Master Post & Mix - Part 1

Prodome

+

Arkos III looks like nothing McCoy would ever want to visit. He's not asked to be a part of the away team, and he doesn't bother questioning it. Kirk takes Sulu and a half dozen of the security personnel, and McCoy keeps an eye on the biomonitors. He knows there is intel about Arkos III being a Cardassian outpost, where they sit and spy on the Terran Empire, who's been blissfully unaware until McCoy tortured the information out of that Cardassian a few months back.

Once they had the name of the planet, it took time to find anyone who'd heard of it to get coordinates, but they were here now, and the place looked abandoned. Desolate. Like the kind of planet that would have underground military operations.

McCoy's not prepared when Enterprise is suddenly jarred in space, rocking from the blast of what has to be weapons fire. “McCoy to the bridge – what the hell is going on?”

“Three Cardassian ships came out of warp, Doktor,” Chekov replies, and McCoy can practically hear the navigators fingers tapping out commands to the weapons controls on his station.

McCoy curses at the ambush. He checks the biosigns again, noticing two of the security ensigns are dead and another is dying. McCoy goes to a panel, scanning the area around the away team to see that they are surrounded by Cardassian life signs with more beaming down from the attacking ships each minute.

The Enterprise shakes again, and McCoy swears he can hear the hull cracking, which is insane considering that sickbay is supposed to be in the safest part of the ship.

Another alarm cries out, this one from the monitor tracking the biosigns, and McCoy can see that Kirk's blood pressure is rapidly dropping. The blip that represents him on screen is directly in front of a Cardassian life sign. McCoy snarls; he is not fucking losing Kirk.

“McCoy to Scott – emergency transport to sickbay now!”

He barely hears Scott's affirmative, clenching his teeth in frustration that Kirk or that demonic son of a bitch Spock hadn't given the order earlier. He's too busy watching the monitors in the three minutes it takes to get the lock, three minutes during which Kirk's stats aren't getting any better, but Sulu seems to have hacked his way through the Cardassians to get to Kirk and manages to keep them from delivering any fatal blows before they appear in the middle of sickbay in a swirl of light.

Kirk's face is white, his gold vest stained red, and McCoy's gaze immediately focuses on the source. Kirk's right arm is gone just below the elbow.

McCoy barks out orders to his nurses, assigning them to check on other crewmembers as he drags Kirk into the sterile surgical suite himself. He calls Chapel to come with him; she's the only one he really trusts.

They could reattach it if someone had thought to grab it, but there's no way now to go back into the certain trap, and McCoy can feel it vibrating through the floor, the barely noticeable change as the Enterprise goes into warp now that her away team has been retrieved.

He can't leave Kirk as an amputee – there's no way he'd survive. Any number of crew on the ship will take advantage of their captain relinquished of his dominant arm.

But first he needs to staunch the bleeding. “Laser suture,” he says, feeling the cool weight of the instrument in his hand when Chapel gives it to him. McCoy fixes his gaze with Chapel's before he gets to work. “This doesn't leave the room.”

The fact that Chapel has brains enough to not question or need a clarification is why McCoy made her his head nurse. “Yes, sir.”

+

Only McCoy and Chapel have access to the surgical suite where Kirk is being kept in quarantine until his amputation wound heals. If other members of the crew need surgery in that time, McCoy doesn't give a flying fuck. The procedure can be done in the main area of sickbay, or they can let the wounds fester until they die.

He sleeps in the viewing room that overlooks the operating theater. It's easy enough when he's on shift to keep an eye on the entrance, to make sure no one tries to sneak a glimpse of the condition the captain is in. McCoy makes good on his threats, having sent two ensigns to the agony booths for their ignorance and gutting one nurse for direct insubordination, but he still can't risk going back to his own quarters and leaving Kirk alone.

Kirk is kept sedated as he heals. He'll be pissed off when he's finally allowed back to consciousness, but McCoy doesn't want him awake until he knows what he's going to do. They couldn't go back for the arm – there'd been too many Cardassians attacking both in orbit and on the planet's surface.

