space_married fic: Since We've Noplace To Go, Kirk/McCoy, NC-17
Title: Since We've Noplace to Go
Author: northatlantic
Prompt: Domestic Bliss #10, Jim drags Bones back to Iowa for shore leave - during the winter. Cue Jim teaching the poor deprived Doctor how to make snow men and how to have a proper snowball fight, complete with forts.
Rating: NC-17
Other Pairings: None
Notes/Disclaimer: the pretty is not mine. the lame? that's probably mine.
Leonard McCoy thinks of himself as a basically adaptable being; an opinionated and occasionally negative one, sure, SOMEONE has to think of all the bad things that could happen or nobody will make a plan if they do, right?
He wonders how that logic managed to derail, how there came to be such a situation and clearly no backup plan as he feels his eyeballs start to freeze in the twenty-five meters between the spaceport and the flit rental, hands tucked in his armpits to keep from losing any extremities as Jim chats up the clerk at the counter while collecting their vehicle's operating codes. The sky is a sullen pewter, the wind at about 30 kph and the stingy icy bits blowing in it don't bear any resemblance to McCoy's idea of snow, which drifts down in cottony fluffs outside a suitably thick window so you can't hear it howling like the souls of the damned. Preferably with a nice big mug of Irish coffee in hand and a fireplace involved somewhere. This does not look like shore leave. This looks like someplace where you EARN shore leave, which subsequently happens somewhere ELSE with blue water and green trees and lots of bare skin for the application of sunblock.
Jim claps him on the back, beaming in that slightly manic way that means he's nervous but damned if he's going to show it. "God, looks like the holidays, doesn't it? Come on, Bones, enough daydreaming, we've got a bit of driving to do. Just rang Sam, we should be there in time for dinner."
"You sure we should be driving in this, Jim?" He eyes the swirling mess outside dubiously, the growing darkness. It looks like the textbook definition of "hostile environment" to him.
"In what? Nah, just a little wintry mix. Could fly us in with my eyes closed."
"Please don't," McCoy says without a trace of sarcasm. "I don't want the first time I meet your brother to be over a hospital bed."
Jim rolls his eyes. "That's my Merry Sunshine. Bones, I promise, there will be no loss of life and limb between here and Ames. Now come on and get in."
He follows Jim out and makes a note to himself to acquire more cold-weather gear. Like, a lot more. And he does want to cheer up, really--Jim has told him approximately a million big-brother-Sam stories "well, George Junior, actually, Sam's his middle name, but who wants to be Junior? that's just--ugh." McCoy wants to make a good impression, and see what little Kirks look like and if the baby pictures still exist somewhere..."Jesus, Jim, what the hell was that??" he yelps as a big dark form bounds across the highway and Jim just hits the glides, lifts them over it without batting an eyelash.
"Deer," he says easily. "Happens this time of day sometimes."
McCoy squeezes his eyes shut. "OK. Tell me when we get there."
***
Sam Kirk and family live in an old converted farmhouse, which makes sense since Sam's a research biologist with a focus on agricultural applications and needs space for his subjects. It also looks like something out of an old 2d movie; McCoy half-expects a wagon tied up in front of the house instead of the tidy minihover sitting out there getting covered in snow. Jim is humming, eyes bright, as he gets their bags out of the back of the car, and McCoy can ignore how cold his feet are in how happy he looks, a few nerves there too but mostly pleasure.
The porch light flicks on and McCoy can see sandy heads at the window, anxiously waiting. "Uh-oh, we've been spotted," Jim says laconically, but the smile breaks through like the sun as the piercing yell goes up "Uncle Jim is here!" McCoy has to smile at that as he follows him up, hanging back a little, thinking about Joanna. Who had been thrilled by her early Christmas gift of a new microscope--her mother, not so much, but dammit, Joanna didn't WANT to dance, she wanted to cut up bugs and look at them and like he knew what to look for in a new pair of ballet slippers anyway? He wishes she could be here, but Jocelyn had asked for Christmas this year and both he and Joanna are all too aware that as much as they both love her and think it might be nice to be able to pretend they all get along in the same room, it's all tense chilly civility punctuated by occasional outbursts and that's just the way it is.
