behind him. Spock's nails dig into the naked flesh of his forearm, and he is turned around before he can say anything.

Pike is sitting at the table, an almost empty bottle of wine next to him. When he sees Kirk, his face splits into a grin.

"Ah. I was wondering whether you would set your sights on him, Spock."

He takes a swig from his glass and stand up slowly, as if it would help against the wine making him dizzy. Kirk can smell the foul alcohol on his tongue when Pike sways closer to him and grips his jaw in one hand.

"I don't know whether you noticed, Kirk," Pike drawls. "But you're exactly his type."

"Really?" Kirk says, but he directs it at Spock, who is coming up right behind Pike. Drama queen.

Spock's eyes, however, are fixed on the V-shape of Kirk's sleeveless top. His lips are very red - it must be the wine.

"Really," he says.

His long nails teasingly scrape over Pike's neck and the man hums pleased. Kirk doesn't need instructions. Instead he leans over Pike's shoulder and presses his cheek to Spock's. His skin is cool.

"I am honoured, Mr. Spock."

With a sudden tug at his arm, Spock's Vulcan strength spins them around until Jim's back is pressed tight against Spock's front and Pike's groin against his leg. He gulps in air, but it sticks in his throat when Spock purrs in his ear and his long, spidery hand slides under his the upper layer of his tunic, right over his left pectoral muscle and his heart. His hand is cool, too, but there is something else he wedges between the layer of fabric and Kirk's skin. It's cold, heavy, and sharp. A scalpel.

Kirk can feel his heart hammering in his ears, and then he can only cling to the thought that he is here for a murder when Spock's teeth gently close around his earlobe.

Maybe his brain isn't fully alert, because the moan he hears sounds dangerously like himself. Pike chuckles.

"Oh Spock. He'll be delightful."

 Spock's mouth releases Kirk's ear and he, almost demurely, bows his head. His breath is hot on Kirk's neck.

"I like to serve my captain well."

His hand disappears from Kirk's chest - not without scraping a long fingernail over his nipple, Jim notices - and he licks his flushed lips.

"Do you want me here over the table, captain?"

Kirk bites his tongue so hard he can taste the iron in his mouth. It won't be the last time tonight that he tastes blood, he reminds himself. Pike entirely misinterprets his flinching and just chuckles.

"Not tonight, no," he says lazily. "Bed. I want to see you on your back later."

He turns to Kirk with a look Scotty gives his less satisfying tools. "And take off your phaser before. Can't have another one of Spock's dumb blondes try to kill me."

He laughs as if he was funny and gives Kirk an almost paternal pat on the back. It makes the scalpel slide further down in Kirk's tunic, the sharp edge kissing his skin with a superficial slice.

His phaser belt clunks to the floor with obedient abandon. So do Kirk's dagger and his boot knife. Spock apparently has taken off his weapons before, or maybe none fit under his pretentious Vulcan bathrobe anyway. Or maybe Pike trusts him. Like an idiot.

Spock, unphased, only nods and turns towards the bedroom door with a swish of his long robe. His braid lies over his shoulder, exposing the slightest sliver of his white neck. Pike follows him.

Spock's bedroom does not look like what Kirk expected. Instead of cold, sterile surfaces, it looks like someone had merged a museum and a Vonda sex dungeon. Lush, red draperies cover the walls and highlight the several (doubtless stolen) trophies from other planets that Spock proudly displays as signs of his conquests. Most of them are weapons, diamond-studded and glittering in the low light. An emerald-heavy necklace lies around the neck of a sculpture on the headboard.

Absentmindedly, Kirk files that somewhere in his brain. So his woman likes expensive things. Good. He'll deck her out in finery once this problem is out of the way.

The problem slumps down heavily on the bed and lazily unties his gold command tunic. Pike is obviously drunk and heavy, and it takes Kirk's every nerve not to scrunch his nose at it. He has a distinct disgust for the smell of alcohol on captains he dislikes. It's one thing if Garrovick makes an embarrassing display of himself on the deck of the Farragut , drunk and crying because his conscience suddenly catches up with him.

It is a different problem entirely if Spock leans over an obviously drunk Pike and traces one of her long nails over his cheek.

"Would you like to see him fuck me?" he purrs into Pike's ear, sharp teeth only inches away from his carotid artery. Kirk clasps his hands behind his back to keep them from trembling. He is being sized up by two pairs of eyes - one lazy and heavy-lidded, pupils hazy around the edges, and one yellow-brown, slitted pupils, clear as a crystal, fresh as pain.

Pike passes his hand over his mouth and swallows something that Kirk can only guess is some illegal potency pill, because how else would he-

"Yeah," Pike grunts affirmatively, then sloppily grabs at Spock's thigh and pulls it over his lap so that Spock straddles him. "But you stay right here. Want to see your face when he opens you up."

His fingers dug into Spock's thighs hard enough to leave a bruise.

"Sit behind him, Kirk. 'n don't worry. His green pussy is always desperate, isn't it?"

