i'll get him hot, show him what i got
Title: Play the cards with spades to start
Author: eonism
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just here for the lulz.
Characters/Pairings: Gary Mitchell/Kirk, Gary Mitchell/McCoy, Kirk/McCoy (Star Trek XI)
Word Count: 3,906
Author's notes: Immediately follows the events of A hard pair we will be and Poker-Face.
Summary: He doesn’t want to think about Gary, about the spiteful things he does with a head full of bourbon and biting kisses. His brain hasn’t cleared up enough for the regret to fully settle in yet, so Leonard just focuses on this. On Jim, and the way the room suddenly feels far too tiny with him in it.
When Leonard gets back to the dorm, it’s after midnight and Jim is there.
Leonard didn’t expect him to be. Sitting up on his bed, thumbing idly through some homework (Like Jim Kirk needs to fucking study, Leonard does his best not to sneer). Jim looks like shit, even for Jim, his eyes bleary, face unshaven. In some spiteful part of Leonard’s brain, still slurring from the three glasses of bourbon, he isn’t sorry for it. It doesn’t make it any easier, feeling the lasting burn of Gary’s cock between his thighs and under his clothes, like dirty fingerprints all over his body in bites and bruises.
Leonard says nothing of that. He doesn’t say anything about the way Gary fucks or how he angles his hips when he’s about to come, the deep thrusts and keening sounds. It won’t seem important, later when he’s scrubbing away the smell of Gary’s skin and breath in the shower that night, before he crawls into bed and tries to forget about it. These are all things that Jim knows, and now Leonard knows them too. It’s in this way that they’re finally even, he decides.
“Where were you?” Jim asks, in that easy way that he does. Like he doesn’t really care, like nothing really matters, even when he’s eying Leonard cautiously from across the room and trying not to be obvious about it.
“Out.” Sliding out of his jacket Leonard tosses it onto his bed, choosing to shuffle through the contents of his back pocket for his wallet rather than looking at Jim. Leonard isn’t good at stand-offs or cold wars, he finds himself reminded up with a sting, which is probably why Jocelyn got the house and the horses back in Atlanta. “I thought you would be, too.”
He doesn’t want to think about Gary, about the spiteful things he does with a head full of bourbon and biting kisses. His brain hasn’t cleared up enough for the regret to fully settle in yet, so Leonard just focuses on this. On Jim, and the way the room suddenly feels far too tiny with him in it.
“I stayed in, decided to wait up for you.” Getting up from his bed, Jim tosses the PADD he was looking at aside, approaching Leonard like he would a barking dog. “Look, I think we need to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Leonard says shortly, “I already know.”
Jim still keeps a measure of distance between them. “About what?”
“You and Gary.”
That brings Jim up short, hard like a slap. “Who told you?”
“Nobody told me, Jim,” Leonard answers. He’s still mad; at Gary mostly, but at Jim, too. Maybe he shouldn’t be but he is. “Nobody had to. I knew the minute you came back that morning, with your tail between your legs.”
The air between them suddenly feels thin and hot, and Jim wasn’t prepared for this.
“Look, Bones,” he explains, or tries, invading Leonard’s personal space until the doctor moves away again. He doesn’t usually have to explain himself, not like this; there’s an unspoken agreement between them, no names or places or dates required. “It’s nothing. I don’t know what you’re so pissed off about. I got drunk and fucked him, alright? It’s not even that big a deal.”
“Yeah, I know,” Leonard says, slow and punctuated, to make sure it stings. Moving around Jim he abandons his jacket and heads straight for the door. “I won’t waste your time with it again.”
This time it’s Jim who says nothing.
--
It’s been a while since Jim Kirk’s been this drunk.
Not since his 21st birthday, he’s pretty sure. When Sam came home from college for the weekend and Mom made Jim play nice and stay at the house, which was easier to swallow since she threw Frank out the year before. It was the Saturday that Sam had to bail him out of jail at six o’clock in the morning, for getting into a fist-fight with some guy named Rod with a scar on his chin and a nasty right-cross. He didn’t remember much, other than Rod’s girlfriend (and the way she curled her tongue in his navel when she was taking off his pants, because Jesus) and that Sam had yelled at him in the car on the way home and Mom didn’t talk to him for two days.
But anyway.
