Behind the Curtain [1/1]
Name: Behind the Curtain [1/1]
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jim Kirk moves in next door, and the still-married Leonard McCoy is a total peeping tom.
Notes: Written for this prompt at the kink meme. LOL, IDEK what this is. Like, modern-day!AU? Something like that. Also continuity nods to fics that I’ve written before… I've got to get around to finishing "In Which Jim Kirk..." is soon. One last part and I can't figure it out AUGH.
Also note that this marks about 108,000 words and 250+ pages of Star Trek XI fic that's written. Many of those fics aren't even finished, or they're just random ideas that hardly got started. Dear God, it's like some mad ficcing spree.
Unbeta'd, btw.
It was a Saturday when Jim Kirk moved into the subdivision called Whispering Oaks. Leo remembered this because Saturdays were the nights Kirk brought people home, and the day he moved in was the first day McCoy realized that there was something a little… different about the man.
He’d been up late in his tiny office on the second story of his and Jocelyn’s small ranch-style house, finishing up some paperwork for the base’s hospital, and it was only when black spots started to eat at the edges of his vision that he decided that, yeah, maybe it was time to go to bed. So he stood to turn off the glaring fluorescent lights overhead, and that’s when he saw it.
Maybe Kirk didn’t have his curtain up yet. He’d moved in earlier in the day, and had gotten all of his boxes into the house in under an hour. Leo knew this, because Jocelyn had perched herself on the desk in this very office, with a pair of rather useless binoculars (the house was only twenty feet away, for God’s sake), and she’d given Leo a play-by-play of Jim’s every movement.
(“Look at that lamp, Leo, it’s godawful!”
“I really hope he isn’t planning on putting those flamingos on the lawn. I’ll get the homeowner’s association to castrate him if he does!”
“Any man with that amount of Christmas lights is bad news, I’m telling you, Leo.”)
He’d nodded and tried to continue (or, at least, attempt to start) enjoying his day off. She’d finally grown tired of watching the new neighbor, and she’d thrown down the binoculars and gone off to rant to her friends from the country club about the “weird new guy who’s just moved in”.
And now it was late night, and he was looking through the exact same window to see Kirk going at it with two rather well-endowed women, lights on and in perfect view of Leo’s office window.
And damn, was he skilled. It was like he was everywhere at once, pleasing both women simultaneously, and it didn’t look like he was even breaking a sweat. Well, a metaphorical sweat: sure, he was sweating, because c’mon, it was sex, but it all looked very easy to Kirk. The women were writhing on the bed and in the air, but he seemed almost bored.
Leo didn’t even notice that his hand had gone for the binoculars until his view of the whole ordeal was suddenly magnified, and he could see that Kirk did indeed look bored as shit. And then he’d looked up from the woman underneath him, seemed to focus on Leo, and then winked.
Leo slammed the curtains shut, tossed the binoculars across the room, and flew across the hall to the master bedroom, where he promptly changed and dropped into bed next to Jocelyn and stared at the ceiling, waiting for his heart to stop beating a hole into his chest.
He didn’t see, did he?
__
He definitely didn’t see. That was the consensus Leo had reached by the time he’d showered and dressed the next day. The curtains had only been open a peek, just enough for Leo poke the binoculars, through (why, oh why, had he picked up the binoculars?), and it had been pitch black outside. There was no way Kirk could have seen him. No way.
So when Jocelyn coerced him into visiting Kirk with a gelatin mold in the shape of an oak tree… well, Leo was a little wary of playing the friendly neighbor, but he wasn’t scared or anything.
He adjusted his tie slightly, superfluously, and rang Kirk’s doorbell. He sat only for few seconds before the door swung open to reveal the new neighbor.
Kirk was shirtless, wearing a pair of damp jeans and running a towel through sunstreaked blond hair. It appeared that he’d just gotten out of the shower. And, fuck, he was all glistening and wet and gorgeous, with a well-defined, muscled chest and torso and dazzling blue eyes set in a equally attractive face and fuck, Leo was staring, wasn’t he?
He definitely was, because Kirk was smirking, leaning on the frame of the front door with a hip cocked and one eyebrow arched. Dammit.
Leo cleared his throat and thrust the plate holding the gelatin mold in front of him. “Greetings to Whispering Oaks, courtesy of the homeowner’s association.”
Kirk stared at him for a few moments, dropping his gaze to the wiggling food in front of him, then lifting his eyes to look at Leo again. “Let me guess: the wife send you over?”
Leo shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. She’s the secretary for the association in her free time.” He paused, and figured that he might as well introduce himself. “Leonard McCoy.” He spared a hand from holding the plate in front of him, and Kirk shook it.
“Jim Kirk, but you probably already know that.” He flashed Leo a brilliant smile.
The name sounded familiar, just as it had when Jocelyn had first told him who was going to be renting the empty house next door. But God, he was distracting. What was Leo here for, again? Oh, right. The gelatin. And now his job was done. “Uh, yeah. Listen, Mr. Kirk--”
“Jim.” Jim blinked those blue eyes at Leo, and crossed his arms over his naked, wet chest, still smiling. “Call me Jim.”
Okay. Whatever. Leo was late for work, and every second he spent in the company of Jim Kirk made him feel ten times more awkward, like he was back in high school and trying not to take a peek in the shower rooms. “Sure, Jim. See you later.”
He shoved the plate into Jim’s hands and darted across the lawn (grass be damned) to his car, where he jumped in and sped off as fast as the speed limit would allow. Which, at ten mph, was not very fast at all.
__
Leo had always known that he was a switch-hitter. It’d felt so natural in high school, and then in college, that he’d never really questioned it. But when he’d met Jocelyn, he’d realized that his time for fooling around with guys (and girls, too) was over. Marriage was one big step, one he was willing to take, because Leo was in love with Jocelyn and, above all, loyal. Cheating? He’d never even considered it.
Not until Jim Kirk, that is.
Jim threw a wrench into every plan he’d ever made for his marriage with Jocelyn. It was bizarre and, frankly, a little scary how much Leo wanted to be the lucky man or woman that Jim brought home every Saturday night. Because, apparently, Jim was a switcher-hitter, too, and had no qualms with displaying that fact. He’d hit on pretty much everyone at the meetings of the homeowner’s association (much to Jocelyn’s horror and much of the community’s embarrassed delight). He’d probably slept with anyone in the neighborhood who was of age and wasn’t married. And probably some of those who were.
He also had a schedule, one that Leo quickly became accustomed to:
Sundays: Sundays were basically identical to the day that Leo had given Jim the Jello mold. He got up, went to work, and then came back to find Jim lazing about on porch, if he wasn't inside already. Maybe Leo shouldn't have started watching Jim from the hidden safety of his curtains on the second story, but someone had to tell him to go inside if it started to rain, right? The kid was liable to fall asleep in the sun, and then it might start pouring, suddenly, what with it being hurricane season and all, and then he'd get sick and die, any nobody would ever know because nobody had been watching.
So of course Leo took the initiative in watching Jim. It was for his own good, after all.
Mondays: Jim spent the earliest hours of the day, from eight to ten, mowing his lawn. Shirtless. The hot Florida sun would beat down upon him, covering his body with a thin sheen of sweat. Jim would push the lawn mower from one end of the lawn to the other, pausing only occasionally to wipe at his face and smile up at the sun. Leo knew this because he left early in the morning on Mondays. Jim had waved to him as he pulled out of the driveway, and he’d given a hesitant wave back.