Only when Spock turns his head for Pike to bite at this throat and gives Kirk a downright demanding glare does he swallow the sickening feeling in his throat and moves over to the bed. God, it will not be hard to kill this man.

The fabric of Spock's robe is cool and sleek. It easily slides under his hands as they travel from Spock's shoulder blades, under his arms, to his chest and down to his waist. It's exactly as delicate as Kirk imagined. He feels a little high on the feeling. Spock's body is hard and cool and flowing under his hands, all sleek muscles and languid lines, and when Kirk squeezes his waist, he moans a rehearsed moan that shoots right to Kirk's core.

Pike bucks impatiently under Spock.

"Come on, Kirk, hurry the fuck up, I also want my turn on him."

Maybe it is through touch, maybe it is through the way that Kirk's movements halt and his eyes fix at Pike's squinting pig face with nothing short of murderous intent, but Spock keens loudly as if in excitement at the thought of being railed, and starts begging.

"Please," he mutters, arching back into Kirk as if he had hit a sweet spot with his fingers.

"Please what, slut?"

"Your fingers," Spock moans and crawls a few inches forward, "please, Captain-"

And Pike obeys, stretching one hand out to stick his grubby, fat fingers into Spock's mouth while the other grabs the back of Spock's braid. Spock makes a gagging noise and Pike grins his disgusting, dirty grin.

"He likes that," he whispers to Kirk over Spock's shoulder. "Vulcan whore. Can't get enough of fingers in his mouth. He won't kiss me, but he loves having his mouth full."

Spock moans and bucks, and Pike pulls at his braid, and Kirk's hands tighten on Spock's waist, and the scalpel bites into his skin where Spock is rutting his back against him.

And suddenly, Spock's voice explodes inside his brain.

Now.

It's not an order, not a request. It's a solid fact.

Spock's hands shoot up to grab Pike's wrists in a relentless grip, and in one fluid motion, he yanks Pike's arms upwards to pin them against the mattress and drops his entire body weight, knee forward, on Pike's chest. Moving in sync without knowing how, Kirk swings his leg over a squirming Pike and pulls the blood-stained scalpel from his tunic. When Pike catches the glint of metal in the low light, his angry, surprised eyes widen in the most delicious thing Kirk can imagine: genuine, primal fear.

His hand is in Pike's hair before he knows it, pining it in place while Pike thrashes and yelps and screams, but Spock doesn't yield.

Kirk can't help flicking the blade in front of Pike's eyes.

"You can stop screaming," he says. "Soundproof, remember?" And just because he can, he adds, "No one will hear you. No one is coming, Christopher."

Spock's eyes light up, and the he hisses when Pike's arms thrash against where he is holding them in place. Even against a Vulcan, Pike is still a strong man. Broad chest. Nice shoulders. Simple.

Kirk is a little in love with his scalpel.

"Now," Spock says, strained and taut and eager.

Kirk sets the scalpel on Pike's throat.

"Any last words?"

"I said now ."

"The Empire-"

Those are pathetic last words, Jim decides. Fitting. They're the last thing Pike says before Kirk leans on his scalpel and slices neatly into Pike's windpipe.

The knife enters the skin with a smooth, wet movement, and Kirk suppresses a groan. Fucking quality work. Beads of blood spurt forward as he slices through skin and cartilage. Pike spasms and gurgles like a drowning man, and his eyes roll back into his head and Spock replaces Jim's hand in Pike's hair and yanks him forward until his head lolls off the bed. Jim follows suit, and this time his knife plunges into Pike's throat with a messy second cut, from one artery to the other, until the only sign that Pike is still alive is his wildly darting eyes as his head falls far, far more backwards than a human head should. Spock lets go off his arms and they drop, limp, left and right to his body.

There is so much blood. It's everywhere. It's spurting down Pike's neck, over his ears, into his hair, over his cheeks, until dripping onto the floor in thick rivulets. The stench fills the air.

Kirk keeps his knee on Pike's chest until the spurting and spasming and eyerolling ceases and Pike goes limp as a ragdoll. Spock is kneeling beside the bed, the hems and sleeves of his robe soaking in the puddle of blood on his bedroom floor. His hands hold Pike's head, not with tenderness, Kirk realises as he sees Spock's face, but with something like scientific curiosity.

"Yes," Spock mutters, more to himself. His head tilts to the side as he overstretches Pike's neck to examine the messy, deep cut Kirk made in his throat. And then he lowers his head and presses his lips to the bleeding wound as if to savour the taste. When he comes back up, his lips, his chin, his teeth are soaked in red. He drops Pike's head like an abandoned toy.

"I can kiss you now, Chris."

When he raises his head, Kirk drops the knife onto the floor. It lands in the puddle as Kirk gives Pike's body a kick and it slides to the floor like a ragdoll. His hands and forearms are soaked.

There's a single moment of quiet where Spock rises from the bloodstained floor and meets Kirk's eyes with a before unknown certainty. Pike doesn't exist anymore. Pike is dead. The Enterprise is his.

Kirk only gets a second to realise the gravity of this before Spock lunges forward and barrels into him with the force of an asteroid, or fate.