There are girls at this bar. Beautiful ones, with soft laughs, short skirts and long long legs. The kind that Jim likes, because they just love guys who play dumb and fuck hard, and that Jim knows all too well how to please. Right now he’s too drunk for that, thrown off of his a-game, licking his lips and slurring the words just enough to be not-so-charming, and nobody likes that. He’s too drunk, and Bones is too busy across town working a double-shift at the base hospital to tell Jim this is a bad idea.
Not that he misses Bones. That’s what Jim assures himself as he sips his eighth beer of the night and eyes the brunette on the next stool. He and Bones are friends and they fuck each other, but it’s not like that. Bones can be busy if he wants and Jim can go out without him.
The brunette - green eyes, matte red mouth, a little freckle under her nose - smiles, and so does Jim.
--
JIM
Are you done being pissed off at me yet?
BONES
No.
Jim looks at his comm. disappointedly, and then frowns.
JIM
Fuck you anyway.
--
Jim barely notices Gary Mitchell when he saddles up beside him at the bar. Gary, still in his cadet reds from the day’s flight tests, with his long fingers around the neck of his second beer and that little glint in his eyes that Jim recognizes from too many nights at bars like this. He places a hand on Jim’s back, and Jim doesn’t have the good sense to shrug it off.
“You look like you’ve seen better days, Kirk,” the helmsman says, softly, smilingly. “What’s the occasion, or is this how you like to spend your Tuesday nights?”
“What do you want, Gary?” Jim asks, because that’s what Bones would ask if he were here. It seems like the right thing to say.
“Oh, don’t be like that, Jim. Just out for a drink,” Gary shrugs and pats the bar-top casually as he props himself on the empty stool beside Jim. “I saw you sitting up here and thought I’d say hello.”
Other things come to mind - very Bones things, short and curt and spiteful - but Jim doesn’t say them. “Well. Hello.”
Gary takes a swallow, purses his lips. “Where’s your friend?” he says, voice low with a thoughtful lick of his bottom lip.
“Working.” Jim shrugs, slants his lashes in Gary’s direction, and smirks a little. “Why? Miss him?”
A snort. “Hardly. McCoy would be a lot more fun without that rod up his ass.”
Jim takes a sip of beer, laughs despite himself. “Yeah, well,” he starts to say, “You’re not really in his kind of crowd, anyway. No offense.”
“None taken.” Gary cants his head, studies Jim. “So, what. He let you out to play all by yourself?” he asks, leaning in just a little closer, lowering his lashes enough to examine the line of Jim’s mouth as it purses in a swallow. “Usually if you’re out he’s all over you, or vice versa.”
Jim shakes his head. He feels a little pissed off at the suggestion, but he doesn’t show it. “Look, I’m not married to the guy,” he says, “We’re just fucking around. And whatever, it’s none of your business.”
“You fuck around with all your friends?” Gary’s eyes look a little sharper than usual, but Jim doesn’t say anything about that.
“I thought you just wanted to say hi, Gary.”
“I did.”
“Then what do you want now?”
When Gary speaks again he makes the words sound like poison when he smiles, dripping off his tongue and filling the space between their bodies. Light from the fixture behind the bar catches the brown in his eyes like unnatural slivers of steel.
"I think you already know what I want, Jim."
--
JIM
You’ve never given a shit about this before.
BONES
I don’t care.
JIM
Obviously you do care, then you wouldn’t be doing your passive-aggressive bitch thing.
BONES
You’re free to fuck whoever you want, just don’t expect me to be waiting around to pat you on the head when you do.
JIM
What about you and me?
BONES
There is no you and me.
Ten minutes. Leonard doesn’t get a response. Tapping his stylus against the keypad, he sighs and closes his comm.
--
There’s something a little bitter about the taste of Gary’s come, Jim thinks as he licks his lips, having spit the rest out in the trash can by the nightstand. At least he’s pretty sure there is, feeling Gary’s fingers smooth over his scalp in something like caress as the helmsman’s breath evened into a sigh.
“Such a fucking cocksucker.” The soft way Gary laughs puts Jim’s teeth on edge.
“Yeah?” Jim asks, even though he doesn’t want to know the answer.
