Stars Align (Five Times Kirk Tried to Seduce McCoy, and One Time He Didn't Have To )(K/Mc, NC-17)
This is an overdue birthday present for the lovely zerrah, my first beta reader and possibly my oldest fandom friend (by seniority, I mean). She's off being scholarly and awesome in Places Abroad, but will no doubt return to being an amazing writer some time soon. Also, my first Five Things fic! Also, not-so-subliminally influenced by paian and blcwriter, and substantially ripped off from a lot of the people who said nice things below, probably. ETA: Changed the title a little because I'm not in strict compliance with international standards for five times fics. This story may not be exportable to the EU.
Warnings: NC-17 for language, K/Mc bouncy bouncy, non-explicit Mc/OFC, and Oedipal humor.
“No.”
“I haven’t actually asked you yet.”
“I know what that look means.” And McCoy does, even upside-down, Jim lying shirtless on the bed, head hanging off the edge.
“But it’ll be fun.”
“No.”
“I know how to perform the ‘Andorian Hovercraft’. Usually you need a grapefruit, and antennae, but I’ll manage.”
“Oh, for-“ McCoy taps his PADD in frustration. “If you need something to screw, look somewhere else.”
“It’s raining.”
That’s really all the excuse Kirk needs to try to seduce his best friend. He’s horny (always), craving attention (always), and lazy (rarely), but apparently not interested in getting his hair wet.
McCoy stops reading Annals of Comparative Xenobiology long enough to actually meet his eyes, and it’s all the encouragement Kirk needs. He twists like a snake so McCoy can see the valley of his back down to where it meets the rolling hillside of his buttocks. It’s a seduction of negative space; he doesn’t have to anything except be.
McCoy tries a different tack.
“You’re only interested because I’m the one thing in fucking distance. And because I keep saying no.”
“I’m interested because I’m interested.”
Kirk’s eyes are bright and earnest. He has the ability to focus on one thing long enough to suck out the nectar, leaving the empty petals behind. As tempting as it might be to be the object of that focus, McCoy decided long ago that it would be more entertaining-not to mention safer and longer-lasting-to be neither flower nor bee.
“Hmm. Ask me again when it’s sunny.”
McCoy goes back to reading, and five minutes later he hears a shifting of weight and looks up to see Kirk pulling on his shirt, heading for greener fields.
+++++
It’s Friday night and McCoy’s spending it with two of his best friends: a glass of bourbon and a plate of chicken sandwiches. He’s got a vid cued up, a grim sepia-toned epic about the Battle of Stalingrad, and is about to hit play when the door opens.
The sight of Kirk’s flushed, smiling face is an inevitable as it is unwelcome.
“I gave you that code so you could water my plants while I was at that conference in Hungary. Do I look like I’m at a conference in Hungary?”
The door opens a little wider to admit a strikingly beautiful young woman. Telarrian, his overclocked brain supplies-could be mistaken for Eurasian except for the cranial morphology.
“Bones, this is Shanay. She’s a dancer; she does this special kind of-what did you call it?”
“Contact improvisation. It’s a form of-oh, wow.”
They’re both staring at him, and he wonders for a moment whether he has mayonnaise on his chin.
“You’re gorgeous. Your eyes are so soulful. I have a friend you have to pose for; he’s amazing with oils.” The way she says it makes McCoy wonder where the oils get applied, and how.
“Thank you. It’s nice to meet you. Jim, get out.”
“But we came here to see you.” He drapes an arm around Shanay and leans in close, so that McCoy gets a whiff of cologne and booze. “Shanay likes to explore the possibilities of movement. The more people, the better.”
“You’re not-oh, good lord.”
“You don’t meet people spending Friday night alone on the 127th floor.” Kirk plucks the vid control out of his hand. “Your mattress feels like it’s stuffed with dead rabbits or something. Shall we use the floor instead?”
“Where I come from, it’s polite to ask your prospective sexual partners whether they're interested before you start planning the sleeping arrangements.”
“How can you not be interested? We’re great-looking, open-minded, and most importantly, we’re here.”
“I told you before, Kirk, I’m not doing this with you.”
“What about with me?”
Kirk’s and McCoy’s heads both snap around to look at Shanay, who’s been browsing McCoy’s holo collection.
“Gladly,” McCoy says, just to wipe the smug look off Kirk’s face. Shanay reaches out a hand and pulls him toward the tiny bedroom, and it occurs to McCoy that he’s actually going to have to take the young lady to bed now.
He wonders if Kirk didn’t plan it this way, or if any combination would have been equally satisfactory to him.
These days, McCoy is all prickles and nerves and tics in bed, but Shanay doesn’t seem to notice. She’s a dedicated kinesiologist, it appears, and McCoy does his best to repay her generosity, especially since his motives were shitty to begin with.