Biometric technology has only come so far, and even then the organs created are much more reliable and of a higher caliber than the limbs. It might not have been so bad if it had been his leg, but this is Kirk's arm, his right arm, at that, and the captain of the empire's flagship is the most desired position amongst the blood hungry dogs of the Imperial Fleet. McCoy might as well strap a dagger to Kirk's stump and hope he can learn to use his left hand for everything else.

McCoy can't keep an eye on Kirk for the rest of his life. Just because McCoy won't kill Kirk himself doesn't mean that he's willing to die for the man. He had kept an eye on him in the past, patching Kirk up during their days at the academy, but that had been with the knowledge that Kirk would be obligated to protect him in kind one day.

Pike's clause is still in place, though, and the universe just became immensely more dangerous for Kirk, which in turn makes it the same for McCoy. He still likes being alive, and leaving Kirk for the dogs won't help further McCoy's existence.

He goes over video recordings of his experiments, studying the way bones and muscles, tendons and ligaments, are all attached in the exaggerated way that his work in separating muscle resulted in. McCoy watches himself expose the delicate musculature of the fingers, and it brings him back to torturing that Cardassian months ago, how his hand had been cut off after he'd punched straight through one of the security detail with it, and McCoy thinks of Scott, the way he'd been playing with it like a puppet master pulling at the strings.

He thinks he can trust Scott. The man has control of the engine room and doesn't seem to aspire to much else, which makes him a similar person, McCoy thinks, to himself. McCoy can convince him that keeping Kirk alive is worth his while, that another captain might not want to keep Scott in his position. It's no secret that Archer wants Scotty, and maybe Kirk's replacement will be more than willing to hand him over instead of keeping him safe on the Enterprise.

It's better than the only other option.

+

“Aye, Doctor, I can do it. Mechanically it's easy, but what about the nerves? It doesn't matter how good the arm is if he can't feel it, react with it.”

“You let me worry about that.”

+

McCoy works long hours when he's not on shift. He has Scotty or Chapel with him, sometimes both, and attaching the mechanical parts is easy enough. The fine work is when McCoy regenerates nerves, coaxing the ones that had been cut off in the arm to grow longer and fill in to the artificial limb. He has to work with special lenses on that act as a microscope, allowing him to see the fine hairs that run through Kirk's skin, the fibers being grown and drawn out amongst wires and cables and metal sheaths.

It's covered with transparent aluminum when he's not working, needing to protect the exposed nerve endings. It works well enough as skin until they're finished. Only once everything is perfect can McCoy switch to working with a dermal regenerator to graft Kirk's own skin on top of it, to make it warm and normal and fragile looking.

Because as good as it looks, they won't know how well it works until Kirk wakes up. If it's not as good or better, then appearance and a shared secret will be the only thing keeping Kirk safe.

"It's a work of sheer genius, is what it is," Scotty promises, but his promises won't hold any weight if it doesn't work. Scotty will wish that he'd only been handed over into Archer's custody.

+

Spock takes longer to try and see Kirk than McCoy thought he would.

“He's in quarantine,” McCoy growls, his hand going automatically for the blade at his hip. Kirk wouldn't be happy if McCoy killed his first officer, but he won't hesitate if Spock so much as looks at him in a way that McCoy doesn't like. He's yet to have the pleasure of seeing how Vulcans are put together in person, and after their planet had been obliterated, it's disappointing that McCoy just can't take one without anyone noticing.

Spock's face is impassive as always. “I am merely here to inquire about his condition, Doctor.” His hands are held behind his back where McCoy can't see him, and it makes McCoy wonder if he's holding a weapon or clenching his fists to control the anger that McCoy knows he possesses.

“He's alive.” McCoy drawls slowly, watching Spock for a reaction but not getting so much as a twitch of an eye. “Don't start getting too comfortable in that chair.”

The Vulcan nods slightly before stepping out of sickbay.

