Fic: Sun Showers
Title: Sun Showers
Author: sunriseinspace
Character(s): Jim Kirk / Leonard McCoy, Joanna McCoy
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I like them very much but they are not the hell my whales. (Horribly misquoted, but it makes me laugh.)
Summary: Summer of Love challenge prompt on jim_and_bones : "Sprinklers on the lawn, oh my!" Part of the heat-wave!verse (comes before Hotter'n Blue Blazes).
+++
A grasshopper buzzes past his chair, landing with a soft thud on the picnic table to his left, and he glances up, childhood wariness kicking in as always. He doesn't mind grasshoppers, is even willing to help Joanna run around the yard trying to catch 'em, but they've always sounded similar to bees and wasps, something he found out with painful consequences as a kid. He still remembers the warm look in his daddy's eyes as he treated the bee sting, telling him to use the good sense God gave a goose and look before runnin' off to investigate something.
"'Kay, Jojo! You'll be red as a lobster if y'stay out here any longer, baby girl. Got your mama's complexion and she always burns before she tans," he calls out to his daughter, setting down the book he'd been reading. It's one of Jim's and he doesn't think it would be much appreciated if he gave it back with water stains.
Joanna runs over, mahogany pigtails flying, dripping water and grinning from ear to ear. "Hug, Daddy!" she giggles, crawling into his lap before he can stop her, soaking the front of his t-shirt. Her arms are cool around his neck, wet from the sprinkler, and he can feel the goosebumps on her skin as he returns the hug. He walks his fingers down her sides, making her giggle again, and she tucks herself under his chin, smelling of summer and sunshine. "You're warm," she mumbles, nosing at the collar of his shirt, and he kisses the top of her head before nudging her off his lap.
"Go on in and change," he tells her, eyeing the blue tint to her lips and the shudders chattering her teeth, despite the heat. She nods and takes off for the house, bare feet inaudible on the sun-baked grass. Jim steps out onto the porch just as she's reaching for the door and Leonard smiles as she wraps her arms around Jim's waist, pigtails leaving damp spots on his shirt, before flinging the screen door open and running inside.
Laughing at the expression on Jim's face, Leonard pulls himself out of his lawn chair, toes out of his sandals, and wanders over to where the sprinkler is set up in the yard. The ground is cool and soft underfoot, well watered after Joanna's hour of play, and a welcome change after the almost-gravelly texture of the rest of the yard. He stops just within the sprinkler's radius, letting cold water run over his feet without getting wet above the knee. Flexing his toes against the ground, he watches the sprinkler run, rainbows glittering in the mist as the water arcs above his head.
Warm arms wrap around his waist as a chin settles into his right shoulder and a solid presence plasters itself to his back. Leonard doesn't stop his smile, leans his head against Jim's and relaxes into the embrace, staring up at the white-hot sky and its wispy clouds as Georgia heat bears down on his skin and cold water washes over his feet.
"It'll rain Friday," Jim mentions, despite all weather reports to the contrary. Len glances sideways though he's too close to see anything of note in Jim's face and quirks an eyebrow.
"That a guarantee?" he asks and feels Jim shrug behind him.
"No, but it will." And he's so certain, just the same as he was before Vulcan, that Leonard lets it drop. It doesn't matter anyway, whether it rains or not; they're here 'til Sunday and it's only Monday, plenty of time for anything to happen.
The water feels good on his feet, keeps the heat at bay, but it's wasteful, so he makes a move to step away from Jim and toward the spigot. And, somehow, he's not surprised when Jim stops him, turns him to pull him into a kiss. But the intensity is unexpected; sweet and strong as the last swallow in the bottom of a coffee cup, the kiss takes his breath away, scatters his thoughts and reduces everything to sensation. Goosebumps from the cold water. Sweat beading at his hairline. The firm pressure of Jim's lips against his own, tongue warm and knowing in his mouth. The slip-slide of sandy-blonde hair through his fingers, hot and damp from the sun overhead. A flash of heat runs through Leonard when Jim's hands trace down his sides and back up to find skin and he breaks away, gasping.
"Jim, Joanna's just inside, she might-" He breaks off with a hiss as Jim nips at his neck before soothing the sting by sucking a kiss into his skin, no doubt leaving a mark. "Jim," he tries again, pushing against Jim's shoulders until he can take a step back, and he feels the water splash higher on his legs, dampening the hem of his shorts. A feral grin lights Jim's eyes with a predatory glow and a shiver of adrenaline-spiked arousal runs through Leonard. God damn the man for looking like that when Leonard couldn't do anything about it. He growls, raises a hand to admonish Jim - or to pull him in close again, he's undecided - when Jim grabs both wrists, hooks a foot behind Leonard's knee, and pushes.
Len lands with a grunt on the soften ground, squinting through the water falling like rain up at the sky above. He lies there frozen for a moment, taking stock, expression gradually growing more and more thunderous as he realizes exactly what Jim did. Pushing himself up on his elbows, feeling mud squish between his fingers, he glowers at the hunched over, sniggering form of his best friend and greatest pain in the ass.
"I hate you, you know," he begins conversationally, glaring through his bangs as water drips down his face and plasters his t-shirt to his chest. Jim makes an effort to compose himself, standing up straight and silent, face only twitching a little - it's the same expression Jim gets whenever Leonard catches him in the middle of a prank, usually accompanied by Scotty or Sulu's stifled chuckles. It lasts until Leonard rolls his eyes and scowls, petulantly aiming a kick at Jim's shin, staring up through falling water tinted gold like molten sunlight.
Jim drops to all fours and crawls forward over Leonard's legs, hands planted in the mud at Leonard's hips so that they're face to face, lips breaths away from touching. "Liar," Jim murmurs, nose skimming along Leonard's cheek, the barest hint of a touch, "you love me and you know it."
Leonard's breath catches in his chest and he closes his eyes. "I do," he whispers back and Jim closes the distance, kissing him with lips tasting of laughter and garden hose-water, sweet and metallic.