Warnings: possible triggers include: domestic violence/non-con sex. referenced underage non-con sex. sub!slavery realism (sadly some doms are more severe than others). societal prejudice. My god, just don't read this fic if any of the above bother you. Don't worry, the McKirk is fully consensual ;)
Prologue
The drink is set in front of him by the bartender, a cute sub with curls of blonde hair and a large chest. Her neck is undeniably bare and she lingers longer than he'd like, no doubt noticing his left wrist is bare as well. It fails to flatter him however, instead it further accentuates why he's here in the first place. He dismisses her with a wave and she scurries off. He gazes into the dark depths of the bourdon, and runs his tongue over his bottom lip. Swallowing, his throat feels like sandpaper, and he knows there's only one thing that will soothe it.
His fingers close around the cool glass, the condensation moist against his skin. The alcohol slips steadily and smoothly down his throat, settling warmly in his gut. He smiles as he puts the glass back down, but it soon slips off his face. It's too painful to smile anymore. Even the thought of it makes him feel nauseous.
Leonard McCoy, for the first time in five years, is a dom without a sub. Worse, his sub had cheated on him, which was one of the highest criminal felonies in the state of Georgia. By law he could have placed her in heavy reprimand, took away all her freedom and confined her to a dungeon, and nobody would've blinked an eye. But he's a doctor first, a dom second, and both conflicted when he found out she was pregnant. So instead he let her go, willingly and without consequence to his childhood rival, Clay Treadway and said good riddance. He boarded the first bus out of Savannah and winded up here in some podunk town in Iowa. He didn't want the scandal to get out, he didn't want to deal with it anymore than he had to, and the easiest solution was to just run away, as if he had been the culprit.
All he wanted now was peace and quiet and his bourbon.
Instead he gets some young kid who swaggers in, deciding of all the places to sit in an nearly empty bar, is next to him. "You look like someone just walked over your grave, man."
Leonard glances over, seeing said kid looks older than he sounds. First thing he picks up on is the boy's bare neck, but the faint tan line still remains. He's devastatingly handsome, with those alluring interesting shade of blue eyes and sun-kissed hair and pink lips. The only feature that takes away from his looks are the circles underneath his eyes and swollen mouth. Split lip and a blossoming bruise along his jawline. Interesting. A recent uncollared sub was societal suicide and yet the kid wasn't hiding away until the evidence disappeared, or even trying to conceal it.
"Ever heard of a tissue regenerator, kid?" he grunts.
Instead of averting his eyes downward like any respectful sub should, the kid has the audacity to look him straight in the eyes as he answers, "I'm not ashamed of my status. Those laws are out-dated and sad. If a dom loses his sub," his eyes stare pointedly at McCoy's naked wrists, "then subs line themselves up at him or her. Yet if a sub becomes unattached, he or she is suddenly shunned from society."
"Look, I don't give two cents about societal laws. But walking around looking like someone just beat you up is enough to make anyone uncomfortable. Are you trying to be a walking charity case?"
Kid grins jauntily. "Maybe. Sympathy can work in anyone's favor. So how about it?"
"How about what?" he snaps, putting his glass down hard it almost breaks.
"Have I earned your sympathy enough to buy me a drink?"
"You're a mouthy one, aren't you?" he admonishes. A sub with a spine. Some doms liked that he supposed, the resistance and the fight but he never did. Demure and pliant had been his favorite traits in Jocelyn...
Fuck.
"Sorry I don't go for pretty boys." With lips that no doubt would look good wrapped around him, he thinks, the thought unbidden.
"Name's Jim, Jim Kirk by the way," the kid retorts, "and I never said you had to. But you're a dom, and I'm a sub, and well, I'm not asking for a collar or anything. But it sure beats unwanted celibacy."
Those words unwillingly bring up more images to mind. His eyes rake over the blonde's lithe frame. The kid, no - Jim - would certainly look enticing on his back, or his knees. Or maybe even astride his lap.
Leonard signals the bartender over. Jim smirks.