It's not tender. It's messy and brutal and sharp and Kirk wouldn't want it any other way. Spock's hand squeezes his throat so that he cannot get away as he pries his mouth open and roughly bites at his lip, shoves his tongue into Kirk's mouth. The second Jim's back hits the mattress, his hands close around Spock's waist, pull at his braid, his feet kick up the cloth of Spock's robe. He can have him now, he remembers, and as if Spock had heard his thoughts, he grunts into Kirk's mouth and his kiss (can it be called a kiss, this hungry devouring?) gets even more intense. His long nails dig into the fabric of Kirk's tunic and rip it clean open, leaving blooming scratch marks on Jim's exposed chest. He wants more of those.

Spock resists when Jim tries to push himself up and flip them around, but when Jim hooks his ankle around Spock's leg, he can pull him off balance and tumble to the side. Spock snarls, but it's cut off with a groan when Jim brutally yanks at his braid. His teeth sink into Jim's shoulder. The wet pool between his legs grows even larger, and he is sure Spock has noticed, sure Spock can smell it, how desperate and wet and pathetic Jim is for him, because he suddenly has everything he ever wanted, a woman and a ship and a right hand man and bruises, and then Spock pins him down on the bed with one knee on his chest and shucks off his robe before grabbing at Jim's hair and yanking it backwards so Jim has to look up at him.

Of course he was wearing nothing under that robe. Jim could have guessed. It's cheesy. It's overdone. It's surprisingly blunt for a Vulcan. And it makes Jim a little feral.

Spock preens when Jim tries to wiggle free, as if there is an added joy in denying Jim the things he wants. He didn't know what he expected - it can't have been better than this.

Long, long legs, the sharp V of lean hip bones, strong arms, a surprisingly thick layer of coarse hair on a broad chest, and that long neck, with tear tracks of human blood still flowing down to the hollow of his throat. Spock lets him go and Jim licks it off his neck like a thirsty dog. When Spock groans and buries his head in Jim's hair, and they move again, there is no need for talk. Spock knows what Jim wants and what Jim wants, he does too, so his nails dig into Jim's shoulders until they draw blood and his other hand presses Jim's head to the headboard by the throat until he cannot budge.

The strap proves to be only a minor problem. Spock has it replicated on voice command while Jim fingers his sheath open and gets slapped whenever he tries to touch himself.

When Spock gets up to pick it up from the replicator, he picks up the scalpel from the puddle around Pike's head and licks the blood clean off, and before Jim knows it, he is out of the bed and pinning Spock to the wall right next to the replicator to shove his tongue down Spock's throat again.

Some glass breaks. He stumbles over Pike's hand when he staggers back to the bed, but it doesn't matter. Her hair has come loose from her braid, and once Jim has closed the last buckle around the strap, she lets him grab her waist with both hands, pick her up and fling them both onto the bed. He feels a little high. The taste of her sheath lingers on his tongue when she rolls them around, razor sharp nails pressed right over his carotid artery, and he could die here and tonight, he thinks, and it would be fine.

Tonight, he's captain of the Enterprise , tonight he's Spock's lover, tonight he has the prettiest woman ride him while her nails and teeth are inside his flesh and his blood on her tongue. There's no tomorrow in the empire, but there is now. There is the taste of Spock and the smell of Spock and the taste and smell and sound of both their sweating bodies, their wet cunts, mingling and filling his nose, his mouth, his brain. His hands are soaked (in blood? In Spock's fluids? Spock's spit? He doesn't remember). There's no air but Spock.

It's only after the first orgasm, when Spock's head tilts back and his thighs momentarily shake, that Jim remembers that the room is soundproofed, and Spock's eyes light up with understanding and in one motion, Jim has turned them around, hips moving on their own accord in deep, brutal thrusts, until Spock scratches up his back and screams with pleasure, fisting the sheets until they rip. Jim can't stop kissing her, her long neck, her strong shoulders, her knee over his shoulder.

Spock grunts mid-thrust and when Jim looks up, she is something entirely different - there's blood hanging in the coarse hair of the beard, dark chest hair rubbing against the bitemarks on Jim's pecs, sweat pooling between them, and the arms holding him are hard and muscular, and for a second, Jim is acutely aware of Spock as a man, his first officer, a gorgeous man that just moaned on Jim's cock. He's a man fucking another man, too.

It's a dangerous thought, that. He shouldn't give in to it. How much he desires this man, this gorgeous, genius man, who could kill him but instead lets him into his bed, into the captain's chair. Still, he struggles to see an ounce of submission in Spock. It's infuriating. It's exhilarating when Spock notices the shift in speed and grabs Jim's jaw to remind him to go harder, and Jim lets it happen. He's wanted Spock for so long that it doesn't matter what he is.