Nobody's pretending anything here, and the only thing chilly is the draft from the door that swings closed behind them, three towheaded kids climbing all over Jim as he kneels to hug and growl and blow raspberries among other things provoking squeals of protest and delight, the man beaming down at them like an older, softer-edged version of Jim, so much so that McCoy thinks he could recognize him in a crowd.
"And this is your uncle Bones," Kirk is saying to the blonde horde, who proceed to attach themselves to McCoy with all the inexorable charm of their bloodline, eyes of every shade from sky to violets looking up at him.
"Did you bring us anything? Uncle Jim brought us a piece of a real-live Klingon Warbird last time he came to visit," the eldest one says hopefully.
"Peter!" The pretty woman looking embarrassed by a perfectly developmentally appropriate mercenary streak could only be their mother, Sam's wife Aurelan, and McCoy smiles at her sympathetically before winking down at the kid, smile going conspiratorial around the edges.
"Have to wait and see, won't you?"
It's a fine line between disappointment and getting them riled up enough to rifle the luggage, but McCoy thinks he's managed it, hopeful glances back over their shoulders as the kids were shooed off to clean up and Jim's brother has finished hugging him, comes over to offer a big hard hand. "It's nice to finally meet you, Leonard. You should probably just go ahead and call me Sam, less confusing that way." He makes a face at Jim.
"Or Junior," Jim says, in the universal tone of bratty younger siblings everywhere and it's kind of exactly how McCoy would have imagined it if he'd been able to imagine a whole house full of Kirks. There's a small feast laid on, which is a revelation after six months on ship food. He is surprised and touched when pecan pie makes an appearance, Aurelan blushing at his pleasure and Jim practically gloating and it is easier than he expects, than he feels like he deserves on some level. But Jim's knee is pressing into his under the table, his happiness pretty well tangible and sometimes you can't question, things just are. Kind of like Jim Kirk in general, Jim Kirk with Leonard McCoy and it kind of makes sense the whole family shares the weakness then, doesn't it?
Kids are bribed after dinner, and although there is a sad dearth of Klingon war trophies the eldest, who McCoy has learned is Peter, is appeased by a REAL working Starfleet tricorder with its less appropriate-for-a-nine-year-old's functions carefully deactivated by Spock in exchange for helping talk Jim out of some of the more interesting plans for Spock's bachelor party. It's a good night, a comfortable night, and while the guest bedroom is lacking in modern conveniences like independent climate controls, it does have a soft mattress and a heavy quilt to curl up under. He noses his cold nose into Jim's neck and tucks chilly feet under Jim's ankles to the accompaniment of some bitching and moaning and squirming and heavy breathing and on the whole, he has to judge it downright survivable.
The next morning, on the other hand, is another story.
***
"Come on, Bones. Never? Really?"
"Well, it's not like we HAVE snow in Georgia, Jim. We have rain, like civilized climates."
"Get your boots on. You are not leaving here until you've had a proper snowball fight. Come on, troops, help Uncle Bones find some mittens."
McCoy shoots Jim a glare of death because bringing the kids into it is hitting below the belt and he damn well knows it. But this is Jim Kirk he's glaring at, who when he wants to has the finely honed ignoring skills of solid rock, and he is shooed out into a glittering blaze of glare, a pitiless expanse of blue and white and throat-burning cold. Jim demonstrates packing a snowball, a process that wouldn't seem to need elucidation but apparently takes more skill than immediately evident when McCoy's first couple of attempts mostly stick to his mittens. Teams are drawn up (geezers against infants, and McCoy bestows a glare at a cherubic Jim) and fortifications are sculpted into the drifts with shovels and buckets and other things to pack snow into to make bricks. That part is fun, kind of like sand castles only they don't fall apart and they're cold as hell.
The first snowball hits him square in the tiny window of vision between hat and scarf about thirty seconds after hostilities are declared. "Grarf!"
"Good arm, Kira," Jim applauds, picks her up and tosses her bodily into a snowbank and the fracas is on. They all have the tactical genius that McCoy, who is dammit a DOCTOR, not a strategist, lacks, and take malicious delight in thoroughly peppering him with wet and icy missiles before deciding that's not enough of a challenge, the older two descending on Jim to the accompaniment of much screaming and leaping.
The youngest, Marie, comes to tug him by the hand. "They're not very nice," she says with the gravity that only an aggrieved six-year-old can produce. "Let's make a snowman. Then Mama can make us hot chocolate."
