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The black and gold marble walls of the meeting room aim to give it an elevated appearance, but Kirk finds it only gaudy. The thick, antique draperies hanging from the walls meant to hide the ugly steel shutters, only remind of their existence. This auditorium is a façade the same way the people in front of him aren’t important either. They are still in San Francisco, still inside the armada's headquarters, and not even in the basement. If allowed, a peak through the shutters would likely reveal a beautiful golden sun setting over a thrumming city, but these people prefer to put on a show instead.
That is the problem with the Terran Empire, that is why it is weakening. In most instances it functions on mere superficial acts rather than true power.
Exceptions are rare, but they do exist. Vice-Admiral Pike for one, standing there at attention next to Jim is the real deal, but the three men opposite of them seated on the other side of a hardwood table, they are mere puppets.
Admirals Barnett, MacLennan and Bell are all tall and broad-shouldered military men. MacLennan, the newest to this revered position, is still lean and fit, but the other two sit fat in their chairs, rather serving the Empire during dinner parties than actual combat.
“The Landru experiment was an ongoing project of the Federation –”
“Sir, there was no record of it in the datab– ”
Jim is shot immediately for his insubordination by one of the guards standing on the side, and his jaw locks up as electricity tightens his muscles.
“Talk when asked, Captain Kirk,” MacLennan warns him then motions for his associate to continue.
“There was none because some thought that an experiment for a mind controlling machine might be too tempting even for some in our own ranks,” Bell explains with a quick glance at Pike.
Kirk wants to laugh. If handed a gun, Pike would shoot Bell this moment without hesitation and get out of it with a promotion instead of his head in his hand. Bell’s a coward, and the other two admirals are aware of that and would not pity his passing, peaceful or violent, even for a moment.
“Your orders were to go straight to Gamma VII, which you ignored, Captain Kirk, and instead you destroyed a promising project for what? To subdue a colony that was already under our influence?”
“Is that a question I’m allowed to answer? Sir.”
Pike’s booted foot moves just an inch, but Jim picks up on the warning immediately.
“That came out wrong, Admiral Bell, I apologize.” He corrects himself quickly. “What I meant to say was, may I explain my actions, sir?”
They don’t shoot at him this time, but the haughty expression on Bell’s face is much worse and Jim would rather take an hour in a torture booth than endure this farce any longer.
But then behind Jim and Pike, a new voice speaks.
“There won’t be need for that, Captain. We all read your report.”
Kirk turns his head towards the voice, eyes catching Pike’s for a brief moment as it dawns on him that now he’s in truly deep shit.
As the fourth admiral walks up to the table ahead, he passes between them, and Kirk and Pike step amenably aside to give him ample space. No one wants to be in the way of Fleet Admiral Alexander Marcus – the consequences of that are rather dire indeed.
Marcus doesn’t even glance at them. Hands locked behind his back, he moves slowly, aware that in this room, in this city, he’s safe. He’s the Terran Empire on this side of the continent, and Bell and his cronies all but bow before him.
Heart beating a little faster now, Kirk clenches his jaw and lowers his gaze to the ground.
“You didn’t realize the Landru project was ours – that’s your excuse, isn’t it, Captain? Well, you weren’t supposed to know, but that makes no difference. What you were supposed to do was to follow your orders – which, I hope were clearly given to you by Vice-Admiral Pike. Were they not?”
“Yes, sir, they were.”
“Do you often question the legitimacy of the orders Vice-Admiral Pike is giving you?”
Kirk feels the shift in the air, feels Pike right next to him invisibly tense up even if he does not make a single motion. He just stares blindly ahead, eyes fixed on a golden swirl in the black marble.
“Never, sir,” Kirk’s quick to say.
“And yet now you abandoned your orders to do a little exploration, haven’t you, Captain Kirk?”