As though he senses it, Gary doesn’t respond. Instead he hauls Jim up to kiss him, all tongue and spit and teeth. It’s better this way anyway, Jim decides, and opens his mouth and cards a hand through Gary’s hair. Tugs, just a little, the way Jim knows Bones likes it, and swallows the little laugh that Gary lets out as he presses Jim back across the bed.
--
“You can stay here, if you want.”
Gary has no roommate. The last one - Andorian botanist, kind of skittish - disappeared just like all the rest, on the heels of reports and rumors about Gary’s late-night proclivities and tendency towards messing with his roommates’ heads. He says it’s easier that way (“These guys have no sense of humor, I swear.”) and Jim doesn’t question it. So when Jim finds himself unofficially thrown out of his dorm (Leonard didn’t ban him, since he didn’t do anything ridiculous like request a room transfer, but Jim knew well enough not to come back just yet), he didn’t have any reason to say no to Gary’s offer.
Actually, Jim has several reasons to say no. Big fat ones that make his head hurt to think about, so he doesn’t, and all of which have to do with Gary Mitchell being the source of the problem. He can’t be part of any solution that ends in Leonard talking to him, but again, these are not things that Jim wants to think about.
The room is nearly identical to his; nearly, save the hometown trinkets Gary has on the dresser, desk and shelves, identifying an entire family of Mitchells that Jim finds kind of surreal upon closer inspection. The bed is identical to his too, just a little springier, having seen less use in the last two years that Gary’s been without a consistent roommate. It shifts under his weight as Jim sits down on it, letting his bag hit the floor by the foot of the bed in a shallow thud, and sighs out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
Across the room Gary watches him, if only for a moment, crosses his arms as he leans back against the corner of the dresser. The smile that curves the corner of his mouth is small and quiet and a little predatory. Jim chooses not to think about that either.
“Thanks,” Jim offers reflexively, and toes out of his boots.
“Still not talking to you, I take it?”
“Nope.” Nudging his things under the borrowed bed for now, Jim decides he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Wouldn’t be here if he was.”
“Yeah, well. Fuck him anyway.” Gary shrugs passively. “So I’m going out for a beer in a bit. You can come with you want, or you can stay here. Whatever you want to do.”
Jim unzips the jacket of his uniform, purses his mouth, shrugs. Alcohol sounds good. It sounds better than the empty dorm room and the messages he and Leonard have been exchanging for the last three days. So he nods, slips out of his jacket, “Yeah, sure.”
Gary shrugs again, “Okay,” like it isn’t a big deal. The little smirk he wears says different though, but Jim doesn’t think about it either.
--
Gary Mitchell fucks impersonally, like he could be fucking anybody. There’s a swift mechanical coldness to it, under the sliding of thigh muscle and the hitching of Gary’s breath, punctuated by fond, sporadic grunts of encouragement. The two split-wet fingers he pressed inside Jim for prep could’ve been meant for anyone, and likely are, squeezing Jim’s sac in his free hand as Jim bucks and moans thickly into the pillow. Jim knows what that’s like, fucking without forethought, without closeness, so that when Gary holds Jim’s hips down into the mattress and replaces his fingers with his cock in one full thrust, it’s as easy as breathing.
A hand between Jim’s shoulders keeps him down on knees and elbows, licking his lips and fisting his fingers in the sheets. Gary doesn’t want to face him and that’s okay; Bones likes to have sex face-to-face and it seems natural that Gary wouldn’t. It might be weird if he did, and Jim doesn’t want to think about that. He just wants to close his eyes as Gary wraps his fingers around the root of his dick, and fucks Jim like he would anybody else.
When Gary finally comes, with a grunt and shiver and a satisfied little chuckle, Jim doesn’t think of anything at all. Instead he sucks in a breath between his teeth, as Gary snakes a fond hand across his scalp, angles back his head and kisses him until he can’t think at all.
--
They have three beers, maybe four. Jim drinks the same Mexican beer that Gary drinks, because he only drinks bourbon when Leonard’s around, and he hasn’t eaten enough today to drink as much as he wants to. There’s a redheaded Orion sitting at a table across the bar. She dips her head when she notices Jim looking at her, smiles under a fallen strand of red hair. Jim doesn’t make it to her table, because his comm. is going off in his back pocket.
JIM
You’re being a fucking asshole about this.
BONES
Then why do you keep texting me?
JIM
Because I’m trying to figure out why you’re acting like such a psycho ex-girlfriend.