+

The slight twitch didn't set off any alarms in McCoy's mind as he goes into the surgical suite to give Kirk another dose of sedative, but it probably should have. The hypospray barely grazes Kirk's neck before McCoy's getting backhanded across the face and sent sprawling to the floor. Kirk's awake and pissed, climbing off the biobed to straddle McCoy on the floor, the artificial hand clenched against McCoy's throat, feeling odd in that it isn't cold, exactly, with the aluminum skin, but it doesn't generate its own heat like it would if there had been blood flowing under it, either.

At least it works, McCoy thinks sardonically, laughing at that, but it comes out choked, struggling to get passed the pressure Kirk is pressing against his trachea. He tastes blood in his mouth, and only then does he feel it dripping down his face. The crush of Kirk's hand probably broke McCoy's nose.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” Kirk yells, spit flying out of his mouth with his rage. It's unsettling to see Kirk flushed red with anger – he's usually so calm.

This is a personal betrayal, to him, McCoy realizes. He opens his mouth to speak but can't get any words out, and he can feel that he's going to black out soon as his body thrashes uselessly under Kirk's weight, trying to dislodge him in an effort to get more oxygen. Black spots dance in front of his vision before Kirk releases his grip, leaving McCoy gasping and sputtering on the ground as Kirk stands, throwing anything he can get his hands on into the walls and even punching the door so hard he leaves a dent. Even when he gets his breath back, McCoy stays where he is, prone on the floor, uncertain in the face of Kirk's unpredictability.

“What did you do to me!?” Kirk repeats, the words this time sounding like they've been ripped out of him.

“I did what it took to keep you alive,” McCoy responded, the aching in his face warring with that in his throat. “Some goddamn Cardassian cut your fucking arm off, Jim!”'

Something wakes up inside of Kirk at the sound of his first name, something that brings him back to straddling McCoy on the floor but instead of strangling him, he's kissing him, crushing McCoy's broken nose even tighter against his face, and he can't even taste Kirk's tongue in his mouth through all of the blood.

McCoy can feel that Kirk's hard against him, rutting like he's drunk, but he's grabbing McCoy's jaw and pushing his head away at the same time, studying his face. He stills and swallows hard. “Go fix your face.”

He goes without painkillers when McCoy resets his own nose and mends the shattered bones back together. Only once the blood is washed off does he see the scratch that runs across the middle of his face from Kirk's sharp knuckles, running from his left cheek to the bridge of his nose.

McCoy doesn't heal it. Kirk's new arm will join the scars McCoy had left at the start of their first campaign as permanent mementos to Kirk that McCoy had the opportunity once again to let him die, but he didn't. McCoy can keep the same reminder.

+

They're sitting in the dark in Kirk's quarters, illuminated only by the stars streaking passed as they drink tumblers of McCoy's good bourbon.

“Were you hoping it would kill me, Bones – this coup we're planning?”

The question makes McCoy pause. Kirk's never doubted him before. “I would've let you go into sepsis if I wanted you dead. Let the infection spread up into your heart until your cardiac muscles died.” He takes a sip, swallows. "I can graft skin over it if you want."

Kirk bends his elbow, watching as he clenches his fingers into a fist, seeing the play of the metal fibers under the aluminum. "Don't. I kind of like it as it is."

+

If McCoy had known the bridge crew's reaction to Kirk's new arm would be so damn amusing, he possibly would've taken the initiative earlier and removed it himself.

It also helps that Kirk storms the bridge and lifts Spock by the neck, pulling him out of the chair and throwing him to the floor. McCoy sees Spock going for the agonizer at his belt, but Kirk has seen it too, and he stomps down hard with his boot, crushing Spock's carpals. Kirk pulls his phaser, pointing it at Uhura. She hasn't moved, but McCoy can see that her legs are tense, ready to spring into action. McCoy would like to see her try, but only because he has a running bet with Sulu on where she hides her knife.