“I did no such thing, Admiral. My orders were to go to Gamma VII, but regulations also state that outside of emergency if any abnormal signals are spotted that might endanger the Terran Empire they are to be examined. My orders to go to Gamma VII were clear, I merely chose to delay them, not abandon them entirely.”
“And yet the fact remains – I have a ruined experiment, and you and your ship here instead of on Gamma VII, where you’re supposed to be. Do not misunderstand me, Captain. I appreciate your zealous protection of our great Empire. But if my officers get an order, I expect them to follow it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring him forward.”
There’s a hand on Kirk’s shoulder and he’s jostled forward, but Marcus stops the guard. “Not the captain. Pike.”
Kirk’s stomach drops as he looks to his right, where two guards grab the Vice-Admiral by his upper arm and haul him forward.
“Kirk was your project and I’ve given you leniency with it for long enough. Regulate him, unless you wish to prove my point and show the Empire yourself that your promotion was hasty.”
Jaw squared, Pike nods. “Yes, sir,” is all he says, eyes still strictly ahead instead of on Marcus.
“Good. Now get on your knees, Pike.”
There’s a moment of hesitation, then the Vice-Admiral moves, hitches up his pantlegs and squats down, then puts his knees to the ground, all without a word, or even with a single muscle moving on his face.
Kirk swallows hard. Every fiber of his being wants to intervene. He should be the one on his knees, he should be the one receiving any kind of punishment, not Pike. The Admiral had nothing to do with the decision to take the Enterprise to Beta III.
This will not end well for Kirk either. He needs Pike, he has a chance to establish himself out there in the galaxy only for as long as Pike has his back here. He can neither lose Pike’s influence, nor his men and his support.
Marcus holds a hand out and a guard passes him a rolled-up whip. Pike’s nails dig into his thighs for a moment, but then he manages to control his anger and his hand relaxes.
Motionless, Kirk watches as another guard grabs his dagger and slices Pike’s uniform right along his spine.
On instinct, the captain steps forward, but there’s no stopping this. The small warning jerk of Pike’s head, as if he heard the motion, acts like an order and Kirk freezes on the spot.
The whip unfurls, its heavy coils snake towards Pike on the ground as if already hungry for his flesh.
“Maybe if you admit your mistake, I will spare you a few lashes, Pike,” the Admiral notes with scathing kindness in his voice but Pike stays resolutely silent.
There’s no warning. Marcus strikes down and the crack of the whip is so sudden and so goddamn loud, everyone jolts in surprise.
“I – Will –” Marcus snarls, every word punctuated with a hit, rage now finally let loose and twisting the meaning of the syllable almost to nonrecognition.
A second lash licks across Pike’s bare back and a red line forms in its wake, glowing brightly as if laser marred the suntanned skin not leather.
“Have –”
As the third strike is dealt out, the tip of the lash licks across Pike's freckled shoulder, missing his nape and throat only by an inch. Wrath sizzles down Jim's spine, jagged and serrated like a broken blade of a knife.
“No –”
CRACK!
Admiral Bell winces, looks away from the punishment. He’d deserve to be executed for this weakness but no one pays him attention besides Kirk, who snarls at the sight of the frail man.
“Admiral –” Marcus snarls savagely as he strikes yet again with brutal force harsh enough to draw blood this time.
That’s as long as Kirk can take this, and he jumps forward, words flowing from his mouth, words he’s not even aware of, apologies and explanations and promises of obedience. He’d say anything to stop this, to spare Pike the humiliation, the pain, because Pike is his only ally and the moment this ends, the moment the Vice-Admiral will stand up with his mutilated back, the fragile partnership they have managed to build since Pike got him to join will forever be ruined.
“In –”
CRACK! The lashes keep coming, and Kirk nearly manages to grab Marcus’ arm and tear that damn whip from his hand, but a bodyguard arrives in time to stop him.
Jim’s hit; a fisted hand smacks into his jaw, his stomach and he balls up only for a knee to come up and meet his nose. He doesn’t care. Punches back blindly, fist coming into contact with hard temple or soft esophagus.