Most of the residents of the houses surrounding Jim’s had taken to watching for Jim’s weekly lawncare sessions. It said a lot, perhaps, that in a neighborhood full of people who paid workers to trim and pesticide their lawns to green perfection, Jim Kirk was apparently the only person who was willing to get his hands dirty, to take matters into this own hands. That, or perhaps the rest of the residents of Whispering Oaks were just as hot for Jim as Leo was.
When the nurse at the hospital who organized the duty roster asked someone to take the graveyard shift on Mondays, Leo figured he should volunteer. Not because he wanted to spend the mornings watching Jim from his home office or anything. No, he just wanted to spend Monday mornings sleeping in. With Jocelyn. His wife.
(Even if he wasn’t in bed with her.)
Tuesdays: Jim sat on the patio. Shirtless. He mostly flipped through books or spent the time on his laptop, but often he just sat there with sunglasses on, basking in the semi-tropical sun. Again, Jim had an audience, this time joined by the people across the pond at the back of his house, who were elated to finally be included in the rapidly-growing sport of Kirk-watching. He did it mostly in the early afternoon, when the sun was still high in the sky, but soon to begin its descent down into the Earth.
So, you know, Leo got off work early in the morning, got some rest, and then woke up to see Jim Kirk reading in the sun. He was a great indicator of time, after all: if Jim wasn’t out when Leo came to, then he had a few more hours to sleep (or wait for Jim to come out onto the deck), or Jim had already gone inside and he was late for work. He was like a human sundial, and that was the only reason why Leo watched him.
Wednesdays-Fridays: Jim disappeared during these days. At first Leo wasn’t sure where, but he wasn’t about to go and ask the guy. How exactly would he go about phrasing that question? “Hey, I’ve noticed, through stalker-like observation, that you don’t come home until Friday night. Where do you go during that time?”
Not a chance.
So Wednesdays through Fridays, Leo spent his time working and eating and sleeping with... oh, right, he had a wife. This wasn’t metaphorically “sleeping with”, unfortunately for Leo. Usually they’d just climb into bed at the end of the day and literally fall asleep. Whoever said that sex ended with marriage was certainly right, in this scenario.
The few overtures he’d tried usually had Jocelyn complaining that she was tired, or that she had a headache, or maybe she was just stressed. So he’d settled into the rather unfulfilling routine of getting himself off in the morning shower. All too often, fleeting images of blonde hair and blue eyes and a muscular physique popped into his head during those times, only to be consciously shoved away.
It was only after a few months when he learned where Jim went those three days out of the week. Leo’d been home that night, and Jocelyn had been visiting one of her friends from the country club again. Jim had shown up on his door and spoken the first words he’d heard from him since Leo had welcomed him.
“I hear you’re a doctor?” Jim shot Leo a weak smile, its beauty tarnished slightly by the blood dripping down his face.
“Jesus Christ!” He pulled Jim into the house and set him down gently on a chair at the kitchen table. He ran back up to his office, where he kept some extra medical supplies from the hospital, and returned to find Jim slumped up against the table. Leo snapped on his gloves and began to work.
“What did you do to yourself, kid?” He busied himself with cleaning Jim’s wound. It was actually mostly superficial, despite the heavy bloodflow. Probably wouldn’t even need real stitches, let alone leave a scar.
“M’not a kid,” Jim muttered in a tired voice. “I’m a photographer.”
And suddenly the name clicked, and everything made sense. “You’re that Jim Kirk? From National Geographic?”
Jim nodded, then winced at the action. “That’s m’name,” he mumbled.
Well, then. He was in the presence of a legend, wasn’t he? Jim Kirk was the winner of a wide spectrum of photojournalism awards across the world. You name it, he’d probably won it at some point. The most important subjects, and topics, the best angles and shots… his keen eye was said to catch every one of them. Not only that, Jim Kirk didn’t stray from warzones and conflict like most journalists, who were unwilling to risk their lives to cover the truth. No, Jim Kirk went straight to the heart of the matter and told it like it was, while bombs burst overhead and bullets whizzed past his ears. He was practically a household name.
“What’s a guy like you doing in a town like this?” Leo muttered, more to himself then to Jim. He’d cleaned away most of the blood and now set to the task of closing up the wound with a liquid adhesive. “Better yet, why the hell were you bleeding out on my doorstep?”
“Don’t like hospitals,” was Jim’s reply. “Just got back from an assignment,” he pointed at his head, here, indicating that he’d probably been injured on the job, “and some of the neighbors’ve said you had medical training. As for living here… well, needed to set up base somewhere, right?”
They were silent for a few moments as Leo applied the adhesive to Jim’s forehead. Jim didn’t wince at the pain, nor did he close his eyes as Leo worked. Instead, he stared up at Leo with those impossibly blue eyes of his. “You’ve got an accent. Southern, but not from around here. What’s a guy like you doing in a town like this?”
Leo couldn’t help but laugh. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”
“That’s why I make a great photographer.”
“I’ll bet. No, I’m from Georgia. After we got married, Jocelyn-my wife-she wanted to moved down here to Florida. Said she wanted to get in an up-and-coming community, wanted to be part of the crowd, you know? Reminded me of high school, but it’s what she wanted.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it.”
Leo avoided Jim’s eyes as he stripped off his gloves and moved to throw them in the trashcan. “Had to sell most of the family land, the home… even the horses, just to move into this overpriced shithole.” He blinked his surprised-he’d never told anyone that. It was the closest he’d ever gotten to telling someone that he felt a little trapped, in this crowded suburbia, full of retirees and plastic people. “Don’t tell Joce I called this place a shithole. She’d eat me alive.”
“That’s dedication.” Jim’s voice was quiet. “You gave up everything, huh?”
Leo nodded, still avoiding Jim’s gaze. He rearranged the items in his medical kit in an unnecessary fashion. “Yeah, well, I suppose that’s what love is: when you’re willing to give up everything but your bones for that one special person, right?”
There was silence again, and Leo finally turned to look at Jim. The other man’s eyes were on the floor. He looked distant, and almost gloomy. “Right,” Jim finally responded.
He looked up, then, and suddenly he was all smiles again. “Thanks, Bones.” He stood, gave Leo a firm pat on the shoulder and a small salute, and then he left.
It was the last time he spoke to Jim for months.
Saturday: Saturday was the big day. Leo lived for his surgery, and for Saturdays. Because on Saturdays, Jim would bring a lucky lad or lady home for the night. This activity was also, unsurprisingly, shirtless.
It always started the same. Leo would rush back home, give Jocelyn a peck hello, and then wait in anticipation up in his study. Jim had never put the curtains or blind up on his bedroom window, and it appeared that he never would.
Vaguely, at the back of his head, Leo realized that this was really fucking wrong. He was being gross and sick and voyeuristic, and he had a wife, for Christ’s sake!
That didn’t stop him from watching Jim assume a variety of interesting positions with his conquests. It certainly didn’t stop him from sitting there with bated breath, watching as Jim guided each man or woman to orgasm, or was brought to that point by his lover. And it didn’t stop him from letting a hand creep down to the zipper of his pants and stroking his cock in time with Jim’s thrusts.
But it also didn’t stop him from feeling guilty. God, did he feel guilty, each time he finally came in unison with Jim, albeit twenty feet away. He’d feel so fucking guilty that he’d stay in his office for an extra hour or so, berating himself for his stupidity, and then he’d climb into bed with Jocelyn and sleep facing the wall. How could he look at her, or even hold her, when he’d just been jacking off to what was essentially free, live porn?
He disgusted himself… and yet, every Saturday, he came back for more.
