akainagi: (trek - nu! capt & doc)
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Title: Submit, Fight, Fail, Fall (or why you can't fight the blood that's in you)
Author: [livejournal.com profile] akainagi
Rating/Warnings/Spoilers: R so far / no warnings / Spoilers for XI
Fandom/Pairing/Prompt: Star Trek AOS AU, Kirk/McCoy
Disclaimer: Alas, I do not own Star Trek.
Summary: Spawned by Word Wars over at [livejournal.com profile] jim_and_bones. Jim Kirk is an omega with a chip on his shoulder. He's convinced all alphas are assholes. Then he meets one that isn't.
Author's Note: This fic features the alpha/beta/omega trope. For a background on this trope check out the fanlore wiki HERE.



[CHAPTER 1]


Jim manifests when he is sixteen. Omega.

He’s fucking angry. And he lacks the self awareness at sixteen to realize that anger is just a comfortable blanket in which to shroud the scared.

One day everything is normal, and the next he can hardly think for the smell of pheromones assaulting his nostrils. And one night a month he has the irresistible urge to get on his knee for someone, male or female, just because they’re alpha and put out the right mix of biochemicals.

And why does he have to be omega? Why does he have to be miserable for the sake of kids he’ll never have. Because having kids worked out so well for his mom.

And there's not one person he can go to. No one he can ask. The douche who teaches Jim’s health class doesn’t know that the only support Jim gets at home is Frank’s fist supporting the side of his face. He has no friends, and he’ll be fucked if he asks one of the school’s counselors, who just look at him with a mixture of pity and irritation. Pity because of his last name, and irritation because he’s … well … HIM. He’s made a name for himself in Riverside as the only genius-level repeat offender, a fact which infuriates and intimidates every adult within the town’s radius.

So Jim does what he’s done his whole life when faced with a clusterfuck of epic proportions. He puts on his best face and wings it.

And that’s how Jim ends up on his knees for the first time to Tracy Higgins, a dark-haired, leggy senior with a sadistic streak a mile wide. A streak Jim finds out about only AFTER his heat is upon him; his hormones screaming at him to submit submit submit. And he does. Because he’s omega, and that’s what omegas do when they're in heat. And it’s not like he feels betrayed that the seemingly mild-mannered alpha female turned out to have a penchant for humiliation.

It’s completely a coincidence that the day after his first heat is the day he finally gets arrested for real this time.

Complete coincidence.

Jim sits in the county jail charged with the underage version of drunk and disorderly. Fuck it. It’ll probably get expunged when he turns 18 anyway. Except for the fact that he will have to go through this humiliation twelve times a year for the REST OF HIS LIFE. His hormones will drive him to his knees (literally) twelve times a year to the handiest available alpha.

He meets Gary not long after that. Jim's first few disasterous encounters have led him to the tentative assumption that all alphas are assholes. Gary Mitchell confirms this in spectacular fashion. Gary is gorgeous, and his pheromones are like a drug. But the guy probably learned all he ever knew about psychosexual politics from the Marquis de Sade. Gary’s a little too fond of the mind-fuck. He ties Jim up once, fucks him raw and makes him go an entire night without coming. Hurts like hell and when Gary finally lets him finish. Then Jim passes out, and wakes to find the bastard laughing at him. And yet Jim puts up with Gary for almost two years because the alpha you know is still infinitely better than the alpha you don't know. And as twisted as the other man is, at least Jim knows what to expect from Gary.

Or Jim thinks he knows, anyway. Until the line is crossed, and every previous mind-fuck pales in comparison to the grand betrayal of Jim's 18th year. And Jim finally realizes the one thing he really knows, or needs to know about Gary's kind.

Yup, alphas are assholes.

After Gary, he goes on hormone inhibitors. Thank Christ he’s not allergic to them. The doctor at the clinic tells him all the risks involved with overuse: “remember, Son they’re only to be used in emergencies.” He takes the prescription and tells the doc “thanks for the script and I’m not your fucking son.” He imagines that if his father had lived, and his mother actually could've stood being in the same room with him for more than a few hours at a time, that he might have come away with a better handle on his own biology. Did normal families sit their kids down and tell them about this shit?

The inhibitors help. They turn the monthly night of mindless lust and humiliation into a monthly date with his own hand. It’s lonely, and a fundamental part of him feels unfulfilled - lying there stroking himself off until the fire inside him finally sputters and dies for another 30 days. But at least he’s not forced on his knees for anyone. And he gets plenty of sex in between heats. Good sex, bad sex, boring sex. Sex he can control. As opposed to being inundated by alpha pheromones and losing any and all higher cognitive function. Instead of being completely at the mercy of someone who may not even be on speaking terms with the concept.