“My –”
CRACK!
There’s no stopping Marcus though, he’s too determined to teach Pike a lesson, so instead of him, Jim jumps to Pike, trying to stand between the whip and its target.
He reaches towards the Vice-Admiral and in the commotion, he almost even grabs a shoulder and shoves him away, but Marcus kicks him ruthlessly to the ground before he swings again, and the whip is sailing through the air already just to strike even harder than ever before as if to punish Pike further for Jim’s current behavior.
Booted feet kick his thigh, his waist, his back and the pain makes him want to draw in on himself, shut his eyes and hide in a dark corner of his mind like he did so many times before back in Iowa, but he catches sight of Pike still just staring resolutely ahead at the ground even as the leather kisses across his back again and again.
“Ranks –”
CRACK!
Jim’s splattered with blood, with Pike’s blood, and winces empathically, but the man just kneels there and takes it without a motion, hands fisted on his thigh, brows a tight knot, jaw clenched, not a word, not a painful gasp, no sign of defeat. He’s a statue of power, of endurance and Jim knows there lies the future of the Empire not in people like Bell and Marcus, not in the lazy and the brute, but in the resolute who can prevail in the harshest environments.
“Who –”
CRACK!
Eyes on Pike’s motionless face, Kirk steels himself and bears the rain of boots, the thunderous kicks with silence.
“Cannot –”
CRACK!
“Control –”
CRACK!
They are both bleeding now; no one is stopping the guards from beating the living shit out of Kirk, and why would they? He brought this on himself after all. The sweet, coppery taste of blood on his tongue, his or Pike’s or a mix of both, acts not as a reminder of his mistake for seeking out the ISS Archon, which was a grave mistake indeed, but only as an oath to do anything to become the biggest pain in Admiral Marcus’s ass from now on without dying – and for that he’ll need Pike, as well.
“His –”
CRACK!
“Own –”
CRACK!
“Goddamn –”
CRACK!
“Men!”
By the time he’s done, Marcus looks like a manic, hair tousled in the effort of his brutal swings, eyes red with rage and wide open in an almost pious zeal as if he believed that this was more than brutal punishment, that it was a teaching in morality, in duty, as if his fervor came from a higher power, not his own sadistic ecstasy in causing misery to those who defy him.
The room swims with Kirk. As much as he’d like to put on a brave face, get up and pretend this was nothing, he knows by the lack of pain and the abundance of oscillating yellow light that things are more dire than he’d like.
He doesn’t know if Pike has collapsed or if he’s still on his knees. He could be up already, although if he’s clever enough he won’t get up as long as Marcus is in the room, otherwise he might enrage the other admiral enough to end up with a dagger in his heart.
“You’re both dismissed,” Marcus barks, then leaves. The sound of his boots hitting the marble echoes loud enough that they feel like a punch each.
Jim groans, when a foot nudges against his head. He turns his face upwards, but his eyes are too swollen to be opened. The boot climbs under his chin and the man above him steps on his throat.
He has several broken ribs, so breathing isn’t easy to begin with, but now, it’s not even an option.
Something wet lands on his face.
It could be blood, or he could have been spat on. He can’t tell. He’s choking on his empty lungs, his heart is hammering right against the sole of that boot, while his pulse thunders in his eardrums like on an instrument.
“You’ve done it now…” hisses the man above him, but he currently can’t see, and the voice is dulled by the raging cacophony of sounds and pain in his system, so he’s still unsure who it belongs to.
It could be Bell, a petty last minute revenge for his earlier disobedience, but Kirk suspects him to be someone too weak after fifteen brutal lashes to kill him on the spot – which might just be the only reason he ends up surviving this meeting.
✰ 🗡 ✰
The moment Jim gets out of the hospital, he forms a plan and hurries to Pike to fix this, if it's still salvable.