When they come out of the bedroom, Kirk’s still there, limbs strewn around the couch, browsing his comm with one thumb. He doesn’t look the least disturbed or even fractionally jealous. In fact, he has the look that McCoy’s momma used to have after she watched him eat a good meal. Satisfaction, maybe even a little pride.
Well, he had enough to share.
+++++
“Did you hear that?” Kirk’s stage whisper is unnecessary; there’s no one for miles around.
They’ve been camping in Yosemite for two days, and Jim’s determined to live out every cliché, from toasting marshmallows to collecting firewood and, now, refusing to go to sleep.
“It’s not a bear, and you put the food halfway up the god damned tree, and what’s your obsession with bears, anyway?”
Kirk kicks at the foot of his sleeping bag restlessly. “It’s not bears; it’s the possibility of bears. The unknown, you know?”
“You’re weird. Now go to sleep.”
For a few minutes, he thinks Kirk might actually have done so, and then-
“Bones?”
“What.”
“I’m cold. It’s, like, five fucking degrees in here. Maybe we could put our sleeping bags together?”
“Oldest trick in the book. What are you going to do next, say your car ran out of gas?”
“What’s gas?”
“I don’t find stupidity charming, just so’s you know.”
But Kirk is actually shivering a little, and that’s hard to fake. He asks himself what danger he can really pose, this beanpole of a kid, who really has no seductive superpowers beyond being 24, bright as a cloudless day, good looking and desperate to be liked.
A few minutes later, they’re back to back, Kirk’s shivering has stopped, and McCoy is actually enjoying the heat, feeling drowsy and relaxed and ready to drop off, when--
“Bones?”
“Now what?”
“I finally got you in bed.” He rolls over, and McCoy has no choice but do the same. Jim smells like wood smoke and damp flannel. “This is nice, isn’t it? And if I were to just reach my hand down and-“
“No.”
“I don’t understand you,” Kirk wails. “It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing, high school shit. Just let me do this. If you want, I’ll never mention it again.”
“It’s not nothing,” McCoy says, and Kirk sighs.
“You know that’s not what I meant. God, everything’s so fucking serious with you.”
He’s saved from having to reply by the sound of breaking twigs and snuffling grunts outside.
+++++
“What, no apron?” Kirk reaches into the pot to grab a wedge of potato, and McCoy is glad when he burns his fingers.
Winona Kirk appears, holding a pitcher. “Leonard, will I be in your way if I make some margaritas?”
It’s been like this all weekend: tag-team harassment by a pair of Kirks, completely unalike except for being brilliant, funny, and terrible cooks. Leonard’s done his polite best to find Riverside anything other than a flat, crashing bore, but at least the house is nice and god help him, he finds Winona extremely attractive.
She’s a head shorter than her son, but with the same dirty blonde hair, laugh lines, habit of standing too close, and grabby hands. Like now, when she gently moves him out the way with a firm grip on each bicep so she can reach up to the cabinet for glasses.
“Here, let me get those for you,” he says, flushing, and not from the heat of the stove.
Behind him, Kirk sniggers.
Winona mixes drinks with the same verve she does everything else, and Kirk slouches around, leaning on countertops and pulling his sweat-damp T shirt away from his body, saying “It’s hot in here” at least a half dozen times. Leonard dices and stirs with crazed frustration, until Winona hands him a mercifully large cocktail.
“Sweetie, let’s go out on the porch. We’re in Leonard’s way.”
“Transference,” Jim says, eyebrows raised dramatically, as he brushes past him.
That night they lie in the dark in the boys’ room, where Jim and Sam used to sleep. It’s a little warm for comfort, and so crowded with other people’s memories that Leonard can feel them brushing past him like moths. There are sad tales to be told--this much Leonard knows--but Kirk doesn’t tell them.
Instead, he teases McCoy relentlessly about wanting to fuck his mother.
“Oedipal? No, that would be the other way, right? Wait, if you sleep with my mother and I kill you because I’m jealous, that’s Oedipal. But if you have sex with my mother because you really want to have sex with me, what's that?”
“Something that doesn’t exist except in your fucked-up brain.” Even for Kirk, whose sexual mores would be at home in a rat colony, this is a bit much.
“You know, I never had sex in this room. Not with other people, anyway. First, I knew Frank would beat the crap out of me if he caught me, then I just didn’t like the idea of it. I did a lot of climbing up trees and crawling into windows, I can tell you.”
“I’ll bet.” The night is eerily quiet compared to a Southern night; Leonard can hear the distant whir of a hovercar, the sound of a slamming door.
“It was easier whacking off once Sam moved out. I learned to be quiet, but he could see the bed shaking, and he’d give me all kinds of crap.”
“That’s more information than I need.”
“I fantasized about girls. Boys, not so much. I didn’t get into that until I started working at the freight stop. But there was this one boy, Bobby, in my high school. He had dark hair and blue eyes, and really nice lips. Oh, and a nice ass. He was a year ahead of me, and I used to imagine him teaching me things. Ordering me to do things, actually.”