__
Leo spent so much time watching Jim that he didn’t even notice that his marriage was falling apart until Jocelyn pointed it out to him.
“Leo, I’m moving into my mother’s house,” she said one day over breakfast.
“Sure, Joce- what?” He’d been in the middle prying a toaster waffle from the depths of the mechanical contraption that held it hostage, and her sudden admission he prompted him to stick his hand into the still-hot grid. He wrenched it out and immediately went to run it under the tap. “Fuck!”
“Yeah, about that. You know those times I’ve gone to see the girls from the country club? I’ve actually been sleeping with Dr. Prury. You know him.” Jocelyn had always been rather blunt.
Leo nodded weakly. He felt his mind and his body going numb, except for the pain in his burnt hand. “Runs the ER, right?”
“Yes.” Jocelyn took a final sip of her orange juice before standing and moving toward the door, where Leo realized she’d placed an armada of packed bags. How could he not have noticed? “Dr. Prury is an expert on triage in emergency situations. He knows how to separate significant damage from an inconsequential injury. He knows how to pay attention to what’s important.”
She picked up her bags and moved them to the car, and then she drove out of the driveway and out of his life.
She never did any more than say those words before she left. Never laid a hand on him. Her words felt like a slap to the face, nonetheless. Even four hours after she’d left, he’d still had his head down on the kitchen table. He still felt the sting of her speech against his cheek, and against his heart.
__
It didn’t take too long for the word to spread that Jocelyn Hatfield had left Leonard McCoy because he’d paid more attention to the next door neighbor than to her. The neighborhood wasn’t small, but it was connected. Whispering Oaks was completely devoid of anything even vaguely resembling an oak tree, but it was, unfortunately, full of a shitload of whispering. So Leo wasn’t surprised, really, when Jim showed up at his door about two months after Jocelyn had left.
He hadn’t descended into drunken misery, like much of the neighborhood had hypothesized. He hadn’t gone on a self-mutilation spree, and hadn’t thrown himself into his work (well, any more than he already did). He’d continued on, the same as he always did. He showed up to work, did his job, went home and finished up excess paperwork, and went to bed. There were two exceptions to his routine.
One: The bed was depressingly cold without the warmth of Jocelyn’s body next to him.
Two: His days were now completely devoid of Kirk-watching.
Leo continued on, as though things were the same, but inside he was falling apart. He was sure he had loved Jocelyn, sure that she had loved him, but everything was blurring together. If he’d loved her, why had he spent so much time ignoring her in favor of looking out a stupid window? If she’d loved him, why hadn’t she given him a chance to rectify his mistake? If they’d loved each other, why hadn’t they tried to make it work?
Leo wanted to pin the blame on Jocelyn, on Jim, on anybody and everybody, but when it came right down to it, he knew it was mostly his fault. He’d become obsessed. Jocelyn hadn’t made any attempt to stick around and try to sort things out, but really, who could blame her? He was a pitiful man, with a crush on that bordered on creepy, on a man who hardly knew he existed. Leo excised Kirk-watching from his daily activities, but he didn’t do more than call Jocelyn to find out that she’d moved safely, that she was okay. Because in his mind, he didn’t deserve Joce, and he didn’t deserve the sick pleasure he got out of watching Jim perform day to day tasks.
The divorce papers came a month into their separation. He gave her the house, because everywhere he looked he saw evidence of his betrayal and his failure. He gave her everything, because he didn’t deserve to keep anything.
So when he opened the door to find Jim on a sunny day two months after Jocelyn’s departure, he was disgusted by the sudden heat of desire that flushed through his body. “Kirk,” he acknowledged, voice quiet and polite.
“Jim,” Jim corrected. “Listen. This is my fault.”
Leo resisted the urge to let out a cackle. “No. No, this isn’t anybody’s fault but mine, Jim.” Still polite, but now his voice was strained. He could see the neighbors across the street peeking through the windows in the master bathroom. “I think you should go.”
“No, it is my fault,” Jim persisted. His voice sounded pleading. “I knew you were watching. I saw you the first time, and I kept doing what I was doing because… I don’t know, I guess I liked it. You, watching. God, that’s pathetic, isn’t it?” He threw one arm across his face and sagged against the door frame.
“Exhibitionism versus voyeurism. I’m not sure which is worse,” Leo said dryly.
“I think we’re both pretty bad.” Jim shifted uncomfortably, and Leo was reminded of his first meeting with Jim months earlier, where he’d stood in the exact same position, looking just as uncomfortable. Except that he hadn’t said these words: “Can I come in?”
“No,” was the automatic response, but Jim pushed past him and entered the house, anyway. His eyes scanned across the kitchen and the living room, where boxes were piled against the walls and across the floors. “Moving out?”
“Yeah. I gave Joce the house.” Jim looked a bit confused, so he elaborated. “We’re getting divorced.”
”Shit. Really?” Leo nodded, and Jim went a bit pale at that. “I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’d say it was inevitable. She was already going at it with someone else, and I was otherwise occupied.” ’With watching you’, were the unspoken words that didn’t really need to be voiced. After all, Jim had known he was putting on a show. That was the whole reason why he’d done it. Leo turned away from Jim and climbed the stair to the bedroom, where he had been putting away the few things that held any importance to him. Soft footsteps behind him alerted Leo that, yes, Jim was following him to his room.
“Well…” They’d reached the master bedroom, and Leo resumed folding his clothes and stacking them in his suitcases. “Now you’ve really lost everything, haven’t you?” Jim’s voice was soft, but almost a bit playful.
Leo spun around and shot the other man a glare. “Well, thanks, Captain Obvious. Way to make me feel better.”
“I prefer ‘Captain Kirk.’” Jim had a small smile on his face now. “I’m just saying that, by your definition, you’re in love with me.”
Well, that certainly came out of left field. “I don’t follow.”
“’Love is when you’re willing to give up everything but your bones for that one special person.’ You said it yourself.”
“One, Jim: this isn’t exactly the kind of situation I was talking about when I said that was what love’s all about. Two: this isn’t love I’ve got for you. It’s obsession. It’s a horrible, sickening obsession that I’m going to try my hardest to get rid of when I get back to Georgia.”
Jim stepped forward, and Leo step backward at the same time, almost subconsciously.
“What if I don’t want you to go back to Georgia?” Another step. “And what if I don’t want you to get rid of this obsession?”
“It’s not really your choice.” Leo tried to appear firm with that statement, but his voice sounded shaky with want and need. He backed up again and fuck, the back of his knees were already against the bed. How the hell did he end up in the kind of story where that shit always happened?
Jim stepped forward again and in one swift movement, he had pushed Leo down onto the bed and climbed on top of him. He dropped his head slowly, at an almost agonizing pace, until their lips were only millimeters apart and Leo’s heart was pounding painfully against his chest. And then he said: “Does your wife own the bed?”
Again, out of left field. “W-what?” Leo managed to stutter.
Jim gave a small smirk. “I asked you if you gave your wife the bed. In the divorce.”
Leo wracked his disoriented mind for what had been divvied up as his and hers, and Jim settled his hips on top of Leo’s and gave a teasing little thrust. “Y-yes!” Leo gasped out. “I mean, yeah, I gave her the bed.”
“Alright, then. Let’s make some memories for her.” And with that, Jim dropped those few extra millimeters and pressed his lips against Leo’s.
God, it was months of burning desire and need and lust all rolled up together and expressed in one deep, monumental moment the stretched from second to minutes to hours, days, and years. Jim was against him and suddenly, he was inside him, all hot and slick against his tongue. Leo let him push deeper and deeper still, because he was tired of fighting his attraction, tired of denying the fact that he wanted this. That he needed this.