The man has long been healed. He sits behind his desk, black uniform pristine, gold trimming glinting in the bright sunlight along with the large sword he keeps mounted onto the wall. The handle, bedazzled with exquisite jewels, also bears its owner’s name. The Romulan Nero is long dead – that’s what got Pike this chair and Kirk the Enterprise.
Pike’s office is not located in the heart of the city, but closer to the bay, near the Academy. Despite the distance, the memory of that black marbled room is right there with them.
Standing at attention, hands held behind his back, Kirk waits for Pike to finish his work and finally look at him. He’s been waiting for ten minutes, but he will stay here all day if need be. He’s being tested, even the blind can see it, and for him to succeed today, he must show patience and obedience, he’s fully accepted that already – wouldn’t be here otherwise.
Five more minutes pass and at last, Pike places his PADD down onto the desk then his gaze settles on Kirk.
“Yes, Captain?”
“I have a proposal, Admiral Pike.”
“And how many lashes will this cost me, I wonder…” he grunts, voice dry as a Vulcan desert, but he leans against the back of his chair. Always cautious, his hand shifts over a panel, disabling any and all recordings in the room.
“They are trying to set us against each other, sir. It’s textbook. Why would I stop if you’re the one who gets punished for my mistakes, and why would you ever have my back if your reward for it is only pain. Resentment slowly builds, and we’re at each other’s throat in a few weeks. I take you out and Marcus has a good night, or you take me out and… you have a few good nights – but then you’re down a solid captain who gets you the results you and the Empire needs.”
“Less of a problem than you think, if the results you’re bringing me are like the Archon project.”
“Sir, do you believe the Terran Empire so weak that it could only rule over sheep? Brainwashed people, sir, is that who we want to become? The epitome of laziness where we don’t even need to fight for what we want, we just switch on a button and millions of people crawl under our feet, mindless and feeble like worms in the ground? Is that your vision for our future as a species, Admiral? Pathetic weaklings indoctrinated to serve not to think, conditioned for existence but not for progress?”
Pike remains silent for a long moment which gives Jim just enough hope – not that his plan will work, but that at least the man will hear him out.
“How I see the future of the Empire is irrelevant, if I’m not alive to live in it, Captain Kirk.”
“If they pit us against each other, it means only one thing. Marcus believes that as long as we’re together, we’re a threat to him,” Jim states with conviction.
“Now, I like what we have here, Admiral Pike,” he continues when Pike offers no comment. “We make a good team, you and I, sir. And if we play our cards right, we can easily get to a place where men like Alexander Marcus have no power over us.”
“Even the little you’re saying is enough to report you for treason, Captain Kirk, let alone all the things you’re leaving unsaid.”
“Report me and spare yourself the future lashes then, Admiral, because I promise there will be more. Or… you could consider my proposal.”
Kirk steps forward and places the bunched-up whip on the table.
“Every hit you receive, I also get.”
Pike’s lip twists into a smile. “That’s your proposal? Lashes? Kirk, you’ve not even been a captain for a year and you’re losing your edge already. I have you whipped if I want to any day. Daily, if I so wish.”
“You could but that would be simple revenge, and exactly what Marcus wants: for this”, he motions between them, “to fester. But to be honest, Admiral, you don’t seem like the brainless avenging type to me, which is why I’m still alive,” Kirk notes with a touch to his throat to which Pike merely reacts with a knowingly cocked eyebrow and a smirk. “That day you, as well, understood what Marcus is after and left me to live, because you know, you’re better off with me as your ally and I’m certainly not dumb enough to want you as my enemy.”
Pike quietly considers him. “So what is your proposal, Captain Kirk?”
“Trust,” he simply answers as he nudges the whip closer to Pike. “Which starts with this.”
Pike stands slowly then walks around the desk. Kirk stands there, waiting, skin prickling with anxiety that he hides with controlled breaths and sheer iron will.