“Lieutenant Uhura,” Kirk says, grinding down with his heel. McCoy's still near the turbolift, and even he can hear Spock's bones grinding against each other. “Bring Commander Spock to sickbay; he has an appointment with Doctor M'Benga, and it would be rude to be late.”

“Yes, sir,” Uhura hisses, and for someone so talented with language, she has a damn hard time controlling her own voice.

McCoy looks around the bridge, but no one else seems to be an imminent threat. Sulu actually looks amused by everything that's happened, and Chekov looks like his skin's crawling. Chekov reminds McCoy of himself at that age – eager for blood with barely controlled impulses. He's more eager to please than McCoy had ever been, though. Chekov probably would have tolerated an arranged marriage much easier than McCoy had.

Although, McCoy concedes, it had been fun to drive her to infidelity and kill the son of a bitch she had been fucking when they'd been caught in the act. McCoy would have killed her too if their marriage contract hadn't specifically stated that McCoy killing her would have resulted in all assets going to her family, and the same held true if she killed him.

McCoy might as well have killed her, though, as she'd used David McCoy's death against him, saying that there was no way her life wouldn't be in jeopardy while she was married to a man that had murdered his own father.

Kirk ordering Sulu to change course shakes McCoy from his thoughts of his ex-wife. His life in Georgia seems like someone else's life now. All he knows is this madman Kirk who's angling to use his position as captain of the fleet's flagship to overtake the Terran Empire at McCoy's own suggestion.

No, he doesn't want Kirk dead. Hell he doesn't even want the power. It's entertaining is what it all is; he hadn't thought he'd be able to make a near-perfect bionic arm until he was forced to. He doubts Scotty thought he'd be able too, either, and the both of them would probably thank the Cardassian that did it, that caused the creation of this work of genius.

Then they'd kill him, of course. They need less Cardassians in the galaxy who think they can get away with killing Terrans.

He watches the stars streak by, knowing that around one of them, an armada is building.

+

“It really is a thing of beauty, innit?” Scotty asks, sitting across from him at the officers' mess. “The way he just picked up Commander Spock like he was naught more than a sack of grain.” Scotty leans in close like he's trying to get some gossip out of McCoy. “Has he tested the extent of what it can lift?”

McCoy knows that he has, also knows that the bionic arm is still restricted by actual muscle, but he's not going to tell Scotty any of this.

“Come on, McCoy, I donnae want to kill him. As you reminded me yourself, he's keeping me safe from Archer.”

“Maybe he'll help you unload the next engineering shipment, and you'll be able to see for yourself,” McCoy responds pulling up an article on his PADD about partial tongue removal that gets its point across to Scotty well enough.

+

McCoy's watching a magnified screen showing macrophages from Orion eating each other when Chapel appears at his side. “The chemistry department commed to say they're sending someone up with a delivery for you, Doctor.”

Not even ten minutes later, a dark-haired woman in the blue science uniform shows up in sickbay with a hazardous materials box and hands McCoy a PADD. “The protein binding agents you asked to have synthesized, sir,” she says, running a hand nervously through her long, thick hair. McCoy finds himself wondering what she would look like on an autopsy table as he reaches for the PADD.

He removes the stylus from its slot to sign off on the delivery when he catches a flash of silver out of the corner of his eye. She's stabbing down, aiming for his femoral artery, but McCoy's bigger, stronger, and he kicks her legs out from under her. The knife just grazes across his hip instead, the blade so sharp that it cuts through his uniform pants like butter.

She just stays on the floor, not even trying to fight, as Chapel hits her with a blast from the agonizer, beating a security officer to his side by half a step.

McCoy wonders if she'd been sent by Spock or if she's been newly signed onto the crew and hasn't learned her place yet. He looks over her in disgust, barely registering his own blood running down his leg.

“Do whatever you want with her,” he says to the nearest security officer, and the lieutenant's eyes are wide with fear as she’s bodily dragged out of sickbay. McCoy lets Chapel push him onto a biobed, another nurse handing over the laser suturer and a dermal regenerator.