“Jim, I'm kind of interested in going to sleep and not hearing about your teenage sexual fantasies.” But Kirk’s voice has that dreamland pitch, and he keeps on going.
“I thought how nice that would be, to be with somebody strong. I don’t mean physically; I mean somebody who knows what they want. What they want from me. Usually figuring that out for other people is a lot of the fun; I like pleasing people. But this-this was about him taking what he wanted-not in an exploitative way, but just because we were on the same page.”
“Uh huh,” McCoy says, dry-mouthed.
“I imagined him coming into the locker room while I was half dressed. Our eyes would meet, and he’d tell me to finish taking off my clothes, so that I’d be standing there naked while he still had his uniform on. He’d look me up and down, and then he’d reach out and run a hand down me, possessive, like he was laying claim to me, like I’d been his all along. Then I’d go down on my knees and pull his pants down and his cock would fall out like it was spring loaded. I’d suck him off and he’d run his hand through my hair, letting me know I was doing a good job, but he wouldn’t make any noise, even when he came. I imagined his come tasted like salt water taffy, isn’t that weird? Then he’d help me up because my knees would be stiff, and he’d kiss me, as my reward.”
It’s the conspiracy of Kirks that’s done it, the hot, sullen air, the tequila, the bed that creaks suggestively every time McCoy moves. “Why don’t we go to Iowa this weekend and ride dirt bikes?” has transmuted into McCoy lying in Jim’s brother’s bed with a hardon. Jim’s brother who, according to the holos throughout the house, is another handsome son of a bitch and probably on his way home from Deneva right now to try to seduce him.
“Do I have to say it?” Kirk’s voice is tentative, adolescent.
“Say what?”
“That you remind me of that boy.”
It steals McCoy’s breath for a minute, and he doesn’t even know what it means: that Jim sees him as someone stronger, older; that he’s a projection screen for some afterimage of Jim’s adolescent longing; that the whole thing is some con game for Kirk to get his mouth on McCoy’s cock so he can add a notch to a bedpost that’s practically a pile of pine shavings.
The air is humid, pregnant; inside of a few minutes, fat drops of rain begin to fall. A breeze blows through the open window and it’s like an angel of salvation.
“Dinner was good,” Jim says after a while. “I don’t usually like Brussels sprouts, but the way you made them, they were good.”
++++
“Computer, location of Captain Kirk.”
“Captain Kirk is in the Deck 7 aft crew lounge.”
Of course he is, since McCoy sent him to his quarters. He has no “off” switch that McCoy has been able to discover, and he probably only encouraged him by fixing the two cracked ribs and hairline fracture of his jaw.
He finds Kirk stretched out on one of the sofas, faced shoved into the bend of his elbow, drooling a little, still wearing that black undershirt that’s probably going to end up in a museum somewhere.
“Jim?” No response.
“Captain?”
“What?” He starts awake, eyes darting around, and it would be funny, if it weren’t. “What’s going on?”
McCoy gives him a little pat and hooks a hand under his armpit, trying to pull him up. “C’mon, I ordered you to bed.”
“I don’t have a cabin. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Oh, for-you’re the captain, you can open any door on this boat. What about, oh, I don’t, know, the captain’s quarters?”
“It’s probably full of Pike’s stuff. How is he?”
“Stable. Resting.” Kirk’s on his feet but practically sleepwalking. “Okay, my quarters.”
It’s a junior officer’s cabin, with a single bed. He gets Jim undressed and into it and heads for the door.
“Where’re you going?”
“Letting you rest in peace.” He winces a little after he says it.
“C’mere, get in.” Kirk flips the covers back and gestures, impatient, cranky and sleepy and a lot of other things McCoy doesn’t want to know. He’s terribly aware that it’s going to be hard to refuse him anything.
He strips to his underwear and gets in, and Kirk’s curled against him in an instant, not that there’s much room for anything else.
“You saved the world,” McCoy says into his hair, which could frankly use a wash. “Nobody actually does that.”
“Superman,” he mumbles.
“What?”
“Superman does it all the time. Cocksucker.” McCoy laughs, and the laugh carries him into sleep.
He wakes to Jim kissing his neck, lips hot and wet, and his body goes on full alert.
“Jim-“ He doesn’t stop.
“Jim?” He doesn’t want to shove him away; he doesn’t deserve that. “Please don’t.”
Jim pulls back far enough for him to see his eyes in the half light, and he sees-not a stranger, but older eyes than looked at him just two days ago. He already misses his Jim, the master of bad ideas, the unapologetic disturber of the peace. This new Jim isn’t a stranger, but he’s going to have to get to know him.
“You’re really going to say no again?”
Jim sees whatever answer he needs in his eyes, and flops onto his back with a sigh. Of all the sounds that can be made in the bedroom, McCoy hates that one the most: it’s Jocelyn and talks that went nowhere and giving up.
