Star Trek AOS, McCoy/Kirk, PG-13. "Tender Loving Don't Mention It"
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Prompt: "TLC - Bones has had a long, miserable day (exams, surgeries, flight sims - your pick). All Jim wants to do is take care of him." The prompt comes from the jim_and_bones Sweethearts challenge, and my assignment was to write it from Jim's POV.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: some swearing. Nothing else, I don't think, but feel free to point out anything you think ought to be warned for.
Word Count: ~5000
A/N: the fun thing about this challenge is that each prompt gets written twice, with one writer getting McCoy and the other Jim's POV. The McCoy to this fic's Jim is abigail89's Another Day in Paradise.
Tender Loving Don't Mention It
"Mountain Man McCoy limping into town had always been a signal for folk to hide the faint of heart and the liquor," Jim called across the shuttle hangar.
The other cadets who'd been waiting like him laughed, everyone watching their friends disembark from the shuttle that had returned from Starfleet compulsory survival training. There was an edge to the laughter - the two weeks in the wilderness told very visibly on the returning cadets, all in stages of haggard and gaunt. It was likely more people were venting shock rather than finding Jim's joke all that funny, but at least it didn't look like anyone was really freaking out.
Not one of the cadets back from the training cracked a smile as they trudged across the hangar and only Bones showed signs of having heard anything at all, despite the fact that Jim had pitched his voice to carry. Well, Bones and his beard. Clearly Bones was one of those people whose hair reacted vigorously when the suppressants ran out. Bristling and looming, man and beard both turned to scan the waiting crowd, in severe need of a trim and hair product before they could have a mutually beneficial relationship. Then again, the shadowing effect of all that hair did lend a handy gimlet pointedness to the light in Bones's look.
"Narration, Jim?" he yelled. "Narration?"
"That one remarkable summer day that ended his long absence was no exception!"
"Try a polite 'hello'!"
The only problem with Bones (beard aside) looked to be exhaustion, his feet barely lifting from the ground as he walked. He hadn't been in touch even though cadets got their padds back - with temporary access to most of Starfleet's interplanetary comm-networks - as soon as their scheduled time out in the wild ended. For a day or so, Jim had tossed from hand to hand the idea that Bones might have decided that any bad news was his own problem to deal with. News like, say, loss of extremities from frostbite, infection making injuries worsen into something hard to repair, burns from turning over into a campfire while asleep... On the rare occasions Bones got close-mouthed it was never about something good. Seeing him now, in one piece and moving under own steam, was good. Uncomplicatedly so. The nagging anxiety that had preceded it no longer counted at all.
"Leonard. Of course I've got a real hello for you! Your flask back in your room is all filled up. I wouldn't actually hide the liquor - carrying it cross-campus just would have been a bad idea." He grinned, holding his arms open like Bones was going to break into a run over the last five metres to embrace him. "Leonard."
The repetition of his name stopped him dead. A few days prior to the survival course, Bones had raised objections to his nickname and had been unswayed by arguments about how badass it sounded, demanding use of only his real name. Jim had scrupulously given him what he wanted.
He closed the gap between them, watching Bones grow appalled to a degree greater than Jim had ever witnessed before, which was saying a lot. A lot. "Good god. You're still doing that," Bones said, with enough emotion that Jim caught himself giving him another lookover to be sure he wasn't capable of pulling an arm back to take a swing. "And for some reason, I am surprised."
"Leonard, please--" hand over heart "--you have to be aware that I'll listen when you insist on something as firmly as you did - and, Leonard, as loudly."
He kept looking astonished. "At least three kinds of shit you've given me, and I haven't been back ten minutes."
Jim squinted at him, wondering if he should be checking Bones's pupils for dilation. When he'd left he'd been laughing (as much as he ever did) at Jim for acting like a dumbass about the name-thing. "Everybody goes for mandatory check-ups immediately after finishing the course, didn't you? You ought to have given me three kinds of shit back already. And you're kind of listing to the right, there."
Bones turned - to the right, apparently making use of the available momentum - and went for the exit.
"Leonard," Jim called, for the reaction. Bones duly twitched and glared over his shoulder, then kept walking in uncharacteristic silence.