They lie on the floor on the other side of the bed, blankets and pillows and bottles and glass shards around them. Spock has slipped into something like trance with his head on Jim's shoulder. There's a red trace (Jim's blood or Pike's, he doesn't know) running from his mouth down to his chest. Jim follows it with his finger as he listens to the hum of the air conditioning. Spock's body is warm and hard and gorgeous, bent in curves like the outer hull of the ship that they're inside. Jim chuckles at the metaphor trickling over his face. He's inside her. She belongs to him. The chuckle rolls into the back of his mouth. He's captain. He's captain, and he's lying naked and spent and drunk on victory on the floor in Spock's quarters, with a man he killed only a few feet away from him. The only thing blocking his view from meeting Pike's dead, empty, surprised eyes is the bed he just got fucked on. It's hilarious.

It's fucking hilarious, actually. It was so fucking easy. He tries to imagine the faces of the admiral's when he'll open the call with Spock across his lap, nursing a Vulcan bite mark on the side of his neck and with Pike's limp body at his feet.

Sorry, Starfleet, Captain Pike fell for the oldest trick in the book. Got his throat slit in a threesome with his murderers. Sorry, Mrs Pike, your son is dead because he couldn't stop thinking with his tiny dick. There's a certain Roman decadence to it. Here lies Christopher Pike, killed because his whore got bored of him.

He can't stop laughing. His body floats and his brain feels light and stupid and high and he laughs until he cannot breathe.

The crew adapts surprisingly quickly. It's a relief that many of them seem actually to like the idea that Pike is not their captain anymore. There were no shouts of angers or signs of grief when Spock stalked out of his quarters in the next morning, dragging Pike's limp body by the leg through the corridors of the Enterprise . Jim had followed suit, in a shiny new command gold tunic, triumphant like Achilles dragging Hector's body. The lolling head left red streaks on the floor until the entire way to the bridge looked like a Bajoran children's hospital, or a red carpet.

And still, despite or because this demonstration, the general atmosphere on the Enterprise is one of apprehensive relief. He can feel it in the way especially his female crewmembers treat him, all apparently confident that he will not try to fuck any of them.

First he thinks it is because Spock hovers around him like a jealous queen bee, and he preens in that. Then he thinks it's because Spock has apparently released his little train of admirers and disoriented, unemployed sexy blondes stalk the halls in confusion.

Then he finds out that Spock cornered Marlena and told her that she has a choice between getting a prestigious research scholarship at the University of Who Cares under the condition that she doesn't ever touch Kirk again, or being sliced into neat little cubes on Spock's fancy tableware if she does. Shortly before leaving, Marlena apparently told all her friends. Spock denies having done such a thing, but if anything Kirk read about Vulcan mating behaviours is true, then Vulcan possessiveness is not something to be toyed with.

He does toy with it. Spock's jealousy is like a scab he can't stop picking at. Whenever he wants to be fucked hard, he only has to flirt with a yeoman in the mess hall right under Spock's gorgeous yellow eyes.

Spock presents him Starfleet on a silver platter. The admiral Jim calls to explain the shift in the Enterprise command chain seems to be, at best, fondly disinterested and promises to send Kirk over all the documentation he needs. Pike isn't missed.

He should still look into that paperwork. But instead, James T. Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise , closes the comms channel to some poor government leader pleading to keep at least some water wells public on their desert planet (absolutely not. Occupying all water distribution centres and charging villages for drinkable water is much too fucking profitable. After all, it is the Empire that was responsible for installing better filtration systems and pumps. Is a little bit of gratitude too much to ask?!).

The bridge is slow today. Lieutenant Uhura, chronically unbothered, is hacking data into her console, ignoring the stares Lieutenant Sulu gives her.

On the first day of his captaincy, Jim considered sending Sulu to the booth for the way he acted towards Uhura. Disrespect like this is unacceptable. He needs his bridge crew functioning, not constantly squabbling with each other. But after he was informed that the huge scar decorating Sulu's face was in fact a result of Uhura's dagger, he thinks it's fair to say that she can stand her own ground. Maybe it'll keep them occupied.

If not, there is still the booth. And since it is a slow day, and he has done a fair share of killing and conquering this week, he decides to just lean back.

They still haven't talked about what they are, and Jim has tried to ignore the questions. They share their meals and they share a bed. He's had Spock over the desk in his office and lying in his bed. The scratches from the night when they killed Pike are still healing on his back. Spock falls asleep in his arms almost every night (at least he assumes that it is sleep. He hasn't asked.) It's blissful. Almost domestic. He will not define it as anything else.

Kirk finds himself less scared of that than he should. The same goes for the occasional bouts where he hears Spock's voice in his head as clearly as if Spock was whispering into his ear. He should probably get worried about that, but he doesn't. It is comforting, in a way, not to mention incredibly practical.

He's showered Spock in jewels wherever they go. Spock has complained about Pike putting restrictions on the more ethically ambiguous parts of his scientific work and Kirk has given him free rein. Spock has told Jim not to chastise his crew members in public (whatever happens in conference room 4 is his affair), and Jim has obliged. He was rewarded with a purr and an almost demure "very good, Captain".

(He has told himself that he does all this because he wants to have power over Spock. Wants Spock to love him to have the same power over his first officer that Spock has long established over his lovers.) But the problem is, of course, that Spock is his first officer. You don't ask your captain's woman for advice on an attack strategy, and you don't eat your first officer's cunt until he sobs your name.