The Admiral stops next to him and takes the whip from the desk.
“You must think yourself very brave and cunning, but this proposal could very well be the last mistake of your life,” he says softly and an entirely different kind of shiver dances across Jim’s nape, one that has nothing to do with pain or fear.
“That’s not what I’m thinking, sir.”
“Then what’s in that pretty head right now, Kirk?”
Jim doesn’t look at Pike, but his mouth still pulls up into a smirk. “My face isn’t the only pretty thing about me. I’m just hoping you’ll at least put me to good use before you kill me… Sir.”
Pike scoffs then Jim hears the heavy coils of the whip unfurl and smack against the white tiled floor.
“Strip,” the Admiral commands, then in a voice that’s almost gentle he adds, “Let’s not spread news of this alliance with your mauled skin before it reaches its full potential.”
A heady rush of excitement sizzles through Kirk. Despite what winning entails, he’s suddenly thrumming with a restless buzz.
He gets out of his golden uniform along with the black undershirt and tosses it down on the desk, then remembering the splashes of blood, he pushes them off to the floor, where they can remain clean until Jim gets out of the office and up onto the medbay of his ship.
“How many lashes?”
“As you see fit, Admiral.”
“Hands on the desk at all times. Raise them, fall over, and we start from the beginning.”
Kirk swallows hard. What’s actually about to happen finally dawns on him. He couldn’t keep standing when he was punched and now, he is to withstand at least fifteen strikes, likely more because as much as Pike’s not a man for revenge, Jim’s been a pain in his ass long enough to deserve the extra attention.
He steadies himself against the table, head raised, eyes on the sword that once belonged to the Romulan. They’d defeated him together, and Nero now is no more than a memory, a footnote in history. Marcus, too, will soon be nothing but a trophy hanging on a wall, a relic illustrating the incorrect path to the Empire’s glorious future.
Kirk is vividly aware of the man behind him, his footsteps, the coil of the whip slithering on the ground as Pike raises his hand, readying to strike.
Jim doesn’t need a warning, still he gets one as the thick leather sails the air with a heavy whoop before the thinner end connects with his body.
For one brief second after the first strike splits the thin skin on his back, the pain stays away and the thought, ‘it’s not that bad’, manages to cross his mind – then the information reaches the pain receptors in his brain, and suddenly he wants to scream.
His back burns. A punch is dull, throbbing, a stab wound quick and sharp, but this, this… this is agony. It doesn’t go away. His split skin combusts at the edges as if a billow was still pressed against it even when the whip has long fallen away – even as it already readies for another strike.
His breath rushes out of him, and he barely dares inhale a new gasp for it would expand his lungs and tighten his injured skin and there would be only more pain. Still he must breathe, but his timing is way off. Just as he inhales, Pike whacks him again and the gasp lodges in his throat, and he nearly suffocates.
He chokes down air through his constricted esophagus into burning lungs, trying to breathe through the sweltering pain spreading across his back.
Still – still, some defiance works itself through his system and by the fourth or fifth strike he gets the breathing down too and as the braided hide licks across his back an agonized chuckle bursts out of him.
“This is what they are trying to regulate us with?” He barks out a laugh but his voice breaks on every other syllable. “It’s nothi- ahhh fuck!”
Another stripe of skin flares, not that Kirk can tell them apart any longer. His entire back is a blazing field of endless misery already, every cut connected through millions and millions of sensors so they all flare up with every new strike.
“Get used to it,” Pike grunts as he swings the whip. The air sizzles as the leather cuts through it, then smacks across Jim’s shoulders. “It’s only gonna get worse if we’re to do this.”
Jim counts the lashes in his head, although his mind blinks out a few times after eleven so it comes to him as a surprise when the strikes suddenly stop.
He doesn’t dare move. His elbows and knees are locked, so he won’t fall to the ground, but one move and he’s down, and then this hell starts over. He’s shaking from top to bottom though, limbs a jittery mess, threatening to collapse beneath him anyway. He prays to gods he does not believe in for that not to happen.