A look around the hangar showed that most of the other cadets had left, with some standing out of the way of the hangar personnel and talking in twos and threes. He didn't know them. The fraught edge in the atmosphere hadn't come to anything - no tears about an injured friend or breakdowns of relief at being back. Nobody had business that could conveniently do with getting into. Okay then, Bones was getting another shot. Touchiness and all.
Jim jogged to catch up, meeting Bones by the door in the dimness outside. The summer day was remarkable only in how mist still lurked around the corners and how low the clouds were. "At least I haven't been calling you Doctor Lieutenant-Commander Leonard McCoy again. And I never used 'Horatio' at all."
"Apology rejected," he snapped. But then he said, "And just go back to calling me 'Bones'."
"Uh-huh, nice try. I have a strong suspicion that you're only going to let me get away with it until you get your reserves back up." It had, however, started to really sink in that he couldn't keep yanking this chain, and he put a casual arm around Bones's shoulders. "How tired are you, anyway?"
"Tired," Bones said on a sigh, and he took the invitation and leaned into Jim's grip. "Just real tired."
Jim arranged himself to provide proper support as Bones rested more weight against him. "I've seen medical shifts take their toll," he said. "That 43-hour shift back in December stands out--" Bones grimaced in agreement "--but this is on a different level. Are you sure you don't need another check-up?"
"Need my bed, that's all."
On his own, Bones might have found it a challenge to keep walking in a straight line and faster than a zombie-shuffle, but he biddably kept up as Jim steered them and stuck to a walking pace. He didn't think Bones would later appreciate being seen looking like a midday drunk for longer than necessary.
"How long are they putting you on recovery leave for?" Jim asked.
"'Til Monday. No hospital shifts this weekend, either."
"Same for everybody else who went on the course?"
"Everybody who didn't do up serious damage."
"I'll get the gossip later. Or from someone else while you rest up," Jim said with a reassuring pat to his chest, and Bones gave a huff of a laugh.
Once they reached the corridor Bones's room was in, Bones sped them up until they reached his bed, and then he barely slowed as he sank down to sit. Then he eyeballed his cadet uniform. "I'm sleeping in this," he announced, and took his padd from the breast pocket and placed it on the bedside table with satisfaction.
"The shoes too?"
His boots got a glare. "No."
Jim went to grab the things he'd left on the desk, since it seemed unlikely that Bones was going to traverse the three steps between desk and bed anytime soon. "Here's an energy drink with electrolytes and nutrients and all kinds of stuff you'd approve of, and your filled-up flask for the more fun welcome back." He placed the drinks on the bedside table. "It's good hooch, too. We're totally splitting what's left in the bottle." Bones continued to look at his boots from galaxies away, doing scans of their unknown composition and hoping for a breakthrough. "You want some help with that? You want help," Jim decided, kneeling.
All Bones did was to motion with his hands in a mini-shrug. If he'd talk it wouldn't feel so weird; it wouldn't feel as much like he needed the help.
At least it didn't smell, Jim thought as he came to terms with peeling off these very normal socks. Not cute lacy ones, not sheer, garter-belted stockings - Starfleet-issue white and entirely the wrong atmosphere. He nudged the footwear out of the way as he straightened so they wouldn't be a tripping hazard.
Bones's eyes were focused on nothing, giving Jim a stern urge to mark him down on life like a high school teacher. You are not doing all that you are capable of, young man! "How are the higher brain functions, Bones?"
"Also no."
"Drink some of the Enerzolt, already."
"What do I need energy for? I'm going to sleep." Gingerly, limb by limb and not committing to too many degrees at once - almost with a sense of ceremony - Bones eased his body onto the bed. He closed his eyes. Looked comatose and bristly.
"I'll be back in the middle of the night to shave that beard off. Kidding," Jim said at the look Bones gave him, eyes opening to hit him with the shock of betrayal. He seemed to actually believe the joke. The man was without any defences, his bullshit detector on the blink - Lieutenant-Commander Doctor Leonard McCoy, a babe in the woods. Jim almost offered to tuck him in. "Tomorrow, man."