"Kid, you sure you're a Kirk? because that's the most sensible thing I've heard this morning."
She giggles, and McCoy has the distinct feeling he is thoroughly overmatched, seeing a mirror of Jim's indulgent amusement on her tiny face as she starts showing him how to roll the snowball. He is certain when he feels how heavy the snowball gets that he's been snookered in service of her ambitions, as clearly he is capable of making a MUCH larger snowman than she is. Still, nonetheless, there is something strangely satisfying as Marie surveys his handiwork and turns to announce, "Uncle Jim, we're going to have the BEST snowman."
"You are, huh?" Jim has snow melting in his eyelashes and eyebrows as he mock-frowns at them in challenge. Cheeks red and eyes sparkling the color of the sky, he looks like a young sun god on vacation. McCoy would totally have dirty thoughts if he wasn't soaked to the skin and freezing. Well, okay, maybe he has one or two anyway. Good for the circulation. "We'll just see about THAT." Jim attacks his snowman with the same verve and glee as the all-out snow war beforehand, packing and smoothing and shaping while Marie patiently instructs McCoy in the fine art of snowman-decorating and convinces him to sacrifice his scarf to the cause.
"Hah. Ours is MUCH bigger than yours," McCoy says, turns and chokes on a laugh when he sees the enormous snow RACK Jim has just sculpted on his...well, snowMAN doesn't really seem properly descriptive any more. Snowgirl? No, definitely snowWOMAN. All woman. Enough to crush someone.
"But mine is prettier," Jim shoots back, grinning. The girls giggle and McCoy's reasonably sure it would be obscene if it wasn't so damned funny. Jim's given his snow-woman a topknot and a long dangling tail of scarf for hair; he totally intends to give Jim crap later about how Uhura would feel about being immortalized in snow in such, uh, vivid anatomical detail. He snaps a picture with his comlink for later blackmail evidence.
"Uncle Jim," Peter tugs at Jim's coat, starting to get bored by artistic endeavor. "You said we could go skating if the pond was frozen."
"Absolutely," he said, grinned at McCoy starting to sidle hopefully towards the door and warmth. "Uncle Bones hasn't done that either, we need to show him how much fun that is."
McCoy grins with teeth bared, and thinks, Jim, if you think you're getting any tonight, you are so, so wrong. The only reason you won't be on the FLOOR is because I might freeze to death otherwise. "Absolutely. Let's go have fun." He follows as the ensemble troops after Jim, ignoring the still small voice in his head pointing out that pride goes before a fall. Or, as it happens, several of them. The last one is almost a perfect spread-eagle. It is adjudged the best fall EVER, with dramatic reenactments by the horde. Jim, of course, skates like the damn athlete he is, long sweeping fluid strokes and easy balance. It would be damn hot--IS damn hot, except for the part where McCoy's bruises have bruises and he's lost the feeling in his feet.
He might rethink the floor decision. It might be worth it.
He also refuses to admit to the quick delighted smile at the feeling when Jim tows him and lets him go, that second's slippery panic and then the freedom of flight, for just a moment until gravity resumes its jurisdiction over one Leonard McCoy.
***
He is still limping a little and feeling mildly surly when Aurelan and Sam pack up the kids to go to their grandparents, but the prospect of Jim to himself and drinks and making out by the fireplace without a potential audience is definitely a mood improver. By the time the minihover makes its way away, the picture-perfect flakes are flying, heavy and soft and sticky, the ground is sparkling within the reach of the house lights, and he thinks he might be ready to embrace the whole snow concept as Jim sinks down next to him, fingers brushing his as he hands him his glass.
"I never really thought I'd come back, when I first left." Jim's eyes are softly amused, something tender and dark there as he looked into the fire. "Or that it'd feel like any kind of home. But some part of me misses weather, I guess. Some part of me that feels strange in a winter without snow, even after this last five years. And it's good to see Sam, to remind myself there were good things about being here."
"Snow forts with your brother? Did he teach you how to skate?" McCoy's throat tightens as he reaches out to wrap an arm around his shoulders, nose into Jim's hair.
"Yeah." Jim's voice is low as he takes a sip of his drink. "And his kids. He's a pretty amazing dad. Especially considering."
"I wish we could have brought Joanna. Next year, maybe."