He couldn’t help but feel embarrassed at the whimper of protest he made when they finally surfaced for air. Jim simply gave him a coy smile before slipping a hand down the front of Leo’s jeans and giving the older man’s cock a firm squeeze. Leo’s hips bucked up against Jim, and they grinded together in one brief moment of ecstasy that threatened to overtake him altogether.
He might have shouted a few nonsensical praises lauding Jim’s sexual prowess at that point, but it was hard to really remember anything at all, when Jim was suckling at his neck, then at his nipples, through his shirt, and then finally at the inside of his thighs. (When had his pants come off? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this-oh God, yes.) His clenched at the mattress, devoid of sheets, thrust his head back and squeeze his eyes shut as a kaleidoscope of pleasure clouded his vision.
Jim moved a little closer to his member and let a breath of warm air glide across it as he whispered, “I’ve wanted to do this since you brought me that Jello.”
All Leo could think of as Jim proceeded to wrap those full lips around his cock was ‘Fuck, I need to buy more Jello.’
He had been right, so fucking right, about Jim being skilled at this, because it felt like all of him was encased in a heavy, wet warmth that had no beginning and no end. He shuddered and moaned and clenched even harder at the mattress to keep from thrusting upward into Jim’s mouth. Jim took even more of him into his mouth and sent his tongue traveling down Leo’s length before coming back up to circle about his head. It was slow and meticulous, and it was driving him fucking insane.
It wasn’t until Jim began humming, strangely, that Leo finally fell over the edge and succumbed to a brilliant firework show of pleasure. He went still at the very moment he came, then sank, shuddering, against the naked mattress.
He came to his senses what seemed like eons later to find that Jim had been, and was still humming, the Fanfare for the Common Man. Like a fucking victory march.
“Asshole,” Leo muttered. He smacked Jim lightly, and Jim merely chuckled as he drew back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Leo made a move to stand, but his wrist was caught by the Jim’s surprisingly strong grip.
“C’mon, Bones. You’re not going to leave me hanging, are you?” Jim gestured to his burgeoning erection, and Leo gave a sigh. Of course he wasn’t going to leave Jim hanging. That would just be rude, right?
__
Leo figured Jocelyn would probably want to buy a new mattress after everything they’d done last night. Actually, she’d probably want to buy an entirely new bed, seeing as how she’d liked to hang her hats on the bedposts, and Jim and Leo had… well, the posts certainly weren’t hygienic, anymore.
He rolled off the now unbelievably sticky mattress and pulled his pants back on before continuing in the task he’d set out to do yesterday: fold and pack all of his shit before Jocelyn moved back in. He’d only been going at it for a few minutes before he felt someone’s gaze boring into his back. He turned his head slightly to see Jim lying in the mess they’d created on the mattress, blinking lazily at Leo through the light streaming in from the window blinds. It was almost picturesque, in a ‘I’m-getting-divorced-and-I-had-sex-with-the-neighbor-I’ve-been-secretly-ogling-for-the-past-six-months’ sort of way.
“What’re you doing?” Jim asked through a rather loud yawn. He stretched as he said this, and Leo could hear tendons and ligaments pop into place all over the man’s body. “Come back to bed,” he cooed, in a scarily-domestic sounding voice.
“No,” Leo snapped, and because that sounded a bit petulant, he added, “I’ve got to get my stuff ready for the move. The truck’s coming today, and Joce is supposed to move back in tomorrow.”
He packed in silence for a few minutes, before a pair of strong, warm arms suddenly wrapped around his torso.
“You’re still leaving?” Jim’s words fell across his ear in a warm breath, and Leo fought to keep an involuntary shudder from running through him.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jim. Of course I am.” He spoke a little more quietly as he said, “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“Well, that’s simple enough.” The arms around his body tightened until, yes, he was being pulled into a hug. Jim dropped his head on Leo’s shoulder and cocked it slightly so that they could see eye to eye. “Come with me.”
Leo shoved away the small tendril of hope that coiled in his chest at that suggestion. “I can’t, Jim. I just fucked up my marriage because of you. What makes you think I’d follow you to... where are you going, anyway?”
“I go wherever the story takes me. I’ve been doing local shit for the time being, but I can’t stay here forever-wanderlust, and all that.” Jim smiled a wide, sincere smile. “And I know you’d follow me because you’re obsessed with me. You also just asked me where I was going, which means you’re actually interested in knowing my next destination. Finally, we just had sex. It was totally awesome, and I’m pretty sure you’d like to repeat the experience.”
“Asshole,” Leo repeated in a disgruntled tone.
“Fair enough,” Jim said, sounding rather lighthearted despite the name-calling. “More importantly, though, is the fact that you haven’t thrown me off, yet. I didn’t major in psych or anything, but that small detail tells me that you want to keep me close.”
DamnJim Kirk and his unorthodox-but-somewhat-correct psychological analysis. He shrugged Jim off of his shoulder and tried to return to packing. “Sex doesn’t make everything suddenly work out, Jim. I’m still getting divorced, and I’m still pretty fucked up. Nothing has changed.”
“But things can change. Come with me,” Jim repeated.
Then he seemed to pause for a moment, and then his eyes seemed to light up as he changed tactics. “Riddle me this, Dr. McCoy: obsession isn’t healthy, right?
Leo didn’t like where this conversation was suddenly heading. “No,’ he said slowly, “generally, obsessive love is detrimental to both the obsessed individual and the object of their affection.”
“So let’s turn that into something positive, huh?” Jim began to pace around the room, nodding to himself as if his idea was unparalleled in its genius. “Since you’re already halfway there, what with losing everything, let’s make it all the way to love.”
Jim spun on his heel and jabbed a finger in Leo’s direction. “I’m going to make you love me.”
There was a brief moment with a complete absence of sound, which Leo took to reflect on the complete absurdity of his life so far. “You can’t make someone fall in love with you, Jim.”
“I can do anything I want,” Jim replied, a cocky grin on his face. “Besides, you’ve got nowhere else to go. Said so yourself.”
“Stop repeating shit I’ve already said so you can use it to your advantage,” Leo shot over his shoulder, but he could already feel himself giving in. This wrong on so many levels, running off with the man who was essentially the cause of his marriage’s implosion. It was so fucking wrong, so why did it feel so right?
He dropped his head against the suitcase he was packing and struggled to win a losing battle, but eventually want and need managed to suppress rhyme and reason. “Fine. I’ll come with you,” he heard himself say.
“Excellent!” Jim’s arms were suddenly around him again, and he was spun about on the spot so that Jim could press a firm kiss to his lips. Then Jim bounded out of the room and down the stairs, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll schedule tickets for a flight next week! There’s this civil war going on in Asia that I’ve been wanting to cover for ages now!”
Leo groaned, dropped his head back upon his suitcase, and tried not to think about what the fuck he’d just gotten himself in to. Instead, he closed his eyes against the fabric of the clothes he’d been folding and lamented the fact that Jim Kirk had never thought to put up his fucking curtains, that first night he’d moved into Whispering Oaks.
____________
Oh my God, I just realized that this seems like the perfect setup for a ridiculous investigative-photojournalist-team!AU with lead-reporter!Jim, team-medic!Bones, second-in-command!Spock, translator!Uhura, information-man!Chekov, pilot/muscle!Sulu, and technician/cameraman!Scotty. Someone should get on that shit.
Also, fun fact: McCoy would totally be working in this airforce base in Florida… you know, if it wasn’t gone now.