*
His morning comms to Bones suggesting places to have a welcome-back lunch went unanswered up to lunchtime. Another try didn't get a response either, so Jim ate at the nearest mess hall with people from the lecture he'd just attended.
They discussed the mini-projects they'd received and had a working lunch of sorts, which was great because it meant everyone was hovering over their padds, giving Jim the opportunity to keep an eye on his message inbox without anyone asking him why he was hovering obsessively over it.
Other people he knew who'd been on the survival course had checked in by now, on their own initiative or after he got in touch - Wilton had sent a mass vid-comm letting his friends know he looked a little different because he'd shed a skin from the stress (and had spent the rest of the course putting up with 'wilting' puns); Ulk was annoyed about missing her sister's birthday party; Lanning had identified every edible plant ever and was looking forward to a good grade. Between them Jim had found out that the worst affected by the course had been two cadets with broken bones and another who'd suffered a bad fever, all currently recuperating in the med centre.
The major information from Bones continued to be: Tired.
No big deal. Any number of other people could be indulging in blissful unconsciousness; the survival course was no joke. Jim didn't even think anything was wrong - Bones would have found the energy to rant for days if he had the slightest suspicion he'd got sick off-planet, and nothing had set off Jim's own instincts.
So Jim wasn't worried, but somehow he was worrying anyway, mind revolving around Bones moving and thinking like a cross between a creaky grandpa and a wide-eyed child. After spending a day thinking up ways for nature to disfigure Bones he seems to be stuck in a mental groove.
As soon as his classmates had all left, he took a brief moment to drop his head onto the table with a thump and let out a low growl. Then he left to hole up in a study carrel, where he worked with determined discipline until his next lecture. He got a lot done on the essay with the closest due date and lined up new sources of research for the one with the furthest - but he also kept looking at his inbox like he was driven by a congenital tic.
It took three more hours before Bones got in touch, and it didn't help.
The vid-comm had been recorded a few minutes ago according to the timestamp and showed half Bones's face, the other half being mashed into a pillow. "Hi. Thanks for ... yesterday?" He was going to hate himself for not thinking to make this comm audio-only. A blink, a look around the room lit by sunlight filtering through the low clouds outside, and then he said in a slightly apologetic tone as he gave up, "Goodnight."
Jim replayed it and watched the fine-lined drooping of Bones's visible eyelid. It was more proof he was all right, even if he'd be better with rest. The fact remained that Bones lay there looking defenceless against no threat at all, and that nothing felt like it needed fighting off.
*
Friday, 4:06 AM: Jim snapped.
His eyes opened and it was immediately clear that it was one of those nights they were going to stay that way. It was also obvious why his brain wouldn't switch off, and what needed to be done about it.
Mindful of his sleeping roommate, he quietly dug his padd out of his discarded uniform on the floor. A few minutes spent finding a good all-night restaurant that did deliveries, and the first phase of the plan was underway. Bones was going to know exactly what hit him. It would be nourishing. It would be comforting. On multiple levels! And maybe then Jim could shake off this possession by the spirit of really, really giving a good goddamn.
He picked vegetable lasagne out of the restaurant's options: a nod to healthy eating, deliciously cheesy, and leftovers would hold up to being reheated. All right, and a salad to be really healthy so the doctor, damn it, would be satisfied.
What next? How far could he take this? ...Jim reached under the bed for the bag he used for toiletries when going to the dorm showers. If nothing else, he could inspire Bones back to perform his normal overreactions.
Hitting his stride, he realised that he might not have to wait until breakfast to go visiting, as Bones might be awake by now. Jim sent a text: Are you awake yet?
He was, because the reply came immediately. Why are you?
Hungry?
Damn it. Yes! A long-ish pause ensued. Jim changed the timing of his delivery order to ASAP, and then Bones commed again. Didn't have anything yesterday except your energy drink, didn't actually realise until now. Pardon as I devour every measly study snack I've got.
Jim replied that he was coming over soon and pulled on tracksuit pants, a hoodie and running shoes by the glow of his padd. His roommate stirred and grunted, but turned over and went back to sleep when Jim mimed Everything's Okay and I'm Apologetic - but Actually Pretty Quiet Too, So No Need to Get Annoyed in the First Place. He'd probably gone overboard with all that. Making a decision had come with an adrenaline high.