“I thought I’d be good enough, now. Older and wiser and more serious, or whatever shit you want.”
Oh, fuck. It’s not about giving him a blow job to prove he can, or notch his belt, or whatever it may never have been about before. And that’s infinitely worse.
“Jim, you’re-“ Jim is a million things, including things McCoy could never describe, and he has no business enumerating. And that’s exactly why-
“It’s okay,” Jim says. “I won’t ask again.” McCoy can sense a door slamming shut as he hears the brittleness in Jim’s voice. “I can do ‘friends’. We are still friends, right?”
There’s no answer for that but to pull Jim into his arms and squeeze him hard, hold him tight so that he’s doing what he always accused Jim of, using physical contact as a substitute for intimacy.
“Yes, always. I’d die for you, Jim.” On this ship, it’s not an idle promise. He'd do anything for him but hurt him the way he seems to want to be hurt.
It’s rank, selfish egotism to think this is the worst loss Jim has suffered, even this week.
He’s asleep again in minutes, breathing deep and easy against McCoy’s chest, as if nothing has changed.
+++++
“Bourbon and soda, double Glenmorangie on the rocks, frozen lemonade, Arcturan mineral water, Jack Daniels straight up and-Sulu?”
“I dunno, a Screwdriver?”
“Two Bermuda Triangles. Trust me.” Kirk then rattles off a list of mezzes that could feed them for a week, but McCoy doesn’t mind because Jim’s buying.
Kirk knows what to tease them about, and how far to go. There are already inside jokes: Uhura’s love of off-duty high heels, Chekov’s being under the legal drinking age. Every odd talent, every bad habit of Kirk’s is proving to have equipped him perfectly for the task at hand. The ink is barely dry on his commission and he’s already their captain; they’re already his crew.
The drinks arrive and Scotty hoists his glass. “To the Enterprise, to Captain Kirk, and to who all who sail in her!” Glasses clink.
“And now, will everyone who’s accepting their commission as senior staff of the Enterprise so indicate by draining their glass and saying aye!” Scotty’s the first to slam his glass on the table, five bangs and five ayes, when McCoy realizes he hasn’t even taken a drink, and they’re all staring at him.
“What’s the matter, doctor?” Uhura asks. “Holding out for higher pay?”
“Entertaining other offers,” he says lamely, swallowing a mouthful, and everyone laughs like it's part of the script.
Three hours later, the party’s broken up and Jim is not shitfaced, but walking McCoy out along the pier where the dark water looms like the black of space.
“What the fuck was that about? Don’t tell me you’re not going to be my CMO.”
“Jim, I-it’s complicated.”
“Oh, bullshit.” He gives McCoy one of those mind-reading looks. “This isn’t about that thing, is it? Because I told you I’ve got that under control. I’ll never mention it after tonight, promise.”
He can’t say it isn’t, and he can’t say it is. It’s a free-floating miasma of fears, only one of which is that he can’t stand the thought of Kirk surrounded by people who are in love with him, and be relegated to the hackneyed character of ol’ Academy buddy, the cynical, wise-cracking doctor.
“There are good reasons-“ McCoy says, and stops.
“There are always good reasons.” Kirk shoves his hands in his pockets and looks past McCoy’s left ear and out to sea. “But please don’t tell me I fucked up your life by kissing you after we all almost died. Ever hear of bunkers?”
“Even you don’t believe that. I know what you want, and I don’t know if I can give it to you.”
“Don’t worry what I want,” Jim says loud enough to startle the guy with the clam chowder cart. “It’s about what you want. Bones, what the fuck do you want?”
It comes to him so clearly that for a minute he thinks he’s hallucinating. He must look stricken; Clam Chowder Guy’s finger hovers above his comm, ready to call for help.
“That’s it,” Jim says, voice low and focused as if he’s coaching him through childbirth. “Hold that thought.”
McCoy’s apartment building is only six blocks away, and neither of them speak. He’s on a mission-his captain has sent him on a mission: Get what you want. He’d never thought it could be that easy.
They drop their jackets on the living room floor, kick their shoes off before they enter the bedroom. Jim plants himself in front of the bed, barefoot, in jeans becoming tighter by the minute.
“What do you want, Bones? Tell me.”
“You. Naked. On the bed. Now.”
Jim strips, efficient and deadly serious, and falls back on the bed, knees splayed. McCoy looks at his erection and thinks he’s still seeing things: it’s perfect, as if it were made for him.
He can barely tear his eyes away from Jim’s body to yank off his own clothes. He’s baffled how he could ever have thought of Jim as skinny, raw-boned. The lines of his body are poetry, his flesh is ice cream. He wants to sing to it, taste it, become it, swallow it whole.
He drops to his knees and takes Jim’s cock into his mouth, as much as he can, letting his hands run up the warm insides of his thighs, spreading them wider. He slips a finger into his mouth to wet it, spreads Jim’s cheeks and rims with a finger, a promise of things to come.