That's how Kirk finds him, leaning back on the biobed with Chapel hands and face at his groin, and the possessive glint that overtakes Kirk's gaze is more than welcome since it means, at least, that something interesting is about to happen.

+

Kirk's chin is hard against his hip bone, his right hand, the one that isn't flesh and bone, running along the inside of McCoy's thigh. The cut is gone, only new pink skin marking that it had ever existed at all.

“We can't trust anyone anymore,” Kirk says, shifting his weight on the mattress.

“I've never trusted anyone,” McCoy replies, keeping his voice from giving away how Kirk's caresses are affecting him.

Kirk hums thoughtfully, nipping and kissing where the wound used to be before slowly mouthing his way across McCoy's pelvis, getting closer and closer to his cock. “Not even me?”

Only ever you, McCoy thinks, but he's not going to say it.

Kirk's bionic arm has moved to McCoy's cock, now, and is stroking him slowly as Kirk sucks on his balls. It's in the back of his mind, now, that Kirk could probably rip McCoy's dick off if he wanted to, but one of their commonalities is a surge of possessiveness after a threat to the other's life, so if Kirk is ever going to, it's at least not going to be now.

“It's remarkable, really,” Kirk says, in awe like a child. “I can feel you.” He squeezes a little to make McCoy gasp, the aluminum skin so cool against his erection and warming to McCoy's body heat, but it still won't reach the temperature of live, human flesh.

He brings McCoy to a quick orgasm, smiling like the cat who got the canary as McCoy tries to catch his breath.

Kirk rises from the bed, shedding his uniform as he pulls a wooden box out of his desk, the one that McCoy knows holds old the surgical scalpels Kirk had found somewhere and decided they suited his needs more than the knife he used to use had. The blades are made out of diamond, and McCoy finds them beautiful in a way that only someone in his field can. They're the only thing of Kirk's that McCoy really wants, but his coveting is sated by the fact that McCoy knows he's the only one that uses them.

He and Kirk change positions on the bed, Kirk lying down on his back with McCoy hovering above him, taking a scalpel out of its velvet lining and holding it reverently.

“I want you on your stomach,” McCoy says, bracing his weight on the balls of his feet in case Kirk feels like putting up a fight first, but he just rolls over, smirking over his shoulder at the way McCoy stares at the play of muscles in Kirk's back and ass.

McCoy follows the path his eyes took with the blade, cutting swirling patterns into Kirk's skin just deep enough to draw blood but not enough to scar. Kirk twitches and moans as his nerves are set on fire, and McCoy has to press his left hand to the small of Kirk's back to keep him from moving too much. These old scalpels aren't like the laser ones, he can't adjust the length of the blade to keep him from going too deep, so he needs to keep Kirk and his hands steady.

He slices across Kirk's ass, watching the blood bubble up through pale skin, and McCoy really can't help but aggravate the cut with his teeth and tongue, lapping up the blood and drawing out more.

“Bones,” Kirk gasps, grinding small circles into the mattress.

McCoy follows the trail of blood across Kirk's left cheek, moving the scalpel to hold it between his middle and ring finger so he can part Kirk's ass with his thumb and forefinger, licking stripes across his hole and making him curse. He stiffens the muscle, penetrating shallowly so Kirk is arching back, trying to force him deeper, but McCoy pulls away and squeezes Kirk's ass.

“You're going to have to hold perfectly still,” he says, flipping the scalpel between his fingers so he's holding it correctly again. “Unless you want to bleed out on the bed before I can do anything to stop it, and I really don't want the Vulcan in charge.”

Kirk fists his hands into the sheets, the muscles in his left arm straining under the skin while the bionic arm still looks smooth but is ripping holes from the strength of its fingers. “Do it.”

McCoy sticks the middle three fingers of his left hand into Kirk's body, curling them to brush against Kirk's prostate as he slowly fucks him with his fingers. With his right hand, and the scalpel in it, McCoy goes back to cutting, but this time he's moving along the sensitive flesh between and on the backs of Kirk's thighs; the dangerous possibility of Kirk moving suddenly or McCoy's hand slipping makes him hard again.