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jim Kirk moves in next door, and the still-married Leonard McCoy is a total peeping tom.
Notes: Written for this prompt at the kink meme. LOL, IDEK what this is. Like, modern-day!AU? Something like that. Also continuity nods to fics that I’ve written before… I've got to get around to finishing "In Which Jim Kirk..." is soon. One last part and I can't figure it out AUGH.
Also note that this marks about 108,000 words and 250+ pages of Star Trek XI fic that's written. Many of those fics aren't even finished, or they're just random ideas that hardly got started. Dear God, it's like some mad ficcing spree.
Unbeta'd, btw.
It was a Saturday when Jim Kirk moved into the subdivision called Whispering Oaks. Leo remembered this because Saturdays were the nights Kirk brought people home, and the day he moved in was the first day McCoy realized that there was something a little… different about the man.
He’d been up late in his tiny office on the second story of his and Jocelyn’s small ranch-style house, finishing up some paperwork for the base’s hospital, and it was only when black spots started to eat at the edges of his vision that he decided that, yeah, maybe it was time to go to bed. So he stood to turn off the glaring fluorescent lights overhead, and that’s when he saw it.
Maybe Kirk didn’t have his curtain up yet. He’d moved in earlier in the day, and had gotten all of his boxes into the house in under an hour. Leo knew this, because Jocelyn had perched herself on the desk in this very office, with a pair of rather useless binoculars (the house was only twenty feet away, for God’s sake), and she’d given Leo a play-by-play of Jim’s every movement.
(“Look at that lamp, Leo, it’s godawful!”
“I really hope he isn’t planning on putting those flamingos on the lawn. I’ll get the homeowner’s association to castrate him if he does!”
“Any man with that amount of Christmas lights is bad news, I’m telling you, Leo.”)
He’d nodded and tried to continue (or, at least, attempt to start) enjoying his day off. She’d finally grown tired of watching the new neighbor, and she’d thrown down the binoculars and gone off to rant to her friends from the country club about the “weird new guy who’s just moved in”.
And now it was late night, and he was looking through the exact same window to see Kirk going at it with two rather well-endowed women, lights on and in perfect view of Leo’s office window.
And damn, was he skilled. It was like he was everywhere at once, pleasing both women simultaneously, and it didn’t look like he was even breaking a sweat. Well, a metaphorical sweat: sure, he was sweating, because c’mon, it was sex, but it all looked very easy to Kirk. The women were writhing on the bed and in the air, but he seemed almost bored.
Leo didn’t even notice that his hand had gone for the binoculars until his view of the whole ordeal was suddenly magnified, and he could see that Kirk did indeed look bored as shit. And then he’d looked up from the woman underneath him, seemed to focus on Leo, and then winked.
Leo slammed the curtains shut, tossed the binoculars across the room, and flew across the hall to the master bedroom, where he promptly changed and dropped into bed next to Jocelyn and stared at the ceiling, waiting for his heart to stop beating a hole into his chest.
He didn’t see, did he?
__
He definitely didn’t see. That was the consensus Leo had reached by the time he’d showered and dressed the next day. The curtains had only been open a peek, just enough for Leo poke the binoculars, through (why, oh why, had he picked up the binoculars?), and it had been pitch black outside. There was no way Kirk could have seen him. No way.
So when Jocelyn coerced him into visiting Kirk with a gelatin mold in the shape of an oak tree… well, Leo was a little wary of playing the friendly neighbor, but he wasn’t scared or anything.
He adjusted his tie slightly, superfluously, and rang Kirk’s doorbell. He sat only for few seconds before the door swung open to reveal the new neighbor.
Kirk was shirtless, wearing a pair of damp jeans and running a towel through sunstreaked blond hair. It appeared that he’d just gotten out of the shower. And, fuck, he was all glistening and wet and gorgeous, with a well-defined, muscled chest and torso and dazzling blue eyes set in a equally attractive face and fuck, Leo was staring, wasn’t he?
He definitely was, because Kirk was smirking, leaning on the frame of the front door with a hip cocked and one eyebrow arched. Dammit.
Leo cleared his throat and thrust the plate holding the gelatin mold in front of him. “Greetings to Whispering Oaks, courtesy of the homeowner’s association.”
Kirk stared at him for a few moments, dropping his gaze to the wiggling food in front of him, then lifting his eyes to look at Leo again. “Let me guess: the wife send you over?”
Leo shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. She’s the secretary for the association in her free time.” He paused, and figured that he might as well introduce himself. “Leonard McCoy.” He spared a hand from holding the plate in front of him, and Kirk shook it.
“Jim Kirk, but you probably already know that.” He flashed Leo a brilliant smile.
The name sounded familiar, just as it had when Jocelyn had first told him who was going to be renting the empty house next door. But God, he was distracting. What was Leo here for, again? Oh, right. The gelatin. And now his job was done. “Uh, yeah. Listen, Mr. Kirk--”
“Jim.” Jim blinked those blue eyes at Leo, and crossed his arms over his naked, wet chest, still smiling. “Call me Jim.”
Okay. Whatever. Leo was late for work, and every second he spent in the company of Jim Kirk made him feel ten times more awkward, like he was back in high school and trying not to take a peek in the shower rooms. “Sure, Jim. See you later.”
He shoved the plate into Jim’s hands and darted across the lawn (grass be damned) to his car, where he jumped in and sped off as fast as the speed limit would allow. Which, at ten mph, was not very fast at all.
__
Leo had always known that he was a switch-hitter. It’d felt so natural in high school, and then in college, that he’d never really questioned it. But when he’d met Jocelyn, he’d realized that his time for fooling around with guys (and girls, too) was over. Marriage was one big step, one he was willing to take, because Leo was in love with Jocelyn and, above all, loyal. Cheating? He’d never even considered it.
Not until Jim Kirk, that is.
Jim threw a wrench into every plan he’d ever made for his marriage with Jocelyn. It was bizarre and, frankly, a little scary how much Leo wanted to be the lucky man or woman that Jim brought home every Saturday night. Because, apparently, Jim was a switcher-hitter, too, and had no qualms with displaying that fact. He’d hit on pretty much everyone at the meetings of the homeowner’s association (much to Jocelyn’s horror and much of the community’s embarrassed delight). He’d probably slept with anyone in the neighborhood who was of age and wasn’t married. And probably some of those who were.
He also had a schedule, one that Leo quickly became accustomed to:
Sundays: Sundays were basically identical to the day that Leo had given Jim the Jello mold. He got up, went to work, and then came back to find Jim lazing about on porch, if he wasn't inside already. Maybe Leo shouldn't have started watching Jim from the hidden safety of his curtains on the second story, but someone had to tell him to go inside if it started to rain, right? The kid was liable to fall asleep in the sun, and then it might start pouring, suddenly, what with it being hurricane season and all, and then he'd get sick and die, any nobody would ever know because nobody had been watching.
So of course Leo took the initiative in watching Jim. It was for his own good, after all.
Mondays: Jim spent the earliest hours of the day, from eight to ten, mowing his lawn. Shirtless. The hot Florida sun would beat down upon him, covering his body with a thin sheen of sweat. Jim would push the lawn mower from one end of the lawn to the other, pausing only occasionally to wipe at his face and smile up at the sun. Leo knew this because he left early in the morning on Mondays. Jim had waved to him as he pulled out of the driveway, and he’d given a hesitant wave back.