Besides, there is something fascinating about the way Spock soaks up every crumb Jim throws him. He doesn't exactly know why he expected Spock to be a bitchy princess (granted, Jim is into bitchy princesses. Marlena could be one whenever he pissed her off enough), but it sometimes shocks him how easy to please his Vulcan is. Maybe it is because Pike only let him have nice things if he got a reward out of it, and reserved himself the right to take Spock's shiny things away whenever he pleased.

Whatever it is, Spock seems famished for affection. At every touch of their hands, his brow relaxes into something like a Vulcan gasp. He's explained the Vulcan mind shenanigans to Kirk (probably not all of them), and now Kirk can feel the little thrum of affection in Spock's mind whenever Kirk calls him pretty, or smart, or gets him some new fancy gadget for the ever-growing science lab.

They met a Vulcan ambassador just last week who, as M'Benga later regaled to Kirk over dinner with Bones, was most offended about Spock's behaviour towards his captain. Submissive, he had called it. Unbefitting a Vulcan man. He apparently called Spock a word that the universal translator could only approximate as "trollop". Jim laughs first. Then he sends the code for peanut-infused Klingon curry to the replicator of the famously allergic Vulcan ambassador and gets M'Benga, the expert on Vulcans, piss drunk.

The same evening, Spock timidly rests his head in Jim's lap as Jim is browsing reports and stays entirely still as Jim starts petting his hair. Jim is not sure whether he was even breathing.

They don't talk about that.

Fact is, Spock has latched onto every friendly breath of Kirk's lungs like a drowning man for air, and Kirk is yet unsure what to do with it. It doesn't feel strange to be friendly to Spock. It pays its rewards, of course, but he doesn't find himself deliberately considering what and when that reward might come about. It is like Spock was starving for blood and Kirk fed it to him right from his own wrist.

Actually, that is a little hot. He stills thinks about Spock clawing at his back with those damn long nails while his entire chin and mouth were covered in Pike's blood and his mouth tasted of metal. Maybe he should get her something with rubies, Kirk thinks.

I would like that, Captain.

Kirk jerks so hard in his chair that the padd with the paperwork clatters to the ground. The voice at the back of his head rumbles, sending little ripples (for lack of a better word) through his brain.

My apologies, Captain. I should have anticipated that the connection between our minds takes some getting used to. I assure you, it surprised me as much as it did you.

A yeoman has sprinted to pick up the padd from the ground and give it back to Kirk. He just nods. That particular yeoman hasn't pissed him off yet, so he rather likes the guy. He's rather pretty, too, with his ashy blonde hair and a strong chin. Jim has no doubts he would be warming Spock's bed if he wasn't there.

He has.

Correction: Kirk fucking despises that yeoman and will see to it that he is fired, or better yet, marooned on the next ice planet.

Another rumble of Vulcan amusement flutters at the back of his head.

Not to worry, k'diwa. I found his performance less than adequate. He was dismissed after a failed attempt to satisfy me, and I doubt that his stamina or less than considerable equipment have improved since then.

Uhura gives him an irritated look as he snorts a laugh. Spock's little ripple seems inordinately pleased. It reminds Jim a little of a cat that is getting scritches.

You are amused.

I guess? You're somewhere on this ship working on the next Biblical plagues and you go out of your way to use the precious Vulcan mind magic to tell me that some human's dick just wasn't enough for you?

The engineering of more resilient kinds of grain hardly counts as one of the Biblical plagues, Captain. They will be very beneficial for the new colonies.

Beneficial as long as you want them to be, if I remember correctly, Kirk thinks. You know, maybe I should have kept Marlena on the station. Would have been lovely to see both my pretty women work on crops that fail the second the empire releases some non-traceable gas in the atmosphere.

The resulting flash of jealousy is so hot and so brief that Kirk actually winces. Then Spock's voice is back.

Doctor Moreau's expertise is not needed here, Captain. Besides, I find that it is too soon to share my findings with anyone. If, and only if, we succeed, we'll have an entirely new method of controlling the new colonies. With a famine-

I know very well how famines work, Mr. Spock.

He has to ask M'Benga about how shielding works. Right at this moment, he doesn't want Sock to slither his long, pale fingers into his memories.

God, he thinks for a second. Is this why he liked the taste of human blood on Spock's tongue so much?

Spock hesitates. Jim can see him in his mind's eye, leaning over the lab table, his expression frozen in sudden contemplation, fingers still holding a bloody scalpel.

* apologise, Captain, he hears then, and it actually sounds regretful. And then: Allow me to make this transgression up to you. See me in my quarters after the shift.

Well, that's an offer no man could turn down, Kirk thinks and leans back into his chair. The little Spock rumble at the back of his head sounds soothing and pleased. Maybe he is being a little ridiculous. Why should he be offended? He doesn't have to worry. He has Spock. He is captain of the Enterprise .

He doesn't starve. His plate is full, his cup is filled with the richest wine.