“We’re at fifteen,” Pike announces and he too sounds out of breath. His voice comes from deeper within, and it spills over Jim’s injured back like an ointment, soothing and cool. “You’ll get five more. Don’t ever make a scene like that again, Kirk. You made us both look weak.”
Jim whimpers, trying to stand as still as a statue, before he’d initiate another flare of anguish with a careless move.
“Say you understand.”
“I…” He begins but his voice is not strong enough and only air rushes out.
Pike waits instead of striking. The ticking seconds are as unbearable as the pain itself. Kirk squares himself and starts again.
“I… understand, sir.”
“Good,” Pike drawls then hell unfurls yet again and the office is filled with the electrifying, harsh crack of the whip against Jim’s back.
By the end, he’s in tears. He blinks to banish them, but the clear dewdrops among the smeared pools of blood on the glass desk are a dead giveaway.
Twenty lashes he received, not less brutal than the ones issued by Marcus. His hands and legs are trembling to no end, but still, he’s upright at least.
His muscles are itching, he wants to run, fight back. The adrenalin in his system demands an outlet, more pain, kicks, hits, lashes, unconsciousness, pleasure, anything would do.
“You did well.”
The praise sends another torrent of treacherous tears to his eyes and he shuts them tightly, until the drops are all trickling onto the desk with a soft pitter-patter sound.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a hand touches him and he jolts away, body still instinctively associating contact with agony. Pike moves with him however, fingers carding through his short hair as a hand carefully settles on his nape, where no wound gapes open and throbbing.
Kirk’s body is already burning when that touch, strangely gentle after the harsh kisses of the leather, descends against his skin and he shivers hotly while his body roils under Pike’s palm.
This is suddenly different. Overstimulated nerves react to the kindness the same way desert flowers respond to the first downpour. Thrumming life spreads into his limbs, his fingertips, buzzing, eager, threatening to burst his veins.
Cock twitching, Kirk keens, falls onto his elbows at last.
Pike draws that hand down his back, two fingers skating along his spine, caring about neither blood and agony, nor smoldering pleasure.
“Pretty indeed,” admits the Admiral with reverence and Jim looks over his shoulder, eyes swimming in tears instigated by the motion, but sweltering with as much heat as his blood, his tortured back.
“Are we sealing the deal, Admiral Pike… or do I dress now?” he asks with lips curving only partly in pain.
The hand slips over his ass, grabs a mound and squeezes.
Pike answers with a wry smile. “Did you hear me dismiss you, Captain?”
He grabs Jim by the waist and pulls him against himself. He’s already hard and Kirk stores that at the back of his mind for future use or simply as new intelligence on the man. He's not there yet himself, only half way, his confused body uncertain what exactly it wants, beside craving something cathartic.
Pike sheds his uniform jacket, saving its pristine gold stripes from the blood on Jim’s back and chucks it across the desk into his chair.
Jim doesn’t waste a moment either, and grabs for his belt but a new wave of hot pain swelters across his wounds and for a moment it feels like he was dealt another lash.
“Easy…” Pike murmurs above him and as his head clears Jim comprehends that it was the motion that set off the pain.
The Vice-Admiral reaches around him, palm pressing down against Jim’s hardening crotch.
Kirk rolls his shoulder in pleasure, hisses in agony as all the sensations intensify yet again.
“You’ll get used to it,” Pike reassures him and Jim wants to ask, ‘oh yeah, how many times have you been fucked with open wounds across your body’, but then he figures that, knowing the guy, the answer must be a lot, so he shuts his mouth and lets Pike take care of everything.
His belt is undone and so is the fly of his pants, then the whole thing is shoved down his spread thighs as far as they will go. Pike fists a dry hand around Jim’s cock and jerks it a few times, bringing him up to fully onboard then he lets him go. Jim barely bites down on his lower lip when the hand is already gone and he’s tossed into a different depth of longing.