Jim looks a little startled, something bright and uncertain there. "I thought you'd want to go someplace, well, warmer next time. It'll be your turn."
"Why? I'm having fun." Quite a bit when he actually LETS himself, he thinks, a slightly loopy smile as he leans over and nuzzles Jim's nose. "Besides, goddammit, we're not leaving until I can navigate around that damn frozen puddle without falling on my ass."
"Bones, we only have 72 hours." Jim's eyes are sparkling and McCoy growls, cuffs him on the back of the head before kissing him, long and slow and sweet. Jim's hands slide under McCoy's sweater and then he tilts his head as he doesn't encounter skin, starts investigating. "Okay, exactly how many layers ARE you wearing, here?"
McCoy cocks an eyebrow at him. "Let me put it to you this way. The more time we spend discussing that, the less likely you are to get into any of them." Jim starts laughing and unwrapping at that, and the surrounding furniture proceeds to be decorated with any number of lightweight insulating fabrics before Jim's hands are on bare skin, Jim's mouth tracing a hot line from the hollow of McCoy's throat to the dip of his navel on the floor in front of the fire, painting them both with heat and light, sheening Jim's skin lightly with sweat as he mouths over the bruise on McCoy's hipbone, tender and inciting both. "If you're looking for hurts to kiss, pretty sure my whole ass is black and blue..." McCoy gasps, unable to keep from pushing up to the sweet sting of it.
Jim snorts, bites the inside of his thigh. "If that's really what you want--"
"No," McCoy's breath sighs out as Jim's mouth closes over his cock. "I'm good. Really." Bites his lip and laces his hands into Jim's hair and he will never, ever get tired of that sight, of the way Jim's eyes go hot and dark, intensifying the feel of that luscious mouth stretched around him. Jim takes him right to the edge and then backs off; McCoy's moan of protest turns deeper as Jim smiles and slips two fingers into his mouth instead, sucking on them with that same dirty-hot pleasure of being watched for a moment before working them into McCoy and returning to cocksucking almost as an afterthought. McCoy's hands fist into the rug now, not trusting himself not to put his hands on Jim's head and fuck that eager mouth to completion. He's greedier than that; he wants Jim inside him, wants to hear that low needy whine he makes when he's close, to see the blaze of sensation wash over his face as he comes. "In me now," he rasps, raw and demanding.
Jim's teeth graze over his thigh again in answer before he pulls McCoy's legs over his shoulders and pushes into him. McCoy hisses, still a little burn of tightness there but so good, so FUCKING good. He gasps as Jim's hips shift, hit the sweet spot, moans softly as Jim thrusts again, settles into a rhythm as McCoy's hands go clumsy and impatient against him. Jim's eyes go blind and blurry when he comes, tight keening cry and McCoy's body bucking beneath his in answer like Jim's release is permission, covered and filled and needed and loved. They stay tangled together, heart-pounding and sweaty and sticky as they are and McCoy's pretty sure he has an EPIC rug burn but he doesn't want to move again, ever. Eventually, however, enough is enough and they haul each other up like drunks and stagger bed-ward. First, though, they burn through all the hot water in the shower as McCoy washes Jim's hair. "Why do you like that so much?" Jim murmurs, something approaching bliss on his face, and McCoy smiles, fingers sliding through silky strands.
"You should see yourself when I'm doing it."
"The answer to so many questions." Jim closes his eyes and leans into him, and McCoy shrugs. It's true.
Jim gathers up their clothes because he's a gentleman and McCoy is freezing and magnanimously, he doesn't complain when this time Jim tucks HIS cold face against McCoy's neck and slides a knee between his. McCoy has almost fallen asleep when he remembers. "Oh. I have something for you."
Jim jolts out of a contented half-doze. "Dammit, we agreed we weren't going to do that this year!" Jim glowers at him.
"I said I wasn't going to BUY you anything. I never said I wasn't going to GIVE you anything." He stretches way, way out of the bed and manages to snag the strap of his bag to drag it close, fumbles in the zipper pocket and has a moment of panic until his fingers close over the small cold circle. Jim looks at him wide-eyed, as defenseless as McCoy has ever seen him as he slips the old gold ring over his finger. "It was Dad's. Now it's yours. You keep bringing it back to me, okay?"
"Okay." Jim's voice is choked and soft, lips against his hair, wrapped around him tight and McCoy thinks he might finally be warm.