When he went to wait for the delivery by the Bay entrance to the grounds, he kept up a conversation that got the cold, middle-of-shift security guard snickering with him. By the time he got to Bones's door, Jim had to remind himself not to knock out a tune on the door while people were sleeping all around.
This settled the last of the worry that had held on: Bones dragging him inside and into a hug and a clap on the back. "Seriously, Jim, why the hell are you awake? And whatever smells like that had better be mine, please."
"Whatever happened to a polite 'hello'?" Jim demanded triumphantly, handing the bag of food over. "Look at you, with your autonomy back. You're independently upright and everything!"
"God, I was out of it." Shaking his head, Bones went to get plates and cutlery - Jim followed like he was on a string. Those two tired days had made it a novelty to watch Bones move at his ease. "Anything that happened over the last couple of days might as well have been a fever dream."
"Your reprieve from reporting back is over. What the hell happened to you?"
"Half-starving! Half-freezing!" Bones laid the table with a clatter. "Desperately trying to find more of the rest of my so-called crew out in the wilds before anybody one hundred per cent starved and froze!" Back in fighting form: he waved his hands to signify his dread fury, blazing with a glare.
Jim beamed at him and said in an undertone, "So, Bones, remember how there are people - other hard-working medical professionals - sleeping in the rooms around this one?"
Bones stopped short with a furtive look at a wall. "Good to really have you back," Jim said, putting an arm around his shoulders, and Bones pointed him viciously at the place laid for him.
They had tiny servings though the meal was big enough for two, as it wouldn't the best idea for Bones to pack a load of food into a digestive tract that had got accustomed to ration packs and wild plants and Jim only wanted a taste. It was almost painful to watch Bones eat tiny, tidy bite by carefully-chewed bite, but it was convenient that he kept talking so that he wouldn't eat too fast.
The course had taken place on a small planetoid that had a vast portion of its surface are cultivated for survival courses and the like. Bones had a lot to say about constantly being short of breath due to the composition of the atmosphere, the low-to-lower temperatures in the mountainous forest, how purification tablets made water taste, the qualities of the other cadets, and the ways in which everything was terrible.
Finally he gave it a rest and ate two whole bites in a row. "Most I can say is that at least I wasn't wilting." He gave a small smile to himself.
"You. You were one of the people making terrible jokes at Wilton! Of course you were." Jim kicked the leg of Bones's chair as punishment, grinning back and shaking his head. He had been wrong before - there were ways in which Bones had always been a 90-year-old kid, and the serious enjoyment of really cheesy jokes was one of them. "There is no way to convince me you didn't have fun chuckling about that around the campfire."
"I didn't--" Bones momentarily sunk half his being into a cheese-covered cube of eggplant. "--fmmh. I hated it, every minute that I had time to myself to think."
A thread of the exhaustion was back in his voice. Jim did a double-take. "Wait, are you serious? It didn't sound that bad so far. No worse than you expected."
A few more slow chews, then Bones sighed and rocked back in his chair. "The course was pretty much what I expected, yeah. Tough enough, but ... I kept thinking about how someday I'll do that kind of thing regularly: Exploring planets that'll try and end me and everyone with me, while those people will be relying on me as a doctor. With the grand change that there will be less of a safety net for the lot of us when it does happen again - and again, and again, maybe years of it, depending on how Starfleet assigns me." His mouth pulled in that sideways tug of emotion, the beard making it look even more exaggerated than usual. "I probably should have used more of the anti-anxiety medication in the supplies, but that felt like hogging it when there were several other people who needed it too. Why do I have to be my own worst pain in the ass, Jim?"
"No way, not after all the hard work I put in."
"You lost by a country mile. You're outright in my good graces for bringing me this food." He reached over the table to pat Jim on the shoulder with a rare grateful look.
"Take that back, I was winning. And Bones? Remember that you came back fine," Jim said, urgently and without desperation, firm and with no room to find denial. "You and almost every last one of the others, including everyone assigned to be under your care, are fine, and even the three people who got more severely injured during all this are getting exactly the treatment they need. You can do this, and you don't always need to look for the worst scenario."