It's hard to focus until the end of the shift, but he manages. He eats with Bones, whose philosophy, especially in combination with Spock, proves to be very interesting. Bones takes his hippocratic oath very seriously. According to him, he has done no harm if he lets a man he hates bleed to death. For a second, Kirk almost regrets that Spock is probably already waiting in his quarters for him - he would probably argue with Bones in that nitpicky, bitchy Vulcan way of his that drives Bones up the fucking wall while Kirk gets to sit back and watch how gorgeous his woman is when she gets angry. Of course, Spock would deny that he is capable of the emotion (untrue. Kirk has seen what cold Vulcan rage did to Pike.)

But he eats well, knowing that he will need his stamina to satisfy his Vulcan girl (she is insatiable. Kirk loves it.) and says good night to Bones before heading down to his and Spock's quarters. The doors swish open before Kirk can even ring the door bell.

"Can you sense when I'm in front of your door?" he asks the second he has entered and the doors have swished closed. The room is dark, lights at the five percent that Spock likes to relax his cat eyes. His night vision is impeccable and it makes the hairs at the back of Jim's neck stand up. All he can see are the clean, neat, metal-lined edges of the furniture reflecting the low light. Then he hears a low rumble.

"In a sense. I could feel your excitement reaching a peak of sorts. And you were wondering whether that green hacker friend of yours could override my door code."

Jim kicks his boots off somewhere into the darkness. "Don't you dare talking badly about Gaila. That girl is a treasure. It's a shame she never agreed to be my woman."

Another rumble comes from the general direction of the bedroom. Then Jim sees two silver flashing reflective eyes lighting up from somewhere in the darkness. Spock's wide opened eyes are looking right at him.

"And what would you do then?" he asks, with that melting around the sharp edges of his voice that reminds Kirk of open, bleeding cuts. "Storm in here whenever you please, like I am some toy for your pleasure? Do you think you would survive that?"

A prickle runs down Jim's spine. Unfortunately, it drips down between his legs.

"Only if you're into that, sweetheart."

He can hear - no, feel - Spock scoffing. Then he hears "Computer, lights to fifty percent", and the ceiling lights go on.

Spock is sitting on a plush rug of sorts in front of his bed, long legs neatly folded underneath himself, wearing the same long, flowing black robe he wore when they killed Pike on that very same bedroom floor. It was apparently a pain in the ass to wash the blood out of the sleeves. Jim still sometimes thinks that he can smell it. His hair is not braided, only hangs in a loose strand down his back, fixed in place at the top by a gold comb (Kirk gave him that), and a simple ribbon at the bottom. He's handsome as ever. His brows furrow a little when he hears Jim think that.

"Uneventful day on the bridge," he says, with just the tiniest lilt betraying that it is intended as a question, and it's so domestic that Jim wants to grab him and toss him out of the airlock. Yes, honey, my day at work was great, what's for dinner . Fuck that.

Instead, he shucks off his belt and comes trotting over to where Spock is sitting primly on the floor.

"How do you know?"

"You spent the entire time thinking of other things. Your great, glorious deeds. All the planets you could rule over with my help. How you'd reward me for it. I think there was one daydream in particular of gifting me a set of rubies?"

Kirk almost laughs. It's true - their ship has been slow for the last couple of days, as if someone in command wants to punish him for his gory, beautiful assassination of Captain Pike. It makes him a little antsy.

Right, maybe a little more than antsy. If he thinks too much about it, he might get fucking furious.

He's James T. Kirk, for God's sake. Captain of the finest ship in the fleet. Bound up in some entirely meaningless part of the galaxy, managing bureaucratic pleas. If Spock wouldn't ride him to exhaustion every single night, Kirk is pretty sure he would have strangled a crew man in the rec room by now, just to have something happen.

"You'll get your fucking rubies," he grumbles and flops down on the sofa-coush-ottoman-thing with some unpronounceable Vulcan name.

Spock still hasn't moved. Apparently, his meditation things isn't over yet and can't be shortened to attend to the needs of a very frustrated captain. Or maybe he likes making Jim wait. They've done that before, too. Kirk surpirses himself with how little it bothers him.

"And I was bored," he mutters instead, pulls out his dagger and starts cleaning his nails. "Bridge duty is a hell of a lot more interesting when I can look at your pretty ass bending over that console whenever I turn my head."

"Is it now? Pike had the same view for years and never mentioned."

"Well? Then he's a fucking fool. You-" Jim feels the words getting stuck in his throat. Of course, Spock immediately notices and turns halfway around to look at Jim. His braid shimmers in the low light.

"You." The words get stuck in his throat. He looks at his hands again. "Hchrm. You cut a fine figure in that uniform, Mr. Spock."

Spock slowly raises his head, one eyebrow up, until their eyes meet. Jim can feel his heart beating in his ears.

"Thank you, Captain," Spock says then. It's all he says before he stands up, robe swishing around him like oil, and floats over to the desk where he has set down his padd.

"I assume you are still wondering why I asked you to come to me, don't you?" he asks innocently while tapping around on the padd. Jim grins. Fine, they can play that game too, if she wants that.