Most of the residents of the houses surrounding Jim’s had taken to watching for Jim’s weekly lawncare sessions. It said a lot, perhaps, that in a neighborhood full of people who paid workers to trim and pesticide their lawns to green perfection, Jim Kirk was apparently the only person who was willing to get his hands dirty, to take matters into this own hands. That, or perhaps the rest of the residents of Whispering Oaks were just as hot for Jim as Leo was.
When the nurse at the hospital who organized the duty roster asked someone to take the graveyard shift on Mondays, Leo figured he should volunteer. Not because he wanted to spend the mornings watching Jim from his home office or anything. No, he just wanted to spend Monday mornings sleeping in. With Jocelyn. His wife.
(Even if he wasn’t in bed with her.)
Tuesdays: Jim sat on the patio. Shirtless. He mostly flipped through books or spent the time on his laptop, but often he just sat there with sunglasses on, basking in the semi-tropical sun. Again, Jim had an audience, this time joined by the people across the pond at the back of his house, who were elated to finally be included in the rapidly-growing sport of Kirk-watching. He did it mostly in the early afternoon, when the sun was still high in the sky, but soon to begin its descent down into the Earth.
So, you know, Leo got off work early in the morning, got some rest, and then woke up to see Jim Kirk reading in the sun. He was a great indicator of time, after all: if Jim wasn’t out when Leo came to, then he had a few more hours to sleep (or wait for Jim to come out onto the deck), or Jim had already gone inside and he was late for work. He was like a human sundial, and that was the only reason why Leo watched him.
Wednesdays-Fridays: Jim disappeared during these days. At first Leo wasn’t sure where, but he wasn’t about to go and ask the guy. How exactly would he go about phrasing that question? “Hey, I’ve noticed, through stalker-like observation, that you don’t come home until Friday night. Where do you go during that time?”
Not a chance.
So Wednesdays through Fridays, Leo spent his time working and eating and sleeping with... oh, right, he had a wife. This wasn’t metaphorically “sleeping with”, unfortunately for Leo. Usually they’d just climb into bed at the end of the day and literally fall asleep. Whoever said that sex ended with marriage was certainly right, in this scenario.
The few overtures he’d tried usually had Jocelyn complaining that she was tired, or that she had a headache, or maybe she was just stressed. So he’d settled into the rather unfulfilling routine of getting himself off in the morning shower. All too often, fleeting images of blonde hair and blue eyes and a muscular physique popped into his head during those times, only to be consciously shoved away.
It was only after a few months when he learned where Jim went those three days out of the week. Leo’d been home that night, and Jocelyn had been visiting one of her friends from the country club again. Jim had shown up on his door and spoken the first words he’d heard from him since Leo had welcomed him.
“I hear you’re a doctor?” Jim shot Leo a weak smile, its beauty tarnished slightly by the blood dripping down his face.
“Jesus Christ!” He pulled Jim into the house and set him down gently on a chair at the kitchen table. He ran back up to his office, where he kept some extra medical supplies from the hospital, and returned to find Jim slumped up against the table. Leo snapped on his gloves and began to work.
“What did you do to yourself, kid?” He busied himself with cleaning Jim’s wound. It was actually mostly superficial, despite the heavy bloodflow. Probably wouldn’t even need real stitches, let alone leave a scar.
“M’not a kid,” Jim muttered in a tired voice. “I’m a photographer.”
And suddenly the name clicked, and everything made sense. “You’re that Jim Kirk? From National Geographic?”
Jim nodded, then winced at the action. “That’s m’name,” he mumbled.
Well, then. He was in the presence of a legend, wasn’t he? Jim Kirk was the winner of a wide spectrum of photojournalism awards across the world. You name it, he’d probably won it at some point. The most important subjects, and topics, the best angles and shots… his keen eye was said to catch every one of them. Not only that, Jim Kirk didn’t stray from warzones and conflict like most journalists, who were unwilling to risk their lives to cover the truth. No, Jim Kirk went straight to the heart of the matter and told it like it was, while bombs burst overhead and bullets whizzed past his ears. He was practically a household name.
“What’s a guy like you doing in a town like this?” Leo muttered, more to himself then to Jim. He’d cleaned away most of the blood and now set to the task of closing up the wound with a liquid adhesive. “Better yet, why the hell were you bleeding out on my doorstep?”
“Don’t like hospitals,” was Jim’s reply. “Just got back from an assignment,” he pointed at his head, here, indicating that he’d probably been injured on the job, “and some of the neighbors’ve said you had medical training. As for living here… well, needed to set up base somewhere, right?”
They were silent for a few moments as Leo applied the adhesive to Jim’s forehead. Jim didn’t wince at the pain, nor did he close his eyes as Leo worked. Instead, he stared up at Leo with those impossibly blue eyes of his. “You’ve got an accent. Southern, but not from around here. What’s a guy like you doing in a town like this?”
Leo couldn’t help but laugh. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”
“That’s why I make a great photographer.”
“I’ll bet. No, I’m from Georgia. After we got married, Jocelyn-my wife-she wanted to moved down here to Florida. Said she wanted to get in an up-and-coming community, wanted to be part of the crowd, you know? Reminded me of high school, but it’s what she wanted.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it.”
Leo avoided Jim’s eyes as he stripped off his gloves and moved to throw them in the trashcan. “Had to sell most of the family land, the home… even the horses, just to move into this overpriced shithole.” He blinked his surprised-he’d never told anyone that. It was the closest he’d ever gotten to telling someone that he felt a little trapped, in this crowded suburbia, full of retirees and plastic people. “Don’t tell Joce I called this place a shithole. She’d eat me alive.”
“That’s dedication.” Jim’s voice was quiet. “You gave up everything, huh?”
Leo nodded, still avoiding Jim’s gaze. He rearranged the items in his medical kit in an unnecessary fashion. “Yeah, well, I suppose that’s what love is: when you’re willing to give up everything but your bones for that one special person, right?”
There was silence again, and Leo finally turned to look at Jim. The other man’s eyes were on the floor. He looked distant, and almost gloomy. “Right,” Jim finally responded.
He looked up, then, and suddenly he was all smiles again. “Thanks, Bones.” He stood, gave Leo a firm pat on the shoulder and a small salute, and then he left.
It was the last time he spoke to Jim for months.
Saturday: Saturday was the big day. Leo lived for his surgery, and for Saturdays. Because on Saturdays, Jim would bring a lucky lad or lady home for the night. This activity was also, unsurprisingly, shirtless.
It always started the same. Leo would rush back home, give Jocelyn a peck hello, and then wait in anticipation up in his study. Jim had never put the curtains or blind up on his bedroom window, and it appeared that he never would.
Vaguely, at the back of his head, Leo realized that this was really fucking wrong. He was being gross and sick and voyeuristic, and he had a wife, for Christ’s sake!
That didn’t stop him from watching Jim assume a variety of interesting positions with his conquests. It certainly didn’t stop him from sitting there with bated breath, watching as Jim guided each man or woman to orgasm, or was brought to that point by his lover. And it didn’t stop him from letting a hand creep down to the zipper of his pants and stroking his cock in time with Jim’s thrusts.
But it also didn’t stop him from feeling guilty. God, did he feel guilty, each time he finally came in unison with Jim, albeit twenty feet away. He’d feel so fucking guilty that he’d stay in his office for an extra hour or so, berating himself for his stupidity, and then he’d climb into bed with Jocelyn and sleep facing the wall. How could he look at her, or even hold her, when he’d just been jacking off to what was essentially free, live porn?
He disgusted himself… and yet, every Saturday, he came back for more.