Author: northatlantic
Prompt: Domestic Bliss #10, Jim drags Bones back to Iowa for shore leave - during the winter. Cue Jim teaching the poor deprived Doctor how to make snow men and how to have a proper snowball fight, complete with forts.
Rating: NC-17
Other Pairings: None
Notes/Disclaimer: the pretty is not mine. the lame? that's probably mine.
Leonard McCoy thinks of himself as a basically adaptable being; an opinionated and occasionally negative one, sure, SOMEONE has to think of all the bad things that could happen or nobody will make a plan if they do, right?
He wonders how that logic managed to derail, how there came to be such a situation and clearly no backup plan as he feels his eyeballs start to freeze in the twenty-five meters between the spaceport and the flit rental, hands tucked in his armpits to keep from losing any extremities as Jim chats up the clerk at the counter while collecting their vehicle's operating codes. The sky is a sullen pewter, the wind at about 30 kph and the stingy icy bits blowing in it don't bear any resemblance to McCoy's idea of snow, which drifts down in cottony fluffs outside a suitably thick window so you can't hear it howling like the souls of the damned. Preferably with a nice big mug of Irish coffee in hand and a fireplace involved somewhere. This does not look like shore leave. This looks like someplace where you EARN shore leave, which subsequently happens somewhere ELSE with blue water and green trees and lots of bare skin for the application of sunblock.
Jim claps him on the back, beaming in that slightly manic way that means he's nervous but damned if he's going to show it. "God, looks like the holidays, doesn't it? Come on, Bones, enough daydreaming, we've got a bit of driving to do. Just rang Sam, we should be there in time for dinner."
"You sure we should be driving in this, Jim?" He eyes the swirling mess outside dubiously, the growing darkness. It looks like the textbook definition of "hostile environment" to him.
"In what? Nah, just a little wintry mix. Could fly us in with my eyes closed."
"Please don't," McCoy says without a trace of sarcasm. "I don't want the first time I meet your brother to be over a hospital bed."
Jim rolls his eyes. "That's my Merry Sunshine. Bones, I promise, there will be no loss of life and limb between here and Ames. Now come on and get in."
He follows Jim out and makes a note to himself to acquire more cold-weather gear. Like, a lot more. And he does want to cheer up, really--Jim has told him approximately a million big-brother-Sam stories "well, George Junior, actually, Sam's his middle name, but who wants to be Junior? that's just--ugh." McCoy wants to make a good impression, and see what little Kirks look like and if the baby pictures still exist somewhere..."Jesus, Jim, what the hell was that??" he yelps as a big dark form bounds across the highway and Jim just hits the glides, lifts them over it without batting an eyelash.
"Deer," he says easily. "Happens this time of day sometimes."
McCoy squeezes his eyes shut. "OK. Tell me when we get there."
***
Sam Kirk and family live in an old converted farmhouse, which makes sense since Sam's a research biologist with a focus on agricultural applications and needs space for his subjects. It also looks like something out of an old 2d movie; McCoy half-expects a wagon tied up in front of the house instead of the tidy minihover sitting out there getting covered in snow. Jim is humming, eyes bright, as he gets their bags out of the back of the car, and McCoy can ignore how cold his feet are in how happy he looks, a few nerves there too but mostly pleasure.
The porch light flicks on and McCoy can see sandy heads at the window, anxiously waiting. "Uh-oh, we've been spotted," Jim says laconically, but the smile breaks through like the sun as the piercing yell goes up "Uncle Jim is here!" McCoy has to smile at that as he follows him up, hanging back a little, thinking about Joanna. Who had been thrilled by her early Christmas gift of a new microscope--her mother, not so much, but dammit, Joanna didn't WANT to dance, she wanted to cut up bugs and look at them and like he knew what to look for in a new pair of ballet slippers anyway? He wishes she could be here, but Jocelyn had asked for Christmas this year and both he and Joanna are all too aware that as much as they both love her and think it might be nice to be able to pretend they all get along in the same room, it's all tense chilly civility punctuated by occasional outbursts and that's just the way it is.
Nobody's pretending anything here, and the only thing chilly is the draft from the door that swings closed behind them, three towheaded kids climbing all over Jim as he kneels to hug and growl and blow raspberries among other things provoking squeals of protest and delight, the man beaming down at them like an older, softer-edged version of Jim, so much so that McCoy thinks he could recognize him in a crowd.