"There's no need to keep proselytising to get me on a starship," Bones told him, shrugging the speech off all too easily--if he could take Jim seriously some of the time, that would be great. "I already decided that I mean to do it. Getting a taste of what it'll be like, though..." He waved his table knife in a circle, sighed. A little helpless again.
"Hey, I've got an idea. It'll make you feel better." Jim went to the kitchen area to rummage for scissors. "I said I'd be back in the middle of the night to get rid of that beard - here I am! Then when you're rid of it, you won't be reminded of the course every minute."
Before protest could follow he went into the tiny en suite bathroom (who he wouldn't blow to have one in his own room) to get Bones's razor and shaving cream, kept for occasions like this when a beard had gained traction to the point where it would take a while for suppressants to get rid of it, and some towels. "You're out of shaving cream," he called, then came out grinning reassuringly. "Good thing I brought mine."
"What? Just for - this?" Bones's eyes narrowed. "Did you wake up especially to do this, for some godforsaken reason?"
"Nah, insomnia happened to hit and I thought you might be awake too, and probably hungry. That comm yesterday didn't make you look like a guy who bought groceries right afterwards." He arranged what he'd gathered on the table.
"You're not trying to make me presentable so that when you ask me to make a run for the border with you, we won't stand out as much, are you?"
Bones hadn't even hesitated as he came up with that one. "Have you ever thought about going into writing? Melodramas of some kind, I'm thinking."
"That was an honest question."
"And mine wasn't?" Jim gave him the earnest eyebrows. "You could be the next big name in entertainment."
With clockwork-regular suspicious looks, Bones finished off his meal. All the while Jim kept playing 'casual' with conviction, and then got Bones to shift his chair away from the table so there was room to work on him.
"I could do this myself. Later," Bones said as Jim draped the towel over his front, realisation making it past the confusion too late.
"Shut up, I don't want to cut you accidentally because your jaw keeps going," Jim said, wielding the scissors. "Anyway, this way it's done fast. You'll be able to get breakfast without scaring the populace or the instructors getting on your case."
He stood while cutting the long hanks and then tossed that hair in the trash. Then he pulled the other chair closer to sit and do finer trimming before he started shaving, and pretended it didn't faze him in the least to be centimetres away from Bones's face and warmth, legs spread to go around Bones's chair, feeling breath on his fingers as he worked. It wasn't brusque the way the entire process was when Bones got close to patch him up, but Jim was aware that was his own fault.
He and Bones helped each other out and had done it for two years now - studying together when their courses overlapped, herding each other towards the straight and narrow, acting as back-up in fights, drinking together when a drink alone was a bad idea. This was something removed from the regular further education camaraderie, and so was the satisfaction Jim felt doing it.
"Guess this is good." Bones sounded awkward beyond the fact of limiting how much he moved his mouth, but apparently he was willing to go with this. "Now you can't call me 'Mountain Man McCoy'."
"Don't worry, 'Bones' remains a classic. If you did go into writing, though, the hermit aesthetic could work for you. Keep it in mind."
Jim brushed wisps of hair out of the way and leaned back to see if he'd missed a spot the scissors could deal with, and frowned. "I think I could be pissed at the people who run this thing. Now it's obvious how much weight you lost."
"Don't worry about it," Bones said questioningly - are you actually worried? "My nutrition was pretty much what it should be. That's the point of those ration packs, after all."
Jim let Bones put the cream on himself and clean his hands on one of the towels, and then started the oddly difficult job of shaving someone else's face. The concentration required kept him from feeling like he had key nerves at loose ends - but it also had him leaning closer without being fully aware of it. At only a few minutes in and a few strokes of the razor, and Jim using firmly settled fingertips to turn his face to different angles, Bones refused to keep pretending he was still asleep with regards to this alone. "Jim? Where exactly is this going?"
"You've always fixed up my face, now I'm fixing yours." Jim straightened up and held up the razor with a smirk. "Think of this as a dermal regenerator. Now shh. Don't want to nick you."