BONES
Ask your friend Gary.
Gary sees the messages when he peers over Jim’s shoulder with a scoff. Snatches the comm. out of Jim’s hand, snaps it shut.
“Fuck him,” he says, “I don’t know why you’re talking to him.”
“Because he’s pissed off,” Jim snipes as he steals back his comm. “And I’m trying to get back into my dorm room, thanks, so you know, butt the hell out.”
“Whatever.” Shrugging Gary takes a sip of beer. “Let him be pissed off. Like he has anything to say.”
“Say about what?” Jim ventures, only half-interested in this conversation, stuffing his comm. back into his pocket.
Swallowing, Gary gives his bottom lip a lick. “What, McCoy didn’t tell you?”
Jim shakes his head, unsure he likes where this is heading.
“About a week ago, two nights after we,” a vague gesture, “y’know. I run into McCoy at a bar down the street, drinking himself under the table. We get to talking, about how pissed off he is at you for fucking me that night. Next thing I know he’s dragging me outside, trying to get my pants open.”
“Bullshit,” Jim says, and it’s a lot more hurt-sounding than he had anticipated. “Bones wouldn’t do that. He isn’t like that - he doesn’t fuck other guys, and he hates you anyway.”
Bones didn’t fuck anybody but Jim, not since his divorce was finalized the year before. Jim knows this.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Gary shrugs again. The smugness leaves his voice, leaving something like sympathy hiding in the lines of his face. Jim doesn’t recognize it right away; his head is too busy putting dates and locations together like jigsaw pieces. “He seemed pretty fine about it when we were fucking in the alleyway.”
The thought of it is surreal and ugly in a way that Jim can’t quite pin down. Bones and Gary, outside some bar, silhouetted in his mind in bright flashes of curled fingers and tongues, the wet sound of breathing and grunting hanging in the dark between them. Bones’ hands on Gary’s dick, Gary’s dick between his lips, dirt on his knees, letting himself be fucked in some alley. Bones wasn’t like that. Bones was better than that.
Jim finds his gut suddenly tight, a little sick, from something other than the alcohol on his empty stomach. Gary puts a hand on his shoulder, heavier than it should’ve been, and it makes Jim’s face feel hot.
“Hey,” Gary says, and smiles. It’s too slick, too cold, but he tries to look sympathetic anyway. “Forget him, alright? He’s being an asshole. Either he’ll get over it or he won’t.”
Jim nods dumbly, licks his bottom lip in a quick swipe. Tips back his beer and swallows the rest of it before the thought of Bones making Gary come can settle in too snugly behind his eyes. He already knows before Gary gestures towards the door with his chin that he’s going to fuck him again tonight, because Gary is close and it’s easy.
They don’t quite make it to the dorm before Jim is kissing him, hard and sloppy and more than just a little mad. Gary just opens up to it, threads his fingers into Jim’s hair with a tug and a soft purr of a laugh. Tells Jim “Easy there, tiger,” and smirks when he pins Jim against the door. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”
Sucking on Gary’s tongue, Jim doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care about redheads in bars or Bones, or the way Bones’ mouth must look on Gary’s cock. He just plucks open the first two buttons of Gary’s shirt and moves them back when the door slides open behind them.
“Fuck it,” he murmurs, dry, husky. “Let them listen.”
--
The next morning Jim smells like sweat and beer and Gary’s come. It sticks to his stomach and under his clothes, uncomfortable, almost prickly in a way that Jim isn’t used to, and tries to ignore. When he gets back to the dorm Bones is there and awake, sitting on his bed with a textbook in his lap. Jim can’t look him in the eye, he finds as the door slides shut behind him. So he just shrugs off his boots and his jacket, and doesn’t.
“Where were you last night?” If Bones is mad, he’s doing a pretty good job of hiding it for now.
“Out late. Drank a little too much,” Jim answers blithely. Slips out of his shirt, throws it at the laundry hamper across the room and misses. “Had to get a ride home. I probably should’ve called, sorry.”
“Yeah.” Bones looks at the bites on his neck, the bruises on his hipbone from Gary’s fingers. “Next time you should. I thought something happened, or you got yourself busted for fighting again.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Jim lies with a smile, however small and pale. “Hey I need a shower, but after you wanna get breakfast? Don’t tell me you’re broke because I can pay, you cheap bitch.”