__
Leo spent so much time watching Jim that he didn’t even notice that his marriage was falling apart until Jocelyn pointed it out to him.
“Leo, I’m moving into my mother’s house,” she said one day over breakfast.
“Sure, Joce- what?” He’d been in the middle prying a toaster waffle from the depths of the mechanical contraption that held it hostage, and her sudden admission he prompted him to stick his hand into the still-hot grid. He wrenched it out and immediately went to run it under the tap. “Fuck!”
“Yeah, about that. You know those times I’ve gone to see the girls from the country club? I’ve actually been sleeping with Dr. Prury. You know him.” Jocelyn had always been rather blunt.
Leo nodded weakly. He felt his mind and his body going numb, except for the pain in his burnt hand. “Runs the ER, right?”
“Yes.” Jocelyn took a final sip of her orange juice before standing and moving toward the door, where Leo realized she’d placed an armada of packed bags. How could he not have noticed? “Dr. Prury is an expert on triage in emergency situations. He knows how to separate significant damage from an inconsequential injury. He knows how to pay attention to what’s important.”
She picked up her bags and moved them to the car, and then she drove out of the driveway and out of his life.
She never did any more than say those words before she left. Never laid a hand on him. Her words felt like a slap to the face, nonetheless. Even four hours after she’d left, he’d still had his head down on the kitchen table. He still felt the sting of her speech against his cheek, and against his heart.
__
It didn’t take too long for the word to spread that Jocelyn Hatfield had left Leonard McCoy because he’d paid more attention to the next door neighbor than to her. The neighborhood wasn’t small, but it was connected. Whispering Oaks was completely devoid of anything even vaguely resembling an oak tree, but it was, unfortunately, full of a shitload of whispering. So Leo wasn’t surprised, really, when Jim showed up at his door about two months after Jocelyn had left.
He hadn’t descended into drunken misery, like much of the neighborhood had hypothesized. He hadn’t gone on a self-mutilation spree, and hadn’t thrown himself into his work (well, any more than he already did). He’d continued on, the same as he always did. He showed up to work, did his job, went home and finished up excess paperwork, and went to bed. There were two exceptions to his routine.
One: The bed was depressingly cold without the warmth of Jocelyn’s body next to him.
Two: His days were now completely devoid of Kirk-watching.
Leo continued on, as though things were the same, but inside he was falling apart. He was sure he had loved Jocelyn, sure that she had loved him, but everything was blurring together. If he’d loved her, why had he spent so much time ignoring her in favor of looking out a stupid window? If she’d loved him, why hadn’t she given him a chance to rectify his mistake? If they’d loved each other, why hadn’t they tried to make it work?
Leo wanted to pin the blame on Jocelyn, on Jim, on anybody and everybody, but when it came right down to it, he knew it was mostly his fault. He’d become obsessed. Jocelyn hadn’t made any attempt to stick around and try to sort things out, but really, who could blame her? He was a pitiful man, with a crush on that bordered on creepy, on a man who hardly knew he existed. Leo excised Kirk-watching from his daily activities, but he didn’t do more than call Jocelyn to find out that she’d moved safely, that she was okay. Because in his mind, he didn’t deserve Joce, and he didn’t deserve the sick pleasure he got out of watching Jim perform day to day tasks.
The divorce papers came a month into their separation. He gave her the house, because everywhere he looked he saw evidence of his betrayal and his failure. He gave her everything, because he didn’t deserve to keep anything.
So when he opened the door to find Jim on a sunny day two months after Jocelyn’s departure, he was disgusted by the sudden heat of desire that flushed through his body. “Kirk,” he acknowledged, voice quiet and polite.
“Jim,” Jim corrected. “Listen. This is my fault.”
Leo resisted the urge to let out a cackle. “No. No, this isn’t anybody’s fault but mine, Jim.” Still polite, but now his voice was strained. He could see the neighbors across the street peeking through the windows in the master bathroom. “I think you should go.”
“No, it is my fault,” Jim persisted. His voice sounded pleading. “I knew you were watching. I saw you the first time, and I kept doing what I was doing because… I don’t know, I guess I liked it. You, watching. God, that’s pathetic, isn’t it?” He threw one arm across his face and sagged against the door frame.
“Exhibitionism versus voyeurism. I’m not sure which is worse,” Leo said dryly.
“I think we’re both pretty bad.” Jim shifted uncomfortably, and Leo was reminded of his first meeting with Jim months earlier, where he’d stood in the exact same position, looking just as uncomfortable. Except that he hadn’t said these words: “Can I come in?”
“No,” was the automatic response, but Jim pushed past him and entered the house, anyway. His eyes scanned across the kitchen and the living room, where boxes were piled against the walls and across the floors. “Moving out?”
“Yeah. I gave Joce the house.” Jim looked a bit confused, so he elaborated. “We’re getting divorced.”
”Shit. Really?” Leo nodded, and Jim went a bit pale at that. “I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’d say it was inevitable. She was already going at it with someone else, and I was otherwise occupied.” ’With watching you’, were the unspoken words that didn’t really need to be voiced. After all, Jim had known he was putting on a show. That was the whole reason why he’d done it. Leo turned away from Jim and climbed the stair to the bedroom, where he had been putting away the few things that held any importance to him. Soft footsteps behind him alerted Leo that, yes, Jim was following him to his room.
“Well…” They’d reached the master bedroom, and Leo resumed folding his clothes and stacking them in his suitcases. “Now you’ve really lost everything, haven’t you?” Jim’s voice was soft, but almost a bit playful.
Leo spun around and shot the other man a glare. “Well, thanks, Captain Obvious. Way to make me feel better.”
“I prefer ‘Captain Kirk.’” Jim had a small smile on his face now. “I’m just saying that, by your definition, you’re in love with me.”
Well, that certainly came out of left field. “I don’t follow.”
“’Love is when you’re willing to give up everything but your bones for that one special person.’ You said it yourself.”
“One, Jim: this isn’t exactly the kind of situation I was talking about when I said that was what love’s all about. Two: this isn’t love I’ve got for you. It’s obsession. It’s a horrible, sickening obsession that I’m going to try my hardest to get rid of when I get back to Georgia.”
Jim stepped forward, and Leo step backward at the same time, almost subconsciously.
“What if I don’t want you to go back to Georgia?” Another step. “And what if I don’t want you to get rid of this obsession?”
“It’s not really your choice.” Leo tried to appear firm with that statement, but his voice sounded shaky with want and need. He backed up again and fuck, the back of his knees were already against the bed. How the hell did he end up in the kind of story where that shit always happened?
Jim stepped forward again and in one swift movement, he had pushed Leo down onto the bed and climbed on top of him. He dropped his head slowly, at an almost agonizing pace, until their lips were only millimeters apart and Leo’s heart was pounding painfully against his chest. And then he said: “Does your wife own the bed?”
Again, out of left field. “W-what?” Leo managed to stutter.
Jim gave a small smirk. “I asked you if you gave your wife the bed. In the divorce.”
Leo wracked his disoriented mind for what had been divvied up as his and hers, and Jim settled his hips on top of Leo’s and gave a teasing little thrust. “Y-yes!” Leo gasped out. “I mean, yeah, I gave her the bed.”
“Alright, then. Let’s make some memories for her.” And with that, Jim dropped those few extra millimeters and pressed his lips against Leo’s.
God, it was months of burning desire and need and lust all rolled up together and expressed in one deep, monumental moment the stretched from second to minutes to hours, days, and years. Jim was against him and suddenly, he was inside him, all hot and slick against his tongue. Leo let him push deeper and deeper still, because he was tired of fighting his attraction, tired of denying the fact that he wanted this. That he needed this.