"And this is your uncle Bones," Kirk is saying to the blonde horde, who proceed to attach themselves to McCoy with all the inexorable charm of their bloodline, eyes of every shade from sky to violets looking up at him.
"Did you bring us anything? Uncle Jim brought us a piece of a real-live Klingon Warbird last time he came to visit," the eldest one says hopefully.
"Peter!" The pretty woman looking embarrassed by a perfectly developmentally appropriate mercenary streak could only be their mother, Sam's wife Aurelan, and McCoy smiles at her sympathetically before winking down at the kid, smile going conspiratorial around the edges.
"Have to wait and see, won't you?"
It's a fine line between disappointment and getting them riled up enough to rifle the luggage, but McCoy thinks he's managed it, hopeful glances back over their shoulders as the kids were shooed off to clean up and Jim's brother has finished hugging him, comes over to offer a big hard hand. "It's nice to finally meet you, Leonard. You should probably just go ahead and call me Sam, less confusing that way." He makes a face at Jim.
"Or Junior," Jim says, in the universal tone of bratty younger siblings everywhere and it's kind of exactly how McCoy would have imagined it if he'd been able to imagine a whole house full of Kirks. There's a small feast laid on, which is a revelation after six months on ship food. He is surprised and touched when pecan pie makes an appearance, Aurelan blushing at his pleasure and Jim practically gloating and it is easier than he expects, than he feels like he deserves on some level. But Jim's knee is pressing into his under the table, his happiness pretty well tangible and sometimes you can't question, things just are. Kind of like Jim Kirk in general, Jim Kirk with Leonard McCoy and it kind of makes sense the whole family shares the weakness then, doesn't it?
Kids are bribed after dinner, and although there is a sad dearth of Klingon war trophies the eldest, who McCoy has learned is Peter, is appeased by a REAL working Starfleet tricorder with its less appropriate-for-a-nine-year-old's functions carefully deactivated by Spock in exchange for helping talk Jim out of some of the more interesting plans for Spock's bachelor party. It's a good night, a comfortable night, and while the guest bedroom is lacking in modern conveniences like independent climate controls, it does have a soft mattress and a heavy quilt to curl up under. He noses his cold nose into Jim's neck and tucks chilly feet under Jim's ankles to the accompaniment of some bitching and moaning and squirming and heavy breathing and on the whole, he has to judge it downright survivable.
The next morning, on the other hand, is another story.
***
"Come on, Bones. Never? Really?"
"Well, it's not like we HAVE snow in Georgia, Jim. We have rain, like civilized climates."
"Get your boots on. You are not leaving here until you've had a proper snowball fight. Come on, troops, help Uncle Bones find some mittens."
McCoy shoots Jim a glare of death because bringing the kids into it is hitting below the belt and he damn well knows it. But this is Jim Kirk he's glaring at, who when he wants to has the finely honed ignoring skills of solid rock, and he is shooed out into a glittering blaze of glare, a pitiless expanse of blue and white and throat-burning cold. Jim demonstrates packing a snowball, a process that wouldn't seem to need elucidation but apparently takes more skill than immediately evident when McCoy's first couple of attempts mostly stick to his mittens. Teams are drawn up (geezers against infants, and McCoy bestows a glare at a cherubic Jim) and fortifications are sculpted into the drifts with shovels and buckets and other things to pack snow into to make bricks. That part is fun, kind of like sand castles only they don't fall apart and they're cold as hell.
The first snowball hits him square in the tiny window of vision between hat and scarf about thirty seconds after hostilities are declared. "Grarf!"
"Good arm, Kira," Jim applauds, picks her up and tosses her bodily into a snowbank and the fracas is on. They all have the tactical genius that McCoy, who is dammit a DOCTOR, not a strategist, lacks, and take malicious delight in thoroughly peppering him with wet and icy missiles before deciding that's not enough of a challenge, the older two descending on Jim to the accompaniment of much screaming and leaping.
The youngest, Marie, comes to tug him by the hand. "They're not very nice," she says with the gravity that only an aggrieved six-year-old can produce. "Let's make a snowman. Then Mama can make us hot chocolate."