Bones took hold of his wrist. "I'm a doctor, so I fix your face. You're my friend, but I've never had a friend do this or anything like."
"What, you wouldn't make friends with a barber?" Laughing it off ought to have been easy, but the smirk didn’t feel convincing with Bones's insistence on reading into things, since those things actually were there. Jim tugged his arm free. "It's just the once. All right? Relax."
"Reassuring, as I don't know if I'd be ready to get into a 24/7 arrangement with you. That, we'd have to talk about first."
That unleashed one of those blushes that burned down to Jim's chest. He dropped his face into one hand with a groan to convey how unnecessarily difficult Bones was making things, but the blush probably showed around the edges. At least, when he raised his head again, Bones looked freaked out too. At least Jim could still meet his eyes. Neither of them made to move apart, but that wasn't quite a relief.
"That's not what this is about, all right? Not even close. And if I was trying to get in your pants, you'd know."
"So this is, what, how they say 'welcome back' on your planet?"
"If we were talking about this," Jim said, and took hold of Bones's face to pull the razor in another line through the shaving cream and, incidentally, stop him talking about it for a moment. "You'd be saying you're wrecked, and you need a little assistance to get back on top of your game." Bones let that pass with a minimal growl. "And I would say."
He stalled with another careful drag of the razor. "Let me get the fuck on with it, all right? I just want to."
With a little hesitation, Bones shifted forwards into easier reach. A second later, he quietly said, "Why, though?"
"You need it." Jim drew in a breath. He went for broke. "You need it, I know how you like to be put together. You shouldn't have to be this worn down, and I can help. Let me..." He didn't try wringing out another word, but he fixed his eyes on Bones. Putting all he had into things was another way to burn bridges, and if he was going to mean this so completely without his own permission, then Bones was going to know he did.
Jim waited to get kicked out. They sat in silence, then he held up the razor again and got a nod. He also got Bones steadying himself with his hands on Jim's knees, eyes closing at their maintained proximity. "Thank you," Bones mumbled, back to having to keep his jaw as still as possible.
"We can go for a run afterwards so you actually go outside again," Jim told him. "Or the gym, it will open soon. And I was thinking, if you get bored during the day, there's this series of audiobooks I like. I'll transfer them to your padd." Mocking himself lightly, he said, "That covers all aspects of my plan."
"Can never concentrate on audiobooks," Bones said.
"It's less effort than reading if it turns out you still need to rest. And the narrator has a hot voice. Do not underestimate the plan."
"A hot voice, sure, what a vital consideration," Bones murmured with no loss off sarcasm - the man had a talent - and they finished off mostly quietly, mostly without tension. Jim tried to figure out where he thought he'd been going with this, but not too much, since overall this plan seemed to count as a win.
"How about that run?" Jim asked as Bones towelled off the mess on his face.
"It's raining. Didn't you hear it start? I'm not surprised, the way the weather looked yesterday. Or possibly the day before," said Bones. He looked out the window and Jim studied him for that spare second - pink-faced and familiar again. Jim busied himself with the shaving equipment as Bones looked back. "It's coming down pretty hard, so I'd rather hit the gym. It's close enough that we won't get all that wet, and I am getting a touch of cabin fever."
"The gym's practically adjoined to this dorm. You senior med cadets are the luckiest assholes..." Jim nattered on as they got ready to leave, tidying up and Bones putting on workout clothes, and they traded the complaints, insults and jokes that came with the topic - which was an old one, repeated mostly to reaffirm that they knew each other and that nothing was all that wrong in the corner of the world they currently occupied.
*
Throughout the day, in the back of his mind, Jim considered.
Well, one thing was obvious now - he'd like Bones around for some time to come. It was lucky Bones was good enough at what he did that he would likely ship out on the Enterprise too, even if he wasn't actively trying to get assigned to the future flagship (the bastard; and he wasn't even decently smug about it).
Jim had strategic classmates, he had acquaintances and friends, people sometimes sliding back and forth over that fine line, and he had Bones. Entirely different category, apparently. With the way Bones hadn't laughed it off or shoved him off, that might be a fact that went both ways.