Jim is watching, and Jim is waiting, waiting for McCoy's answer. This, he says with his mouth and hands, this is what I want.
Jim must hear him, because he comes, spectacularly, with a shout and a hand pounding on the bed.
He threads his hand through McCoy’s hair and bends down to give him a sticky kiss.
“Well,” he says. “That took long enough.”
Warnings: NC-17 for language, K/Mc bouncy bouncy, non-explicit Mc/OFC, and Oedipal humor.
“No.”
“I haven’t actually asked you yet.”
“I know what that look means.” And McCoy does, even upside-down, Jim lying shirtless on the bed, head hanging off the edge.
“But it’ll be fun.”
“No.”
“I know how to perform the ‘Andorian Hovercraft’. Usually you need a grapefruit, and antennae, but I’ll manage.”
“Oh, for-“ McCoy taps his PADD in frustration. “If you need something to screw, look somewhere else.”
“It’s raining.”
That’s really all the excuse Kirk needs to try to seduce his best friend. He’s horny (always), craving attention (always), and lazy (rarely), but apparently not interested in getting his hair wet.
McCoy stops reading Annals of Comparative Xenobiology long enough to actually meet his eyes, and it’s all the encouragement Kirk needs. He twists like a snake so McCoy can see the valley of his back down to where it meets the rolling hillside of his buttocks. It’s a seduction of negative space; he doesn’t have to anything except be.
McCoy tries a different tack.
“You’re only interested because I’m the one thing in fucking distance. And because I keep saying no.”
“I’m interested because I’m interested.”
Kirk’s eyes are bright and earnest. He has the ability to focus on one thing long enough to suck out the nectar, leaving the empty petals behind. As tempting as it might be to be the object of that focus, McCoy decided long ago that it would be more entertaining-not to mention safer and longer-lasting-to be neither flower nor bee.
“Hmm. Ask me again when it’s sunny.”
McCoy goes back to reading, and five minutes later he hears a shifting of weight and looks up to see Kirk pulling on his shirt, heading for greener fields.
+++++
It’s Friday night and McCoy’s spending it with two of his best friends: a glass of bourbon and a plate of chicken sandwiches. He’s got a vid cued up, a grim sepia-toned epic about the Battle of Stalingrad, and is about to hit play when the door opens.
The sight of Kirk’s flushed, smiling face is an inevitable as it is unwelcome.
“I gave you that code so you could water my plants while I was at that conference in Hungary. Do I look like I’m at a conference in Hungary?”
The door opens a little wider to admit a strikingly beautiful young woman. Telarrian, his overclocked brain supplies-could be mistaken for Eurasian except for the cranial morphology.
“Bones, this is Shanay. She’s a dancer; she does this special kind of-what did you call it?”
“Contact improvisation. It’s a form of-oh, wow.”
They’re both staring at him, and he wonders for a moment whether he has mayonnaise on his chin.
“You’re gorgeous. Your eyes are so soulful. I have a friend you have to pose for; he’s amazing with oils.” The way she says it makes McCoy wonder where the oils get applied, and how.
“Thank you. It’s nice to meet you. Jim, get out.”
“But we came here to see you.” He drapes an arm around Shanay and leans in close, so that McCoy gets a whiff of cologne and booze. “Shanay likes to explore the possibilities of movement. The more people, the better.”
“You’re not-oh, good lord.”
“You don’t meet people spending Friday night alone on the 127th floor.” Kirk plucks the vid control out of his hand. “Your mattress feels like it’s stuffed with dead rabbits or something. Shall we use the floor instead?”
“Where I come from, it’s polite to ask your prospective sexual partners whether they're interested before you start planning the sleeping arrangements.”
“How can you not be interested? We’re great-looking, open-minded, and most importantly, we’re here.”
“I told you before, Kirk, I’m not doing this with you.”
“What about with me?”
Kirk’s and McCoy’s heads both snap around to look at Shanay, who’s been browsing McCoy’s holo collection.
“Gladly,” McCoy says, just to wipe the smug look off Kirk’s face. Shanay reaches out a hand and pulls him toward the tiny bedroom, and it occurs to McCoy that he’s actually going to have to take the young lady to bed now.
He wonders if Kirk didn’t plan it this way, or if any combination would have been equally satisfactory to him.
These days, McCoy is all prickles and nerves and tics in bed, but Shanay doesn’t seem to notice. She’s a dedicated kinesiologist, it appears, and McCoy does his best to repay her generosity, especially since his motives were shitty to begin with.
When they come out of the bedroom, Kirk’s still there, limbs strewn around the couch, browsing his comm with one thumb. He doesn’t look the least disturbed or even fractionally jealous. In fact, he has the look that McCoy’s momma used to have after she watched him eat a good meal. Satisfaction, maybe even a little pride.
Well, he had enough to share.
+++++
“Did you hear that?” Kirk’s stage whisper is unnecessary; there’s no one for miles around.