He couldn’t help but feel embarrassed at the whimper of protest he made when they finally surfaced for air. Jim simply gave him a coy smile before slipping a hand down the front of Leo’s jeans and giving the older man’s cock a firm squeeze. Leo’s hips bucked up against Jim, and they grinded together in one brief moment of ecstasy that threatened to overtake him altogether.
He might have shouted a few nonsensical praises lauding Jim’s sexual prowess at that point, but it was hard to really remember anything at all, when Jim was suckling at his neck, then at his nipples, through his shirt, and then finally at the inside of his thighs. (When had his pants come off? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this-oh God, yes.) His clenched at the mattress, devoid of sheets, thrust his head back and squeeze his eyes shut as a kaleidoscope of pleasure clouded his vision.
Jim moved a little closer to his member and let a breath of warm air glide across it as he whispered, “I’ve wanted to do this since you brought me that Jello.”
All Leo could think of as Jim proceeded to wrap those full lips around his cock was ‘Fuck, I need to buy more Jello.’
He had been right, so fucking right, about Jim being skilled at this, because it felt like all of him was encased in a heavy, wet warmth that had no beginning and no end. He shuddered and moaned and clenched even harder at the mattress to keep from thrusting upward into Jim’s mouth. Jim took even more of him into his mouth and sent his tongue traveling down Leo’s length before coming back up to circle about his head. It was slow and meticulous, and it was driving him fucking insane.
It wasn’t until Jim began humming, strangely, that Leo finally fell over the edge and succumbed to a brilliant firework show of pleasure. He went still at the very moment he came, then sank, shuddering, against the naked mattress.
He came to his senses what seemed like eons later to find that Jim had been, and was still humming, the Fanfare for the Common Man. Like a fucking victory march.
“Asshole,” Leo muttered. He smacked Jim lightly, and Jim merely chuckled as he drew back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Leo made a move to stand, but his wrist was caught by the Jim’s surprisingly strong grip.
“C’mon, Bones. You’re not going to leave me hanging, are you?” Jim gestured to his burgeoning erection, and Leo gave a sigh. Of course he wasn’t going to leave Jim hanging. That would just be rude, right?
__
Leo figured Jocelyn would probably want to buy a new mattress after everything they’d done last night. Actually, she’d probably want to buy an entirely new bed, seeing as how she’d liked to hang her hats on the bedposts, and Jim and Leo had… well, the posts certainly weren’t hygienic, anymore.
He rolled off the now unbelievably sticky mattress and pulled his pants back on before continuing in the task he’d set out to do yesterday: fold and pack all of his shit before Jocelyn moved back in. He’d only been going at it for a few minutes before he felt someone’s gaze boring into his back. He turned his head slightly to see Jim lying in the mess they’d created on the mattress, blinking lazily at Leo through the light streaming in from the window blinds. It was almost picturesque, in a ‘I’m-getting-divorced-and-I-had-sex-with-the-neighbor-I’ve-been-secretly-ogling-for-the-past-six-months’ sort of way.
“What’re you doing?” Jim asked through a rather loud yawn. He stretched as he said this, and Leo could hear tendons and ligaments pop into place all over the man’s body. “Come back to bed,” he cooed, in a scarily-domestic sounding voice.
“No,” Leo snapped, and because that sounded a bit petulant, he added, “I’ve got to get my stuff ready for the move. The truck’s coming today, and Joce is supposed to move back in tomorrow.”
He packed in silence for a few minutes, before a pair of strong, warm arms suddenly wrapped around his torso.
“You’re still leaving?” Jim’s words fell across his ear in a warm breath, and Leo fought to keep an involuntary shudder from running through him.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jim. Of course I am.” He spoke a little more quietly as he said, “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“Well, that’s simple enough.” The arms around his body tightened until, yes, he was being pulled into a hug. Jim dropped his head on Leo’s shoulder and cocked it slightly so that they could see eye to eye. “Come with me.”
Leo shoved away the small tendril of hope that coiled in his chest at that suggestion. “I can’t, Jim. I just fucked up my marriage because of you. What makes you think I’d follow you to... where are you going, anyway?”
“I go wherever the story takes me. I’ve been doing local shit for the time being, but I can’t stay here forever-wanderlust, and all that.” Jim smiled a wide, sincere smile. “And I know you’d follow me because you’re obsessed with me. You also just asked me where I was going, which means you’re actually interested in knowing my next destination. Finally, we just had sex. It was totally awesome, and I’m pretty sure you’d like to repeat the experience.”
“Asshole,” Leo repeated in a disgruntled tone.
“Fair enough,” Jim said, sounding rather lighthearted despite the name-calling. “More importantly, though, is the fact that you haven’t thrown me off, yet. I didn’t major in psych or anything, but that small detail tells me that you want to keep me close.”
DamnJim Kirk and his unorthodox-but-somewhat-correct psychological analysis. He shrugged Jim off of his shoulder and tried to return to packing. “Sex doesn’t make everything suddenly work out, Jim. I’m still getting divorced, and I’m still pretty fucked up. Nothing has changed.”
“But things can change. Come with me,” Jim repeated.
Then he seemed to pause for a moment, and then his eyes seemed to light up as he changed tactics. “Riddle me this, Dr. McCoy: obsession isn’t healthy, right?
Leo didn’t like where this conversation was suddenly heading. “No,’ he said slowly, “generally, obsessive love is detrimental to both the obsessed individual and the object of their affection.”
“So let’s turn that into something positive, huh?” Jim began to pace around the room, nodding to himself as if his idea was unparalleled in its genius. “Since you’re already halfway there, what with losing everything, let’s make it all the way to love.”
Jim spun on his heel and jabbed a finger in Leo’s direction. “I’m going to make you love me.”
There was a brief moment with a complete absence of sound, which Leo took to reflect on the complete absurdity of his life so far. “You can’t make someone fall in love with you, Jim.”
“I can do anything I want,” Jim replied, a cocky grin on his face. “Besides, you’ve got nowhere else to go. Said so yourself.”
“Stop repeating shit I’ve already said so you can use it to your advantage,” Leo shot over his shoulder, but he could already feel himself giving in. This wrong on so many levels, running off with the man who was essentially the cause of his marriage’s implosion. It was so fucking wrong, so why did it feel so right?
He dropped his head against the suitcase he was packing and struggled to win a losing battle, but eventually want and need managed to suppress rhyme and reason. “Fine. I’ll come with you,” he heard himself say.
“Excellent!” Jim’s arms were suddenly around him again, and he was spun about on the spot so that Jim could press a firm kiss to his lips. Then Jim bounded out of the room and down the stairs, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll schedule tickets for a flight next week! There’s this civil war going on in Asia that I’ve been wanting to cover for ages now!”
Leo groaned, dropped his head back upon his suitcase, and tried not to think about what the fuck he’d just gotten himself in to. Instead, he closed his eyes against the fabric of the clothes he’d been folding and lamented the fact that Jim Kirk had never thought to put up his fucking curtains, that first night he’d moved into Whispering Oaks.
____________
Oh my God, I just realized that this seems like the perfect setup for a ridiculous investigative-photojournalist-team!AU with lead-reporter!Jim, team-medic!Bones, second-in-command!Spock, translator!Uhura, information-man!Chekov, pilot/muscle!Sulu, and technician/cameraman!Scotty. Someone should get on that shit.
Also, fun fact: McCoy would totally be working in this airforce base in Florida… you know, if it wasn’t gone now.