He wasn't particularly surprised when Bones invited him over that night to finish off the rest of the food, since the order had been made for two, or when Bones said, "I'm not letting you get away with it, you know."
"I am visiting you in a fully normal capacity," Jim protested. "Look, there's take-out, a holovid, I'm sitting right away from you. Huge personal space bubble." He waved a hand between their chairs. "So I had some kind of momentary obsessive compulsion the past few days. I get like that sometimes, you know that."
"Are you back to normal, then? The crisis is averted, and there's no more need to shower care on me?"
That was the problem. Thinking about it only led to the conclusion that it felt normal on an instinctive level to help out, even like that, when Bones needed it. Why the hell not? he kept asking himself, and it was weird to prop up the other side of the debate with the idea that he'd been too nice. Too nice, after everything, to Bones. It wasn't how he normally behaved, and normally was happy behaving. But it was how he genuinely had wanted to behave, and when something Jim thought worked didn't match up with what was expected of him - even if the expectation came from a part of himself - he tended towards fuck the world. Here he was, after all, readying himself to blast into space and get the earth off his boots.
One answer to Bones's question was 'I'd do it again'. Jim stared straight through the holo-vid, stuffing a forkful of salad leaves in his mouth, and made a different and equally valid point. "You let me."
"Stay over," Bones shot back, apropos of very little as far as Jim could tell.
"I won't start singing a lullaby over you as soon as you start looking sleepy, all right, I promise. I truly do believe you're a big boy who can take care of himself."
Bones cleared his throat and put down his food. He leaned low over his elbows, resting on the table, obscuring part of the holo and most of his face. "Stay over. It's as simple as that, if simple is how we're going about things. I want you to stay, in my bed" -- he didn't seem to have thought about how clearly the back of his neck would show a blush -- "and you left your toothbrush and stuff here this morning, anyway."
Now that really would be easy and very much in line with his normal behaviour. Jim could do in-and-out of bed as a neat and satisfactory combo, and sometimes it was nice to take a while to climb back out if all parties involved were into the idea. Bones intended this to be one of the latter times, he suspected.
"Yes or no would do, if we're still not talking about it," Bones said, lower and more unsteady, "which seems like a better idea by the nanosecond."
If they fucked up, they wouldn't hurt anyone but themselves; the world couldn't ask for fairer than that. If they fucked up it would be a shock, because now Jim knew how easy it was to be gentle with Bones.
"Left my toiletries," he announced, jamming another bite into his mouth. Hey, Bones knew what he was getting into, Jim thought, and found himself grinning broadly. "It's still raining."
Bones cautiously lifted his head. "It's coming down pretty hard again, yeah."
"Who wants to trudge all the way back to their dorm in that?" Jim asked airily. Bones turned his head a fraction, and they finally gave looking at each other another try. "And gosh, it is really hot in here!" Jim said, tugging his t-shirt half out of his pants, and -- there it was: Bones full-on smiled! The holo clattered on in the background like the characters were talking in reverse, and Jim and Bones stared at each other as they tallied up another, longer, better, even unfunnier than usual private joke.
If they fucked up and hurt each other, it was going to be incredibly shit, to such an extent that he could almost waver on following his usual policy of jumping in with both feet. It kept coming on, though, the welling-up of answers in the middle of Jim's mind that centred on how much he wanted to let Bones know there really was someone in his corner, full time. He'd wanted it longer than he knew, and the knowledge was asserting itself with a vengeance.
"I'd say it's a good thing I just learned these past two weeks how much I'm capable of dealing with, if I'm going to take up with you," Bones said, and snorted. And because he was apparently a mind reader, he continued: "But who would I be fooling, trying to say I haven't done that long ago?"
There could not be many ways to make 'Thank you for wanting me back the same' sound anything above pathetic. Jim instead shuffled his chair over enough to put his feet in Bones's lap. "I get dibs on this next time," Bones said, and started massaging them. Jim dutifully tried to memorise the technique for using later.
That was when most of the conversation for the night stopped aside from a comment here and there; in the latter hours, after they'd moved the bed away from the wall so it wouldn't knock against it, they still got across what they needed to.