“Sure,” Bones nods, and thumbs through the textbook to avoid looking at the imprints of Gary’s fingers in Jim’s flesh.
They say nothing about Gary, and Jim never brings it up.
--
“So what’s your damage?”
It’s almost noon and unseasonably warm in San Francisco. The heat makes his cadet reds all the more stiff and uncomfortable, and Leonard is making his way to Xenobiology when Gary turns up over his shoulder. Gary matches Leonard’s quick steps across the quad to the hospital complex, giving the doctor a look that he can’t quite read at this angle. It takes every ounce of Leonard’s resolve to keep from smashing his medical case across the helmsman’s face, break his nose and his irritatingly straight teeth.
“I don’t have any damage,” he all but snarls instead, “and just because you want to try this shit in public doesn’t mean I won’t knock your lights out. I don’t care if half of Starfleet sees me do it, either.”
Leonard knew where Jim was sleeping. He wasn’t blind and he wasn’t dumb. He certainly wasn’t dumb enough to pretend that he didn’t see it coming, and that if it weren’t for him, Jim wouldn’t have gone to Gary. That still didn’t mean that he felt like talking about.
“Either you’re fucking Kirk or not, McCoy,” Gary says, doing his best to keep up, “Make up your mind, because this shit is getting old.”
“What’re you even talking about?” Leonard snaps over his shoulder. It earns him a few curious glances from some passing cadets, and he takes a breath to steady himself.
Gary puts a hand on his arm, pulling Leonard close, slowing down his steps. Leonard immediately shrugs the hand away.
“I’m talking about your jealous bullshit,” Gary says accusingly, voice low to keep dissuade eavesdroppers. “You storm around like you’ve been wounded, even after you fuck me behind Jim’s back, then act like Jim’s the one being an asshole. It was alright for a while, but you’ve got Jim pining over you like some lovesick puppy. It’s getting kind of pathetic.”
“What goes on between me and Jim is our business,” Leonard all but spits at Gary, not caring who hears, “so stay out of it, or I swear to God-”
“Either you want him or you don’t. Otherwise you’re kind of being psychotic about this.” Gary gets in Leonard’s space, crowding him the way Jim does, and it makes Leonard bristle. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“Jim isn’t a poker-chip, or a prize, Mitchell - and this isn’t a goddamn bet.”
“And I don’t see it that way.”
“What’re you getting out of all this?” Leonard asks, hand gripping his case tightly, although he already knows the answer. “If you’ve got something to settle with me, then do it. Because this fucking game you’re playing? It’s sick.”
“You know what I want, McCoy,” Gary says, straight-faced and a little dangerous. His eyes look silver in the sunlight, caught in his lashes like splinters. “If you want Jim, make a move for him.”
Leonard’s jaw tics. “And if I don’t?”
“You do. Which is why you can’t stand me having him. But if you don’t have the balls to do it, then stay out of my way.” Gary smiles, just with one side of his mouth where no one else will see it, and gives Leonard a soft pat on the chest, beneath the collar bone. “Otherwise, we’ll have to make other arrangements.”
Leonard stiffens at the contact, swallows thickly.
“What’re you talking about?”
Gary’s smile broadens.
“Be seeing you, Doctor.”
Watching Gary first blend and then fade into the red silhouettes scattered across the quad, Leonard is counting on it.
Author: eonism
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just here for the lulz.
Characters/Pairings: Gary Mitchell/Kirk, Gary Mitchell/McCoy, Kirk/McCoy (Star Trek XI)
Word Count: 3,906
Author's notes: Immediately follows the events of A hard pair we will be and Poker-Face.
Summary: He doesn’t want to think about Gary, about the spiteful things he does with a head full of bourbon and biting kisses. His brain hasn’t cleared up enough for the regret to fully settle in yet, so Leonard just focuses on this. On Jim, and the way the room suddenly feels far too tiny with him in it.
When Leonard gets back to the dorm, it’s after midnight and Jim is there.
Leonard didn’t expect him to be. Sitting up on his bed, thumbing idly through some homework (Like Jim Kirk needs to fucking study, Leonard does his best not to sneer). Jim looks like shit, even for Jim, his eyes bleary, face unshaven. In some spiteful part of Leonard’s brain, still slurring from the three glasses of bourbon, he isn’t sorry for it. It doesn’t make it any easier, feeling the lasting burn of Gary’s cock between his thighs and under his clothes, like dirty fingerprints all over his body in bites and bruises.