He floats (stumbles?) through the last of his teen years in this fashion. He greets his twenties with a chip on his shoulder and a shit-eating grin that invites all comers to try him on for size. He gives as well as he gets on most days. And if he wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes and asks himself why the hell is he still wasting his life in the dead-end that is Riverside? Well, he just shoves that question down. At least until the day he runs into one of the most gorgeous creatures he’s ever seen (Gary Mitchell eat your heart out) at the dive over by the shipyard. Beta? A fellow omega? Tall and dark and leggy. Most people would say she was an alpha by the attitude, but Jim knows at this point not to take people at face value. She’s wonderfully, brilliantly bitchy and it is almost worth the pounding he takes from Cupcake and his crew in order to grope her chest.

But then things start to degenerate, because he finds himself face to face with Starfleet made flesh in the form of Christopher Pike, who tells him (no, dares him) to do better than his old man. And Jim wants to snarl at him that what the fuck does he know? That everyone throughout his life has been throwing down that gauntlet just so they can see him fail. Every townie and every paparrazi and every alpha who ever had him on his knees has gotten off on watching Jim Kirk flounder. But this Pike doesn’t look like he expects him to fail. So maybe that’s why he does what he does.

So he takes his bike to the shipyard, takes his feet into the shuttle and parks his ass in the seat, and damned if this isn’t the single dumbest thing he’s ever done in his life. That feeling is cemented by the fact that the guy next to him, a scruffy, loud, apparently neurotic southerner announces that he just might throw up on Jim’s person.

His name is Leonard McCoy, and he smells like the booze he carries around in his hip-flask (which he shares with Jim, and Jim thinks that’s right neighborly). And Jim so overwhelmed by the sheer force of personality and the smell of bourbon that, for once, he doesn’t stop to wonder if the guy’s alpha or omega or anything in between.

[CHAPTER 2]


Leonard McCoy had no idea what made him bitch about his divorce to a total stranger. Later he would blame it on the alcohol.

“Jim Kirk,” the kid said by way of introduction, and chased his words with a pull from Leonard’s own flask. Leonard returned the formalty.

The doctor was not in the most observant frame of mind during this shuttle ride. Crushing nausea tended to disrupt his concentration. But even he noticed the kid had gone a few rounds with someone fierce in the last 24 hours. His face was littered with darkening bruises and abrasions and his knuckles looked sort of worse for wear.

So Leonard asked about it, all the while cursing his doctor’s instincts that make him even interested. The kid loudly related the story with an animation that appeared only slightly forced.

For some unknown reason the tall, dark woman seated across from them was shooting daggers at Kirk with her eyes. Weird.

“Don’t know about you, kid, but I wouldn’t go around telling people I got the shit kicked out of me by someone named Cupcake,” the physician pointed out acerbically.

The kid’s laugh was genuine this time, his gaze amused. The good humor grated on Leonard’s nerves. He was simultaneously too drunk and not drunk enough to tolerate such a display.

The kid rambled, his voice both annoying and blessedly distracting. Around the third tale of local gossip from Asshole Iowa, Leonard realized that the younger man was actually trying to distract him from his miserable physical and mental state of affairs. The realization was unaccountably annoying. He fixed the kid with the same ‘shut the fuck up’ stare that sent poor interns running for cover.

Totally oblivious. Or maybe not so oblivious, as the kid seemed even more obstinately animated than before, a permanent half-smile on his lips and eyes that were so bright they were nearly headache-inducing to Leonard’s semi-hung-over brain.

By the time they landed in San Francisco, Leonard had the urge simultaneously thank Kirk and smack him. He settled for ejecting the liquid contents of his stomach just outside the shuttle. As the bourbon burned his throat on the way up, he realized, mortified, that the kid was patting him on the back as he retched.

“Shit, Bones. You’re in bad shape, man.”

He realized hazily that he had just been christened with a nickname, something he hadn’t tolerated since he was in short pants. He turned to bitch Kirk out and promptly vomited on the other man’s shoes.

Later, he would have to give the kid credit. Jim continued rubbing circles over Leonard’s back throughout the whole miserable event. But he also kept using that ridiculous nickname.

[CHAPTER 3]


The moment Leonard punched the comm number in, he regretted it.

“This is Jim.”

He had the near-overwhelming urge to hang up. He should have no desire to socialize, let alone with an obnoxiously attractive and attractively obnoxious kid who had already been witness to a couple of the less than sterling aspect of Leonard McCoy's nature.

Why was he doing this again?

“Kid? McCoy.” God, where had his powers of speech gone?

Kirk sounded disproportionately pleased all of a sudden. “Bones?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s an expression of my esteem.”

“Bullshit,” Leonard fired back.

“Yeah, but I’m gonna use it anyway. So did you comm me for a reason, or just to discuss nomenclature?”

Nomenclature? The doctor resisted the urge to scoff. “Drinks. After orientation assembly. Tomorrow. You interested?”

“Why?” The question was a mixture of amused and … wary?

“What do you mean, why?” Leonard fairly growled. This had been such a shit idea.

“I mean why? What, you wanna give me a chance to puke on your shoes?” Kirk’s voice had a hint of repressed laughter.