Kirk comes hard with a grunt, his cock trapped between his stomach and the bed, and only once McCoy has set the scalpel down on the nightstand does he roll over. Kirk's bottom lip is torn and bloody from biting it, his blood dripping down his chin. The copper tang is heady in McCoy's mouth.

“Let them hate us so long as they fear us,” Kirk says, his pupils wide in the dim light of his quarters.

McCoy silently agrees. If the crew stops being afraid of them then they're as good as dead.

+

His communicator beeps on the instrument tray. “Kirk to McCoy.”

McCoy puts the laser scalpel down, glaring like Kirk can actually see him. “I'm working. Ensign Jacobs got himself stabbed in the stomach, and it's my job to stitch him up before his stomach acid does lethal damage to his vital organs.”

There's empty air, like Kirk is actually considering leaving him alone, but McCoy knows better than to think Kirk will save it for later. Kirk, true to what McCoy had expected, completely ignores the fact that McCoy is busy. “I think you can spare fifteen minutes. Come down to deck M, room 53.”

It beeps, signifying that Kirk closed the connection, before McCoy can even respond. The room Kirk had mentioned is where most of the agony booths are kept, the ones that anyone on the ship can stop by and see who is being taught a lesson. McCoy can't say that his curiosity isn't piqued.

He removes the surgical mask, pointing at Chapel. “I'll be back in twenty minutes. Don't bother closing him up; I'm not done yet.”

McCoy takes the turbolift to M deck, ignoring everyone that makes a point to stop and salute him along the way. He knows this has everything to do with their proximity to the booths, and McCoy almost wants to drag each and every one of them into an agony booth for thinking it would lessen his annoyance, this false display of submissiveness.

Kirk doesn't look over when he enters. He's watching a booth with his arms crossed, the bionic one holding his chin in its hand.

“I left a man with his abdominal cavity open,” McCoy starts, but he doesn't expect Kirk to care. Hell, McCoy barely does. “I'm not allowing his anesthesia to get upped, so if I'm still working on him when he wakes up, I'll make sure he knows that it was your doing.”

That got a reaction in the form of a smirk. “I'll just render your hard work moot.”

“You and everyone else on this damn boat,” McCoy grumbles, which makes Kirk laugh outright.

“Yourself included, there, Bones,” he says, actually turning to look at McCoy for the first time since he entered the room, and McCoy doesn't even try to retort because he has personally killed crew members whose lives he had saved earlier, some only a matter of hours later.

McCoy draws his attention to the booth Kirk had been watching. He instantly recognizes the chemist who had tried to murder him in his own sickbay, even with her hair shorn into uneven tufts and the way her uniform is torn so much that she might as well not be wearing one at all.

“I didn't do any of that,” Kirk says like he needs to make the disclaimer.

She's on the floor of the booth in the fetal position, not even twitching despite the booth being set to level seven, the security officer McCoy had ditched her with seeming to have not only destroyed her hair and uniform but also her will to live. McCoy had figured that to be punishment enough, but Kirk had clearly thought otherwise. McCoy's seen this before from Kirk, when he wants to teach the lesson that there is something worse than death.

“And here I thought you'd gotten over these juvenile displays of marking your territory.”

“You've never complained before.” Kirk watches the fingers of his bionic hand clench before lowering it to his side. “She told me that she acted on her own, wanted to get you out of the way. She had aspirations of being the captain's woman, Bones.”

“What did you tell her?” McCoy growls.

“That while the position's open, it's unlikely it will ever be filled. Then something regarding you doing some filling in various positions.” He reaches forward with his left hand to hook a finger in the neck of McCoy's scrub top, which McCoy knocks away.

“Your fifteen minutes are up,” McCoy says before heading back to the turbolift, smiling to himself with the knowledge that Kirk will make him pay later, and he looks forward to it.

Part 3 - Part 4