"I thought you wanted to sweeten my evening a little bit," he answers and props himself up on his elbows. "What do you have in mind, princess?"

The nickname doesn't do much except for making the tips of Spock's ears turn a shade darker. He returns to tapping on the padd and sipping some sweet-smelling tea from the sideboard, no matter how hard Jim tries to project all the very many things he has in mind for them. Earth to Vulcan, your captain wants to get fingered.

"Have you never wondered why I didn't let you slit Pike's throat the second you stepped aboard this ship?" Spock asks then. Jim almost rolls off the ottoman. What a way to kill the mood.

"No? Yes? Does that matter right now?"

Spock gives him a teeth-flashing almost-smile. "It very much does. Come over here. I assume you haven't read our paperwork yet."

"I admit, I have been very bad-"

"James."

The tone is unmistakable. Usually, Jim finds it hot. Right now, it sounds like he is being chastised like a school boy.

With a frustrated grunt, he slides off the ottoman and comes over to the table. Spock is sitting on the table top, so when Jim sits down in front of him, he is eye level with the fold in Spock's tunic that he knows is the only barrier between him and a sweet, green, Vulcan cun-

Spock grabs his air and yanks his head upwards.

"Listen," he hisses, without malice. "Trust me, Captain, if I could have told you to rip Pike to shreds the minute your feet touched the landing padd, I would have, and you would have, I know that. But you had to wait. We had to wait. It was infuriating to you. And believe me, it was just as irritating to me. But I could not let you off your leash yet. Do you wish to know why?"

Jim bucks his head, sharp, and Spock's long siper fingers let him go. He presses the padd into Jim's hands. It is indeed paper work. The one he has been avoiding all day. But now that Spock is holding it under his nose, looking like there's  electricity thrumming through him, Jim can finally parse the letters of the title without feeling like he is going to die of boredom.

//MISSION ASSIGNMENT ONE-BETA-32//

Hold on.

"Spock?"

The same man glides from the surface of the table top as Jim reads. His hands land on Jim's shoulders, but he barely notices them as his eyes fly over the text in front of him. Beta 32. He knows that assignment.

"Mere days before you came aboard the ship," Spock says quietly, "we were alerted that the Enterprise had been chosen for a first contact mission with the Beta quadrant. We were not certain who would still support the mission, with Komack being murdered and the political turmoil following in its wake. In the meantime, we had to present as our best. No infighting. No failed missions. No assassinations. Pike had the reputation of a steady, reliable captain. A fool, yes, but a fool who always does the same things on any planet. They wouldn't have given the same trust to some bloodlusty, ambitious, young new captain. The mission was approved with him in mind, but it was approved. No one can take it away from the Enterprise anymore. The minute I got the news, I knew it was time. The galaxy has been soiled enough by Christopher Pike."

Jim still hasn't glanced away from the paper. A whole quadrant. A fucking quadrant. Over 300 hundred systems. Each with several inhabitable planets. Untouched, virginal.

"So you invited Pike to a tasteful dinner and threesome to celebrate his success and stabbed him," he says, kind of breathlessly. Without looking up, he can feel that Spock preens.

"Precisely. I must admit, I pushed the Council a little bit. Our qualifications were good. They just needed to be convinced a little harder."

Jim sets the padd down on the table. He feels a little dizzy. A whole quadrant. Start of the mission in one week. All he needs is sign. Spock just gave him the world on a silver platter.

He turns around to face Spock. His head is a sharp, glowing shape in front of the ceiling light. "You made me wait so we could have a quadrant for ourselves," he mutters and Spock's shoulders soften.

"I did it for my Captain," he says simply. His robe slips off his shoulder. "You're hungry, James. It's inside your bones. You hunger, you starve, and you won't have your fill until you've devoured the world. Think of it, k'diwa."

The robe falls deeper and pools at his elbow, and something irresistible, like a magnet, pulls deep in Jim's chest.

"A new quadrant for me to explore. A world for you to conquer."

Spock pulls the comb out of his hair and it comes undone over his shoulders in swirls of pitch-black.

"Come to bed, Captain."

A year later, James T. Kirk is lounging in luxurious silk sheets while his Vulcan lady feeds him grapes. The Enterprise is quietly in orbit - he has a young yeoman who adores him hold Sulu at gunpoint while he and Spock enjoy some hard earned days of rest and relaxation. It isn't easy, leading an empire.

The planet, Ursa, they are on is the twelfth of a series they have conquered. The first one was a triumph, followed by flowing wine and very athletic, never ending, bonescraping sex. By the twelfth, the taste of victory is a little stale. 

But Spock's strategies are frighteningly effectful - but whenever Kirk attempts to compliment him on it, Spock only demurely bows his head and purrs like a satisfied cat. On this planet, she finally got her rubies.

Well, Jim isn't sure they're rubies. They're shiny, blood-red gemstones that he ripped from the neck of the local high priestess as her limp body sunk to his feet, and they look gorgeous on his woman. Spock likes running his hands over the small, tear-drop-shaped stones. Kirk likes seeing Spock wear the jewels he gives her. Currently, Spock is wearing little else.