Leonard says nothing of that. He doesn’t say anything about the way Gary fucks or how he angles his hips when he’s about to come, the deep thrusts and keening sounds. It won’t seem important, later when he’s scrubbing away the smell of Gary’s skin and breath in the shower that night, before he crawls into bed and tries to forget about it. These are all things that Jim knows, and now Leonard knows them too. It’s in this way that they’re finally even, he decides.
“Where were you?” Jim asks, in that easy way that he does. Like he doesn’t really care, like nothing really matters, even when he’s eying Leonard cautiously from across the room and trying not to be obvious about it.
“Out.” Sliding out of his jacket Leonard tosses it onto his bed, choosing to shuffle through the contents of his back pocket for his wallet rather than looking at Jim. Leonard isn’t good at stand-offs or cold wars, he finds himself reminded up with a sting, which is probably why Jocelyn got the house and the horses back in Atlanta. “I thought you would be, too.”
He doesn’t want to think about Gary, about the spiteful things he does with a head full of bourbon and biting kisses. His brain hasn’t cleared up enough for the regret to fully settle in yet, so Leonard just focuses on this. On Jim, and the way the room suddenly feels far too tiny with him in it.
“I stayed in, decided to wait up for you.” Getting up from his bed, Jim tosses the PADD he was looking at aside, approaching Leonard like he would a barking dog. “Look, I think we need to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Leonard says shortly, “I already know.”
Jim still keeps a measure of distance between them. “About what?”
“You and Gary.”
That brings Jim up short, hard like a slap. “Who told you?”
“Nobody told me, Jim,” Leonard answers. He’s still mad; at Gary mostly, but at Jim, too. Maybe he shouldn’t be but he is. “Nobody had to. I knew the minute you came back that morning, with your tail between your legs.”
The air between them suddenly feels thin and hot, and Jim wasn’t prepared for this.
“Look, Bones,” he explains, or tries, invading Leonard’s personal space until the doctor moves away again. He doesn’t usually have to explain himself, not like this; there’s an unspoken agreement between them, no names or places or dates required. “It’s nothing. I don’t know what you’re so pissed off about. I got drunk and fucked him, alright? It’s not even that big a deal.”
“Yeah, I know,” Leonard says, slow and punctuated, to make sure it stings. Moving around Jim he abandons his jacket and heads straight for the door. “I won’t waste your time with it again.”
This time it’s Jim who says nothing.
--
It’s been a while since Jim Kirk’s been this drunk.
Not since his 21st birthday, he’s pretty sure. When Sam came home from college for the weekend and Mom made Jim play nice and stay at the house, which was easier to swallow since she threw Frank out the year before. It was the Saturday that Sam had to bail him out of jail at six o’clock in the morning, for getting into a fist-fight with some guy named Rod with a scar on his chin and a nasty right-cross. He didn’t remember much, other than Rod’s girlfriend (and the way she curled her tongue in his navel when she was taking off his pants, because Jesus) and that Sam had yelled at him in the car on the way home and Mom didn’t talk to him for two days.
But anyway.
There are girls at this bar. Beautiful ones, with soft laughs, short skirts and long long legs. The kind that Jim likes, because they just love guys who play dumb and fuck hard, and that Jim knows all too well how to please. Right now he’s too drunk for that, thrown off of his a-game, licking his lips and slurring the words just enough to be not-so-charming, and nobody likes that. He’s too drunk, and Bones is too busy across town working a double-shift at the base hospital to tell Jim this is a bad idea.
Not that he misses Bones. That’s what Jim assures himself as he sips his eighth beer of the night and eyes the brunette on the next stool. He and Bones are friends and they fuck each other, but it’s not like that. Bones can be busy if he wants and Jim can go out without him.
The brunette - green eyes, matte red mouth, a little freckle under her nose - smiles, and so does Jim.
--
JIM
Are you done being pissed off at me yet?
BONES
No.
Jim looks at his comm. disappointedly, and then frowns.
JIM
Fuck you anyway.