"Kid, you sure you're a Kirk? because that's the most sensible thing I've heard this morning."
She giggles, and McCoy has the distinct feeling he is thoroughly overmatched, seeing a mirror of Jim's indulgent amusement on her tiny face as she starts showing him how to roll the snowball. He is certain when he feels how heavy the snowball gets that he's been snookered in service of her ambitions, as clearly he is capable of making a MUCH larger snowman than she is. Still, nonetheless, there is something strangely satisfying as Marie surveys his handiwork and turns to announce, "Uncle Jim, we're going to have the BEST snowman."
"You are, huh?" Jim has snow melting in his eyelashes and eyebrows as he mock-frowns at them in challenge. Cheeks red and eyes sparkling the color of the sky, he looks like a young sun god on vacation. McCoy would totally have dirty thoughts if he wasn't soaked to the skin and freezing. Well, okay, maybe he has one or two anyway. Good for the circulation. "We'll just see about THAT." Jim attacks his snowman with the same verve and glee as the all-out snow war beforehand, packing and smoothing and shaping while Marie patiently instructs McCoy in the fine art of snowman-decorating and convinces him to sacrifice his scarf to the cause.
"Hah. Ours is MUCH bigger than yours," McCoy says, turns and chokes on a laugh when he sees the enormous snow RACK Jim has just sculpted on his...well, snowMAN doesn't really seem properly descriptive any more. Snowgirl? No, definitely snowWOMAN. All woman. Enough to crush someone.
"But mine is prettier," Jim shoots back, grinning. The girls giggle and McCoy's reasonably sure it would be obscene if it wasn't so damned funny. Jim's given his snow-woman a topknot and a long dangling tail of scarf for hair; he totally intends to give Jim crap later about how Uhura would feel about being immortalized in snow in such, uh, vivid anatomical detail. He snaps a picture with his comlink for later blackmail evidence.
"Uncle Jim," Peter tugs at Jim's coat, starting to get bored by artistic endeavor. "You said we could go skating if the pond was frozen."
"Absolutely," he said, grinned at McCoy starting to sidle hopefully towards the door and warmth. "Uncle Bones hasn't done that either, we need to show him how much fun that is."
McCoy grins with teeth bared, and thinks, Jim, if you think you're getting any tonight, you are so, so wrong. The only reason you won't be on the FLOOR is because I might freeze to death otherwise. "Absolutely. Let's go have fun." He follows as the ensemble troops after Jim, ignoring the still small voice in his head pointing out that pride goes before a fall. Or, as it happens, several of them. The last one is almost a perfect spread-eagle. It is adjudged the best fall EVER, with dramatic reenactments by the horde. Jim, of course, skates like the damn athlete he is, long sweeping fluid strokes and easy balance. It would be damn hot--IS damn hot, except for the part where McCoy's bruises have bruises and he's lost the feeling in his feet.
He might rethink the floor decision. It might be worth it.
He also refuses to admit to the quick delighted smile at the feeling when Jim tows him and lets him go, that second's slippery panic and then the freedom of flight, for just a moment until gravity resumes its jurisdiction over one Leonard McCoy.
***
He is still limping a little and feeling mildly surly when Aurelan and Sam pack up the kids to go to their grandparents, but the prospect of Jim to himself and drinks and making out by the fireplace without a potential audience is definitely a mood improver. By the time the minihover makes its way away, the picture-perfect flakes are flying, heavy and soft and sticky, the ground is sparkling within the reach of the house lights, and he thinks he might be ready to embrace the whole snow concept as Jim sinks down next to him, fingers brushing his as he hands him his glass.
"I never really thought I'd come back, when I first left." Jim's eyes are softly amused, something tender and dark there as he looked into the fire. "Or that it'd feel like any kind of home. But some part of me misses weather, I guess. Some part of me that feels strange in a winter without snow, even after this last five years. And it's good to see Sam, to remind myself there were good things about being here."
"Snow forts with your brother? Did he teach you how to skate?" McCoy's throat tightens as he reaches out to wrap an arm around his shoulders, nose into Jim's hair.
"Yeah." Jim's voice is low as he takes a sip of his drink. "And his kids. He's a pretty amazing dad. Especially considering."
"I wish we could have brought Joanna. Next year, maybe."
Jim looks a little startled, something bright and uncertain there. "I thought you'd want to go someplace, well, warmer next time. It'll be your turn."