This time, Pike does spit on him for sure. His saliva splashes onto his bare butt and, with the mindset of ‘it’s gonna hurt like hell eventually anyway’, Jim reaches behind to pull one of his cheeks aside for easier access.
He underestimates just how fucking much it’s going to hurt, and when white sparks appear in his vision he whimpers, but doesn’t let go.
“Goddamn impatient…” Pike murmurs under his breath, but Jim’s rewarded with wet fingers at his entrance and he’s pushing back and he’s begging with low moans until two is finally shoved inside him.
If there’s pain, he doesn’t feel it. It’s nothing compared to the absolute nightmare of flaring receptors all across his back. What he does feel is the pleasure though, the stretching, the way his body reacts to being scissored open for something harder, wider.
He moans – he moans Pike’s name, breathless swearwords jostle through his swollen lips now bitten raw, nearly ravaged by his own teeth.
“Fuck… just do it… just do it… goddamn fuckin’- hahhhh…”
He’s bleeding already so what does it matter – but Pike doesn’t give up just yet. He snarls, grabs Jim by the scruff like a misbehaving dog and presses him down to the table. Palm against the side of his face, he keeps Jim there, two fingers hooked into his mouth as if to keep Kirk from spouting more bullshit.
There are more than one way to drive a man into action and Jim sucks on those digits, tongue lapping at them, sliding between them until he hears a dark, delicious sound from above.
“You animal,” Pike grunts with such clear approval in his tone, Jim’s body reacts to the commendation like it would to prodding fingertips against the sweet spot in the depth of his body and lights up. His cock splatters the table with clear fluid and the whimper in the back of his throat slips out into an awaiting hand.
Pike wrenches his fingers out of Kirk’s backside, and then, as the man’s belt buckle is undone, the sweet sound of metallic jangles fill Jim’s ears more fully than the crack of the whip ever managed to do.
His body is a clump of sizzling pain and blazing need but for one instance he’s allowed the sensation of only the good parts. As he feels Pike against his hole, his mind forgets the whip, the lashes, all twenty of them, it doesn’t know pain, the wet sheen across his back is not blood but sweat, the tears in the corner of his eyes come from frustration not agony.
Pike doesn’t do warnings and Jim’s grateful for that. Still, as the admiral slides inside him, the first honest shout breaks loose in his throat, sharp and needy and uncontrolled.
Jim sobs as Pike thrusts inside, relentless, and hard, and so fucking delicious. Every stroke of his hips knocks the breath out of Jim, and he shifts first onto his elbows, then straightens even more and leans on his hands again, ravaged back bending into a beautiful arch.
He knows no pain anymore, just pleasure, endless, electric – a perfect chaos of his senses as almost each snap of Pike’s hips has the tip of his cock press against Jim’s prostate.
A depraved, high-pitched string of “Ah-ah-ah-ah…” is the only sound he’s capable of anymore but even that seems too much.
“Dammit, son, you gonna summon my guards,” Pike laughs then reaches for the whip.
Jim’s whole body tightens suddenly and he’s shoved to the brink of something overwhelmingly devastating. Good or bad he can’t tell, he just hovers there on the edge, right at his breaking point either to be graced with bliss he’s never felt before or destroyed forever.
“You got enough for now, don’t worry,” Pike scoffs against Jim’s ear darkly.
His wild motions halt only long enough until his hand rises on Jim’s naked front and it reaches his chest in one smooth, tender caress, melting the last of Kirk’s mental strength.
Then he swings the folded whip, grabs the other end of the braided hide, and raises it up to Jim’s mouth.
“Your time to bite back,” he teases as he pulls the whip tight against Jim’s mouth like it would be a fucking bridle. “You’re too damn loud and I’m not dressed for company,” he grunts.