They’ve been camping in Yosemite for two days, and Jim’s determined to live out every cliché, from toasting marshmallows to collecting firewood and, now, refusing to go to sleep.
“It’s not a bear, and you put the food halfway up the god damned tree, and what’s your obsession with bears, anyway?”
Kirk kicks at the foot of his sleeping bag restlessly. “It’s not bears; it’s the possibility of bears. The unknown, you know?”
“You’re weird. Now go to sleep.”
For a few minutes, he thinks Kirk might actually have done so, and then-
“Bones?”
“What.”
“I’m cold. It’s, like, five fucking degrees in here. Maybe we could put our sleeping bags together?”
“Oldest trick in the book. What are you going to do next, say your car ran out of gas?”
“What’s gas?”
“I don’t find stupidity charming, just so’s you know.”
But Kirk is actually shivering a little, and that’s hard to fake. He asks himself what danger he can really pose, this beanpole of a kid, who really has no seductive superpowers beyond being 24, bright as a cloudless day, good looking and desperate to be liked.
A few minutes later, they’re back to back, Kirk’s shivering has stopped, and McCoy is actually enjoying the heat, feeling drowsy and relaxed and ready to drop off, when--
“Bones?”
“Now what?”
“I finally got you in bed.” He rolls over, and McCoy has no choice but do the same. Jim smells like wood smoke and damp flannel. “This is nice, isn’t it? And if I were to just reach my hand down and-“
“No.”
“I don’t understand you,” Kirk wails. “It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing, high school shit. Just let me do this. If you want, I’ll never mention it again.”
“It’s not nothing,” McCoy says, and Kirk sighs.
“You know that’s not what I meant. God, everything’s so fucking serious with you.”
He’s saved from having to reply by the sound of breaking twigs and snuffling grunts outside.
+++++
“What, no apron?” Kirk reaches into the pot to grab a wedge of potato, and McCoy is glad when he burns his fingers.
Winona Kirk appears, holding a pitcher. “Leonard, will I be in your way if I make some margaritas?”
It’s been like this all weekend: tag-team harassment by a pair of Kirks, completely unalike except for being brilliant, funny, and terrible cooks. Leonard’s done his polite best to find Riverside anything other than a flat, crashing bore, but at least the house is nice and god help him, he finds Winona extremely attractive.
She’s a head shorter than her son, but with the same dirty blonde hair, laugh lines, habit of standing too close, and grabby hands. Like now, when she gently moves him out the way with a firm grip on each bicep so she can reach up to the cabinet for glasses.
“Here, let me get those for you,” he says, flushing, and not from the heat of the stove.
Behind him, Kirk sniggers.
Winona mixes drinks with the same verve she does everything else, and Kirk slouches around, leaning on countertops and pulling his sweat-damp T shirt away from his body, saying “It’s hot in here” at least a half dozen times. Leonard dices and stirs with crazed frustration, until Winona hands him a mercifully large cocktail.
“Sweetie, let’s go out on the porch. We’re in Leonard’s way.”
“Transference,” Jim says, eyebrows raised dramatically, as he brushes past him.
That night they lie in the dark in the boys’ room, where Jim and Sam used to sleep. It’s a little warm for comfort, and so crowded with other people’s memories that Leonard can feel them brushing past him like moths. There are sad tales to be told--this much Leonard knows--but Kirk doesn’t tell them.
Instead, he teases McCoy relentlessly about wanting to fuck his mother.
“Oedipal? No, that would be the other way, right? Wait, if you sleep with my mother and I kill you because I’m jealous, that’s Oedipal. But if you have sex with my mother because you really want to have sex with me, what's that?”
“Something that doesn’t exist except in your fucked-up brain.” Even for Kirk, whose sexual mores would be at home in a rat colony, this is a bit much.
“You know, I never had sex in this room. Not with other people, anyway. First, I knew Frank would beat the crap out of me if he caught me, then I just didn’t like the idea of it. I did a lot of climbing up trees and crawling into windows, I can tell you.”
“I’ll bet.” The night is eerily quiet compared to a Southern night; Leonard can hear the distant whir of a hovercar, the sound of a slamming door.
“It was easier whacking off once Sam moved out. I learned to be quiet, but he could see the bed shaking, and he’d give me all kinds of crap.”
“That’s more information than I need.”
“I fantasized about girls. Boys, not so much. I didn’t get into that until I started working at the freight stop. But there was this one boy, Bobby, in my high school. He had dark hair and blue eyes, and really nice lips. Oh, and a nice ass. He was a year ahead of me, and I used to imagine him teaching me things. Ordering me to do things, actually.”
“Jim, I'm kind of interested in going to sleep and not hearing about your teenage sexual fantasies.” But Kirk’s voice has that dreamland pitch, and he keeps on going.