"Why? I'm having fun." Quite a bit when he actually LETS himself, he thinks, a slightly loopy smile as he leans over and nuzzles Jim's nose. "Besides, goddammit, we're not leaving until I can navigate around that damn frozen puddle without falling on my ass."
"Bones, we only have 72 hours." Jim's eyes are sparkling and McCoy growls, cuffs him on the back of the head before kissing him, long and slow and sweet. Jim's hands slide under McCoy's sweater and then he tilts his head as he doesn't encounter skin, starts investigating. "Okay, exactly how many layers ARE you wearing, here?"
McCoy cocks an eyebrow at him. "Let me put it to you this way. The more time we spend discussing that, the less likely you are to get into any of them." Jim starts laughing and unwrapping at that, and the surrounding furniture proceeds to be decorated with any number of lightweight insulating fabrics before Jim's hands are on bare skin, Jim's mouth tracing a hot line from the hollow of McCoy's throat to the dip of his navel on the floor in front of the fire, painting them both with heat and light, sheening Jim's skin lightly with sweat as he mouths over the bruise on McCoy's hipbone, tender and inciting both. "If you're looking for hurts to kiss, pretty sure my whole ass is black and blue..." McCoy gasps, unable to keep from pushing up to the sweet sting of it.
Jim snorts, bites the inside of his thigh. "If that's really what you want--"
"No," McCoy's breath sighs out as Jim's mouth closes over his cock. "I'm good. Really." Bites his lip and laces his hands into Jim's hair and he will never, ever get tired of that sight, of the way Jim's eyes go hot and dark, intensifying the feel of that luscious mouth stretched around him. Jim takes him right to the edge and then backs off; McCoy's moan of protest turns deeper as Jim smiles and slips two fingers into his mouth instead, sucking on them with that same dirty-hot pleasure of being watched for a moment before working them into McCoy and returning to cocksucking almost as an afterthought. McCoy's hands fist into the rug now, not trusting himself not to put his hands on Jim's head and fuck that eager mouth to completion. He's greedier than that; he wants Jim inside him, wants to hear that low needy whine he makes when he's close, to see the blaze of sensation wash over his face as he comes. "In me now," he rasps, raw and demanding.
Jim's teeth graze over his thigh again in answer before he pulls McCoy's legs over his shoulders and pushes into him. McCoy hisses, still a little burn of tightness there but so good, so FUCKING good. He gasps as Jim's hips shift, hit the sweet spot, moans softly as Jim thrusts again, settles into a rhythm as McCoy's hands go clumsy and impatient against him. Jim's eyes go blind and blurry when he comes, tight keening cry and McCoy's body bucking beneath his in answer like Jim's release is permission, covered and filled and needed and loved. They stay tangled together, heart-pounding and sweaty and sticky as they are and McCoy's pretty sure he has an EPIC rug burn but he doesn't want to move again, ever. Eventually, however, enough is enough and they haul each other up like drunks and stagger bed-ward. First, though, they burn through all the hot water in the shower as McCoy washes Jim's hair. "Why do you like that so much?" Jim murmurs, something approaching bliss on his face, and McCoy smiles, fingers sliding through silky strands.
"You should see yourself when I'm doing it."
"The answer to so many questions." Jim closes his eyes and leans into him, and McCoy shrugs. It's true.
Jim gathers up their clothes because he's a gentleman and McCoy is freezing and magnanimously, he doesn't complain when this time Jim tucks HIS cold face against McCoy's neck and slides a knee between his. McCoy has almost fallen asleep when he remembers. "Oh. I have something for you."
Jim jolts out of a contented half-doze. "Dammit, we agreed we weren't going to do that this year!" Jim glowers at him.
"I said I wasn't going to BUY you anything. I never said I wasn't going to GIVE you anything." He stretches way, way out of the bed and manages to snag the strap of his bag to drag it close, fumbles in the zipper pocket and has a moment of panic until his fingers close over the small cold circle. Jim looks at him wide-eyed, as defenseless as McCoy has ever seen him as he slips the old gold ring over his finger. "It was Dad's. Now it's yours. You keep bringing it back to me, okay?"
"Okay." Jim's voice is choked and soft, lips against his hair, wrapped around him tight and McCoy thinks he might finally be warm.