The atmosphere of the planet is warm enough to warrant it. It is hot, and humid, and they have done little but lay low and lounge in the sinfully luxurious room they got for a while. Jim is pretty sure this used to be some administrative, official building of some kind. The Ursians had been really annoying over giving up their "democracy", but in the end, Spock prevailed. It takes little to topple a democracy - only a few unsatisfied people and a glorious, shiny promise that everything will be better if they shut up, don't think, and do what the captain tells them. Whether or not this was the office of the Ursian chancellor or not, Jim doesn't care. It has a pretty view.

He has had a bed and a replicator installed, and three guards rotating outside the door (all of them madly infatuated with the idea that Kirk will make them the new security officer if they're good). His ship is in synchronous orbit with the capitol city - if he squints, he can see the tiny white spot that is his ship floating in the sky. A giant fern sways lazily across the high windows. Spock's fingers dance over the hem of his pants.

"How long do you think the Ursians will believe us?" he asks, just out of curiosity. "I mean, they're not stupid. They were like, this close from developing warp. I don't think they're buying the whole 'we're so much more advanced than you and can lead you to a wonderful future' story."

Spock sighs and her body flows in a neat curve to come to rest next to Jim. Her hair is cool. "I assume it would take them several years to form an actually threatening resistance, and even then it would be hard to catch up on the technical advantage we have. Plus, it would require that they actually see a stark decline in their quality of life. And there isn't, is there? We brought them new languages. Replicators." Spock rumbles and his leg snakes across Jim's waist. "Resilient grain."

Jim chuckles and pops a grape into his mouth.

"Besides," Spock adds, "it would take someone to organise that resistance. And, well, resistance leaders live dangerously. And right now, the people adore you."

"Good." Jim grins and presses a quiet, non-consequential kiss to the top of Spock's head. "I want them to adore you, too."

My Princess doesn't have to ask for anything, he projects. He's gotten better at that. He's not gotten better at saying these things aloud. Spock rumbles in appreciation. You get whatever you please. My diamond. My dagger.

The rumble turns into something like a Vulcan chuckle, quickly caught off with a gasp as Jim tugs on his hair. The ruby necklace jingles.

"And I wouldn't say no to staying here a little longer," Jim adds. "I don't want to show my head in the alpha quadrant for a little while."

"Is my captain afraid of a challenge?"

Jim grunts. He's not afraid. He just has no appetite for getting caught up in the messy, petty, backstabbing power struggle going on on Terra. Since Komack died, no emperor has lived for more than three months (and that was already a stretch). Fractions split apart. Brothers turn on each other. Last week, someone blew up the car of the current Proconsul, and three fractions claimed they did it. It's messy, and exhausting, and the parties are dreadful.

But out here, no one questions his authority. He is king. He is adored.

He fondly thinks of the huge poster of him in front of the new Imperial Palace on Ursa. His face, printed on cloth, almost thirty feet high, for everyone to see. He knows the Ursians are still a bit frightened by the hair on his head, his round ears, the absence of a bird-like beak. He doesn't give a shit. He actually finds it amusing. Spock likes stalking among scared Ursian officials like a cat through a bird cage. They’ll be put to work. Soon. Not now.

Because right now, Spock's sandpaper tongue scrapes over Jim's neck, teeth only inches away from the very same spot where they ripped Pike's throat open.

" Emperor ," he purrs. "I could see myself loving an emperor."

The jewels around his neck, his arms, his wrists and legs jingle. He's as gorgeous as ever, and just as deadly. Jim wishes there was more blood on him, but that would ruin the sheets. He has seen Spock dislocate arms and rip out windpipes with his teeth. Every time, it made him a little wet. 

He empties his cup of wine and tosses it over the side of the bed, to the heap of gnawed off bones, and fruit scraps, and jewels Spock didn't approve off. Later, some Ursian maid will shuffle in to clean the pile up. It has started reeking a little.

But now, right now, his sun is shining on his planet, in his palace, and Jim is already plotting how to devour the frightened, pink neighbour planet hanging in his sky, and Spock's hands snake into the hem of his pants and pull them off. 

Jim stops him with his hand when he feels the strands of Spock's hair reverently brushing over his inner thighs. Spock freezes. Jim finishes chewing the grape in his mouth and spits out the stones, only to look down and see Spock panting, pupils blown wide and begging and starving to serve him. It still makes him feel as high as it did the first time. Her hair falls over her shoulders and he kneels in front of Jim like in prayer.

"You may."

Spock obeys with the reckless abandon of a man in love. Deadly. Very much not blond. And Jim's.

Jim is endlessly pleased. Of all his conquests, this is by far the most gratifying. 

With the hand not holding Spock where he belongs, he fishes the holo remote out from under a cum-stained silk pillow. As he switches on the TV to see the empire burn in the background, Spock's delicious teeth scrape over his cunt.

James Tiberius Kirk is a man who knows what it is to be a god.