“I thought how nice that would be, to be with somebody strong. I don’t mean physically; I mean somebody who knows what they want. What they want from me. Usually figuring that out for other people is a lot of the fun; I like pleasing people. But this-this was about him taking what he wanted-not in an exploitative way, but just because we were on the same page.”
“Uh huh,” McCoy says, dry-mouthed.
“I imagined him coming into the locker room while I was half dressed. Our eyes would meet, and he’d tell me to finish taking off my clothes, so that I’d be standing there naked while he still had his uniform on. He’d look me up and down, and then he’d reach out and run a hand down me, possessive, like he was laying claim to me, like I’d been his all along. Then I’d go down on my knees and pull his pants down and his cock would fall out like it was spring loaded. I’d suck him off and he’d run his hand through my hair, letting me know I was doing a good job, but he wouldn’t make any noise, even when he came. I imagined his come tasted like salt water taffy, isn’t that weird? Then he’d help me up because my knees would be stiff, and he’d kiss me, as my reward.”
It’s the conspiracy of Kirks that’s done it, the hot, sullen air, the tequila, the bed that creaks suggestively every time McCoy moves. “Why don’t we go to Iowa this weekend and ride dirt bikes?” has transmuted into McCoy lying in Jim’s brother’s bed with a hardon. Jim’s brother who, according to the holos throughout the house, is another handsome son of a bitch and probably on his way home from Deneva right now to try to seduce him.
“Do I have to say it?” Kirk’s voice is tentative, adolescent.
“Say what?”
“That you remind me of that boy.”
It steals McCoy’s breath for a minute, and he doesn’t even know what it means: that Jim sees him as someone stronger, older; that he’s a projection screen for some afterimage of Jim’s adolescent longing; that the whole thing is some con game for Kirk to get his mouth on McCoy’s cock so he can add a notch to a bedpost that’s practically a pile of pine shavings.
The air is humid, pregnant; inside of a few minutes, fat drops of rain begin to fall. A breeze blows through the open window and it’s like an angel of salvation.
“Dinner was good,” Jim says after a while. “I don’t usually like Brussels sprouts, but the way you made them, they were good.”
++++
“Computer, location of Captain Kirk.”
“Captain Kirk is in the Deck 7 aft crew lounge.”
Of course he is, since McCoy sent him to his quarters. He has no “off” switch that McCoy has been able to discover, and he probably only encouraged him by fixing the two cracked ribs and hairline fracture of his jaw.
He finds Kirk stretched out on one of the sofas, faced shoved into the bend of his elbow, drooling a little, still wearing that black undershirt that’s probably going to end up in a museum somewhere.
“Jim?” No response.
“Captain?”
“What?” He starts awake, eyes darting around, and it would be funny, if it weren’t. “What’s going on?”
McCoy gives him a little pat and hooks a hand under his armpit, trying to pull him up. “C’mon, I ordered you to bed.”
“I don’t have a cabin. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Oh, for-you’re the captain, you can open any door on this boat. What about, oh, I don’t, know, the captain’s quarters?”
“It’s probably full of Pike’s stuff. How is he?”
“Stable. Resting.” Kirk’s on his feet but practically sleepwalking. “Okay, my quarters.”
It’s a junior officer’s cabin, with a single bed. He gets Jim undressed and into it and heads for the door.
“Where’re you going?”
“Letting you rest in peace.” He winces a little after he says it.
“C’mere, get in.” Kirk flips the covers back and gestures, impatient, cranky and sleepy and a lot of other things McCoy doesn’t want to know. He’s terribly aware that it’s going to be hard to refuse him anything.
He strips to his underwear and gets in, and Kirk’s curled against him in an instant, not that there’s much room for anything else.
“You saved the world,” McCoy says into his hair, which could frankly use a wash. “Nobody actually does that.”
“Superman,” he mumbles.
“What?”
“Superman does it all the time. Cocksucker.” McCoy laughs, and the laugh carries him into sleep.
He wakes to Jim kissing his neck, lips hot and wet, and his body goes on full alert.
“Jim-“ He doesn’t stop.
“Jim?” He doesn’t want to shove him away; he doesn’t deserve that. “Please don’t.”
Jim pulls back far enough for him to see his eyes in the half light, and he sees-not a stranger, but older eyes than looked at him just two days ago. He already misses his Jim, the master of bad ideas, the unapologetic disturber of the peace. This new Jim isn’t a stranger, but he’s going to have to get to know him.
“You’re really going to say no again?”
Jim sees whatever answer he needs in his eyes, and flops onto his back with a sigh. Of all the sounds that can be made in the bedroom, McCoy hates that one the most: it’s Jocelyn and talks that went nowhere and giving up.
“I thought I’d be good enough, now. Older and wiser and more serious, or whatever shit you want.”
Oh, fuck. It’s not about giving him a blow job to prove he can, or notch his belt, or whatever it may never have been about before. And that’s infinitely worse.