--
Jim barely notices Gary Mitchell when he saddles up beside him at the bar. Gary, still in his cadet reds from the day’s flight tests, with his long fingers around the neck of his second beer and that little glint in his eyes that Jim recognizes from too many nights at bars like this. He places a hand on Jim’s back, and Jim doesn’t have the good sense to shrug it off.
“You look like you’ve seen better days, Kirk,” the helmsman says, softly, smilingly. “What’s the occasion, or is this how you like to spend your Tuesday nights?”
“What do you want, Gary?” Jim asks, because that’s what Bones would ask if he were here. It seems like the right thing to say.
“Oh, don’t be like that, Jim. Just out for a drink,” Gary shrugs and pats the bar-top casually as he props himself on the empty stool beside Jim. “I saw you sitting up here and thought I’d say hello.”
Other things come to mind - very Bones things, short and curt and spiteful - but Jim doesn’t say them. “Well. Hello.”
Gary takes a swallow, purses his lips. “Where’s your friend?” he says, voice low with a thoughtful lick of his bottom lip.
“Working.” Jim shrugs, slants his lashes in Gary’s direction, and smirks a little. “Why? Miss him?”
A snort. “Hardly. McCoy would be a lot more fun without that rod up his ass.”
Jim takes a sip of beer, laughs despite himself. “Yeah, well,” he starts to say, “You’re not really in his kind of crowd, anyway. No offense.”
“None taken.” Gary cants his head, studies Jim. “So, what. He let you out to play all by yourself?” he asks, leaning in just a little closer, lowering his lashes enough to examine the line of Jim’s mouth as it purses in a swallow. “Usually if you’re out he’s all over you, or vice versa.”
Jim shakes his head. He feels a little pissed off at the suggestion, but he doesn’t show it. “Look, I’m not married to the guy,” he says, “We’re just fucking around. And whatever, it’s none of your business.”
“You fuck around with all your friends?” Gary’s eyes look a little sharper than usual, but Jim doesn’t say anything about that.
“I thought you just wanted to say hi, Gary.”
“I did.”
“Then what do you want now?”
When Gary speaks again he makes the words sound like poison when he smiles, dripping off his tongue and filling the space between their bodies. Light from the fixture behind the bar catches the brown in his eyes like unnatural slivers of steel.
"I think you already know what I want, Jim."
--
JIM
You’ve never given a shit about this before.
BONES
I don’t care.
JIM
Obviously you do care, then you wouldn’t be doing your passive-aggressive bitch thing.
BONES
You’re free to fuck whoever you want, just don’t expect me to be waiting around to pat you on the head when you do.
JIM
What about you and me?
BONES
There is no you and me.
Ten minutes. Leonard doesn’t get a response. Tapping his stylus against the keypad, he sighs and closes his comm.
--
There’s something a little bitter about the taste of Gary’s come, Jim thinks as he licks his lips, having spit the rest out in the trash can by the nightstand. At least he’s pretty sure there is, feeling Gary’s fingers smooth over his scalp in something like caress as the helmsman’s breath evened into a sigh.
“Such a fucking cocksucker.” The soft way Gary laughs puts Jim’s teeth on edge.
“Yeah?” Jim asks, even though he doesn’t want to know the answer.
As though he senses it, Gary doesn’t respond. Instead he hauls Jim up to kiss him, all tongue and spit and teeth. It’s better this way anyway, Jim decides, and opens his mouth and cards a hand through Gary’s hair. Tugs, just a little, the way Jim knows Bones likes it, and swallows the little laugh that Gary lets out as he presses Jim back across the bed.
--
“You can stay here, if you want.”
Gary has no roommate. The last one - Andorian botanist, kind of skittish - disappeared just like all the rest, on the heels of reports and rumors about Gary’s late-night proclivities and tendency towards messing with his roommates’ heads. He says it’s easier that way (“These guys have no sense of humor, I swear.”) and Jim doesn’t question it. So when Jim finds himself unofficially thrown out of his dorm (Leonard didn’t ban him, since he didn’t do anything ridiculous like request a room transfer, but Jim knew well enough not to come back just yet), he didn’t have any reason to say no to Gary’s offer.
Actually, Jim has several reasons to say no. Big fat ones that make his head hurt to think about, so he doesn’t, and all of which have to do with Gary Mitchell being the source of the problem. He can’t be part of any solution that ends in Leonard talking to him, but again, these are not things that Jim wants to think about.