“Look, Kid, if you don’t –“

The sound of backpedaling. “I didn’t say I didn’t. I do. I will. Yeah, sure. I pick the bar, though.”

“Fine. Okay. Right.” And Leonard flipped his comm. Closed before his day could get any more pathetic.

Why was he doing this again?

Because he was going to be spending the next three to four years in this hell before getting shipped into the black sucking vortex of space, and he couldn’t expect to hide in his dorm or medical the whole time. Because he’d already spent the last year of his life hiding from the world at large and his ex-wife in particular. And because it was nice to have a living breathing person to bitch at for once.

Fine. Okay. Right.

[CHAPTER 4]


Jim toggled off the comm and flopped onto his narrow dorm-issue bunk, fluctuating between feelings of anticipation and mild foreboding. Was he being pursued? The omega in him was happily crowing in the affirmative. He ruthlessly quashed the voice. McCoy was probably just trying to make up for puking on Jim’s only pair of shoes. Or the man was a long way from home and was simply looking for someone to knock a few back with.

Although from their scant few hours together the other day, Jim wouldn’t have pegged him for the guilty or the needy type. Rather the opposite.

He’s the alpha type, Jim thought darkly as he stared at the dorm ceiling.

Broad-shouldered, strong voiced, assertive. Attractive traits in an alpha. Attractive traits to Jim, despite his discouraging past experience with the entire breed. And the man’s acerbic personality and gruff presentation added a bit of intrigue to the classical alpha profile. God, another alpha. Jim just never learned, even after the clusterfuck with Gary. Gary Mitchell had always told him that you can’t fight the blood that’s in you. Of course the man usually said that right before visiting something sadistic and perverted on Jim’s body.

But what if Gary was right?

Jim burrowed further into his pillow and firmly declared himself a chickenshit. Things could be different now. The hormone inhibitors would help – his omega pheremones wouldn’t be blaring themselves to all and sundry. And he was finally fucking out of Riverside, although it had taken years of wallowing, Captain Pike’s goading and one truly epic bar-brawl to finally get him here. No one here had ever had a front row seat to his delinquent behavior and general asshattery. Not that he had plans to be a model citizen, but there was a universe of opportunity here if he managed not to fuck it up before the game even began.

Jim heaved himself off his bed, schooling his face into its most determined smirk. He had told Bones that he was picking the bar. So it was only appropriate that he do some research beforehand. He shoved on his boots, checked himself in the mirror (his face still looked like one honking bruise) and embarked on a mission to find out who had the best draught on tap in the Bay Area.

[NEXT PART]


(no subject)

Date: 2012-10-24 11:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hora-tio.livejournal.com
Boy you are on one hell of a creative roll and I'm loving it. Although the anticipation is killing me. lol Keep it up you are doing great. I eagerly await your future posts. These story lines are really creative and you should give yourself a pat on the back for being able to produce them.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-10-26 09:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] akainagi.livejournal.com
Thank you! I fell in love with the idea of Jim as omega and Bones as alpha (can you tell I like Kirk on the bottom?).
*pats self on back*
*pats [livejournal.com profile] hora_tio on back for leaving great feedback*

(no subject)

Date: 2012-10-26 05:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hora-tio.livejournal.com
I pat you too. I do really see Jim as a bottom because at the end of the day as tough as he is inside I think he craves having someone that he can trust enough to let them top.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-10-27 12:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] akainagi.livejournal.com
*nod nod*
I absolutely agree with your argument for bottom!kirk.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-06-04 11:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kel-1970.livejournal.com
I loved how you introduced the a/b/o meme perfectly in the first couple of paragraphs. I did, when you first started sharing this at Word Wars, read the page about the a/b/o trope that you linked to at the top, but your own introduction laid it out without laying it out too specifically--just enough to make the reader go "hmmmm....now THAT'S interesting." Especially making Jim an omega.
Your scenes of introduction between Jim and Bones are gritty and compelling, and make me immediately want to put them together, to the dismay of both of them.
So glad to see this posted!

(no subject)

Date: 2013-06-05 01:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] akainagi.livejournal.com
Wow, thank you, Kel! I'm so glad the beginning came off okay. I was afraid of having too much exposition. Thank you for taking the time to read and comment! It makes me want to write more :)

(no subject)

Date: 2013-06-05 01:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kel-1970.livejournal.com
DO write more! Pretty please!

(no subject)

Date: 2013-06-30 01:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pyxiefics.livejournal.com
aieeee, I've been looking for a good fic with a/b/o dynamics in this fandom for ages! Love it so far, omega!Jim is perf and alpha!Bones is perf and flgkjgkjd thank you for writing this <33

(no subject)

Date: 2013-07-01 09:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] akainagi.livejournal.com
Wow! Thank you so much! I'm so glad you're liking the story. There is a sad lack of a/b/o in trek, imo. I should have a new chapter up soon, so I hope you continue to enjoy. <333

October 2013

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