“Jim, you’re-“ Jim is a million things, including things McCoy could never describe, and he has no business enumerating. And that’s exactly why-
“It’s okay,” Jim says. “I won’t ask again.” McCoy can sense a door slamming shut as he hears the brittleness in Jim’s voice. “I can do ‘friends’. We are still friends, right?”
There’s no answer for that but to pull Jim into his arms and squeeze him hard, hold him tight so that he’s doing what he always accused Jim of, using physical contact as a substitute for intimacy.
“Yes, always. I’d die for you, Jim.” On this ship, it’s not an idle promise. He'd do anything for him but hurt him the way he seems to want to be hurt.
It’s rank, selfish egotism to think this is the worst loss Jim has suffered, even this week.
He’s asleep again in minutes, breathing deep and easy against McCoy’s chest, as if nothing has changed.
+++++
“Bourbon and soda, double Glenmorangie on the rocks, frozen lemonade, Arcturan mineral water, Jack Daniels straight up and-Sulu?”
“I dunno, a Screwdriver?”
“Two Bermuda Triangles. Trust me.” Kirk then rattles off a list of mezzes that could feed them for a week, but McCoy doesn’t mind because Jim’s buying.
Kirk knows what to tease them about, and how far to go. There are already inside jokes: Uhura’s love of off-duty high heels, Chekov’s being under the legal drinking age. Every odd talent, every bad habit of Kirk’s is proving to have equipped him perfectly for the task at hand. The ink is barely dry on his commission and he’s already their captain; they’re already his crew.
The drinks arrive and Scotty hoists his glass. “To the Enterprise, to Captain Kirk, and to who all who sail in her!” Glasses clink.
“And now, will everyone who’s accepting their commission as senior staff of the Enterprise so indicate by draining their glass and saying aye!” Scotty’s the first to slam his glass on the table, five bangs and five ayes, when McCoy realizes he hasn’t even taken a drink, and they’re all staring at him.
“What’s the matter, doctor?” Uhura asks. “Holding out for higher pay?”
“Entertaining other offers,” he says lamely, swallowing a mouthful, and everyone laughs like it's part of the script.
Three hours later, the party’s broken up and Jim is not shitfaced, but walking McCoy out along the pier where the dark water looms like the black of space.
“What the fuck was that about? Don’t tell me you’re not going to be my CMO.”
“Jim, I-it’s complicated.”
“Oh, bullshit.” He gives McCoy one of those mind-reading looks. “This isn’t about that thing, is it? Because I told you I’ve got that under control. I’ll never mention it after tonight, promise.”
He can’t say it isn’t, and he can’t say it is. It’s a free-floating miasma of fears, only one of which is that he can’t stand the thought of Kirk surrounded by people who are in love with him, and be relegated to the hackneyed character of ol’ Academy buddy, the cynical, wise-cracking doctor.
“There are good reasons-“ McCoy says, and stops.
“There are always good reasons.” Kirk shoves his hands in his pockets and looks past McCoy’s left ear and out to sea. “But please don’t tell me I fucked up your life by kissing you after we all almost died. Ever hear of bunkers?”
“Even you don’t believe that. I know what you want, and I don’t know if I can give it to you.”
“Don’t worry what I want,” Jim says loud enough to startle the guy with the clam chowder cart. “It’s about what you want. Bones, what the fuck do you want?”
It comes to him so clearly that for a minute he thinks he’s hallucinating. He must look stricken; Clam Chowder Guy’s finger hovers above his comm, ready to call for help.
“That’s it,” Jim says, voice low and focused as if he’s coaching him through childbirth. “Hold that thought.”
McCoy’s apartment building is only six blocks away, and neither of them speak. He’s on a mission-his captain has sent him on a mission: Get what you want. He’d never thought it could be that easy.
They drop their jackets on the living room floor, kick their shoes off before they enter the bedroom. Jim plants himself in front of the bed, barefoot, in jeans becoming tighter by the minute.
“What do you want, Bones? Tell me.”
“You. Naked. On the bed. Now.”
Jim strips, efficient and deadly serious, and falls back on the bed, knees splayed. McCoy looks at his erection and thinks he’s still seeing things: it’s perfect, as if it were made for him.
He can barely tear his eyes away from Jim’s body to yank off his own clothes. He’s baffled how he could ever have thought of Jim as skinny, raw-boned. The lines of his body are poetry, his flesh is ice cream. He wants to sing to it, taste it, become it, swallow it whole.
He drops to his knees and takes Jim’s cock into his mouth, as much as he can, letting his hands run up the warm insides of his thighs, spreading them wider. He slips a finger into his mouth to wet it, spreads Jim’s cheeks and rims with a finger, a promise of things to come.
Jim is watching, and Jim is waiting, waiting for McCoy's answer. This, he says with his mouth and hands, this is what I want.
Jim must hear him, because he comes, spectacularly, with a shout and a hand pounding on the bed.
He threads his hand through McCoy’s hair and bends down to give him a sticky kiss.
“Well,” he says. “That took long enough.”