Jim nearly comes when he feels the leather cut into his cheeks, dig between his lips and press his tongue against the bottom of his mouth. The sounds that do manage to break out of him are muffled and muted, not just by the whip, but his own mind is just about ready to shut down and flee this extremely charged torment of his senses.
Pike gets moving again, almost fond and gentle at first, but a little more spit and he’s back at pounding into Jim who takes it, bears it, throbbing and needy and blinking tears away while he begs, mumbled and indistinct, for mercy through the leather stretched tight across his lips.
“Raise a hand and we start all over,” Pike rumbles in warning just as Jim would move to end his own suffering and wrap his eager fingers around his cock. “You wanna beat Marcus at his own game, you gotta learn endurance, Kirk.”
Jim bobs his head, hand staying there on the desk, fingers clawing at the slippery glass. He doesn’t know what all over means, he’d long forgotten the harsh kisses lashed into his skin, forgotten the boots in his face from days ago, can’t recall who the fuck Marcus is at all. But he nods, whimpers weakly, knees shaking, body upheld only by his teeth biting the braided leather that tastes like blood.
“Fuck,” Pike moans against his ear and pleasure strikes into the pit of Jim’s stomach at the low, lustful hum the man’s voice has taken. “You’re one hell of an ally, James…” he admits as his free hand drops to Jim’s cock and folds around it.
One squeeze is enough and Jim comes, spluttering come all across Pike’s desk, his PADD, almost his chair, too, and thank god for that whip in his mouth because his needy whines are still loud enough to draw attention, especially when Pike keeps fisting him in rhythm with his harsh thrust until he, too, gets what he wants and signs their partnership with hot streaks of jizz deep in Kirk’s body.
Jim’s brain is ready to capitulate but a little voice in his head commands him to endure. He holds on to the fraying edges of his consciousness, but only barely. He’s aware of Pike against his back, heaving in deep breaths, one after the other, but he’s not sure when his own hands have given up, when he’s fallen onto his elbows, when the whip was dropped to the table. He’s aware of Pike pulling out, followed by some kind of humming but can’t be bothered to figure out what it is.
The pain is slow to return. He doesn’t even mind as he begins to feel little tendrils of it as the afterglow dims and his tortured skin demands acknowledgment – except it doesn’t hurt half as much as it should.
He’s tense as fuck, shoulders, back, ass aches, every muscle in his body, in fact, makes itself known, but the sharp agony he expected is nowhere. He moves, tests his back, ready for the electric, sudden strike of torment, but still, nothing.
“I healed it up slightly,” Pike says over him and Jim lifts his head astonished.
The man sits half-assed at the edge of the desk, dressed, uniform jacket left unzipped.
“You proved your point. However, you’re still gonna need a doc to clean you up properly.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Jim presses himself up and begins to dress. His clothes have been collected to a cleaner corner of the desk, which was no small feat to find because the entire glass is indeed a fucking mess. Semen and blood, hand prints and the smudged silhouette of Kirk’s sweaty chest adorn it like a holographic retelling of the events.
Jim’s careful as he puts his undershirt on. No matter the regeneration, he still hisses when the fabric touches his wounds. He decides to drape the rest of his uniform across his arm instead – he’ll go straight to medbay anyway.
“You better leave a few scars, Kirk. You’ll need the reminder that some mistakes will have fatal consequences within an alliance with me.”
Leave it to Pike to threaten him not five minutes after he fucked Jim within an inch of his life.
“If you allow a comment, sir?” Jim requests and Pike nods for him to continue. “If I become stupid enough to betray you, Admiral Pike, I deserve to be put down.”
“There was a time Marcus and I were as close as you and Commander Spock, do not forget that. Alliances aren’t necessarily forged in wisdom but oftentimes in opportunity and a common goal.”
“And loyalty?”
Pike scoffs. “That would be something,” he wistfully admits, “but I’m afraid, loyalty, Captain Kirk, is a credo for another universe, not ours.”