The room is nearly identical to his; nearly, save the hometown trinkets Gary has on the dresser, desk and shelves, identifying an entire family of Mitchells that Jim finds kind of surreal upon closer inspection. The bed is identical to his too, just a little springier, having seen less use in the last two years that Gary’s been without a consistent roommate. It shifts under his weight as Jim sits down on it, letting his bag hit the floor by the foot of the bed in a shallow thud, and sighs out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
Across the room Gary watches him, if only for a moment, crosses his arms as he leans back against the corner of the dresser. The smile that curves the corner of his mouth is small and quiet and a little predatory. Jim chooses not to think about that either.
“Thanks,” Jim offers reflexively, and toes out of his boots.
“Still not talking to you, I take it?”
“Nope.” Nudging his things under the borrowed bed for now, Jim decides he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Wouldn’t be here if he was.”
“Yeah, well. Fuck him anyway.” Gary shrugs passively. “So I’m going out for a beer in a bit. You can come with you want, or you can stay here. Whatever you want to do.”
Jim unzips the jacket of his uniform, purses his mouth, shrugs. Alcohol sounds good. It sounds better than the empty dorm room and the messages he and Leonard have been exchanging for the last three days. So he nods, slips out of his jacket, “Yeah, sure.”
Gary shrugs again, “Okay,” like it isn’t a big deal. The little smirk he wears says different though, but Jim doesn’t think about it either.
--
Gary Mitchell fucks impersonally, like he could be fucking anybody. There’s a swift mechanical coldness to it, under the sliding of thigh muscle and the hitching of Gary’s breath, punctuated by fond, sporadic grunts of encouragement. The two split-wet fingers he pressed inside Jim for prep could’ve been meant for anyone, and likely are, squeezing Jim’s sac in his free hand as Jim bucks and moans thickly into the pillow. Jim knows what that’s like, fucking without forethought, without closeness, so that when Gary holds Jim’s hips down into the mattress and replaces his fingers with his cock in one full thrust, it’s as easy as breathing.
A hand between Jim’s shoulders keeps him down on knees and elbows, licking his lips and fisting his fingers in the sheets. Gary doesn’t want to face him and that’s okay; Bones likes to have sex face-to-face and it seems natural that Gary wouldn’t. It might be weird if he did, and Jim doesn’t want to think about that. He just wants to close his eyes as Gary wraps his fingers around the root of his dick, and fucks Jim like he would anybody else.
When Gary finally comes, with a grunt and shiver and a satisfied little chuckle, Jim doesn’t think of anything at all. Instead he sucks in a breath between his teeth, as Gary snakes a fond hand across his scalp, angles back his head and kisses him until he can’t think at all.
--
They have three beers, maybe four. Jim drinks the same Mexican beer that Gary drinks, because he only drinks bourbon when Leonard’s around, and he hasn’t eaten enough today to drink as much as he wants to. There’s a redheaded Orion sitting at a table across the bar. She dips her head when she notices Jim looking at her, smiles under a fallen strand of red hair. Jim doesn’t make it to her table, because his comm. is going off in his back pocket.
JIM
You’re being a fucking asshole about this.
BONES
Then why do you keep texting me?
JIM
Because I’m trying to figure out why you’re acting like such a psycho ex-girlfriend.
BONES
Ask your friend Gary.
Gary sees the messages when he peers over Jim’s shoulder with a scoff. Snatches the comm. out of Jim’s hand, snaps it shut.
“Fuck him,” he says, “I don’t know why you’re talking to him.”
“Because he’s pissed off,” Jim snipes as he steals back his comm. “And I’m trying to get back into my dorm room, thanks, so you know, butt the hell out.”
“Whatever.” Shrugging Gary takes a sip of beer. “Let him be pissed off. Like he has anything to say.”
“Say about what?” Jim ventures, only half-interested in this conversation, stuffing his comm. back into his pocket.
Swallowing, Gary gives his bottom lip a lick. “What, McCoy didn’t tell you?”
Jim shakes his head, unsure he likes where this is heading.
“About a week ago, two nights after we,” a vague gesture, “y’know. I run into McCoy at a bar down the street, drinking himself under the table. We get to talking, about how pissed off he is at you for fucking me that night. Next thing I know he’s dragging me outside, trying to get my pants open.”
“Bullshit,” Jim says, and it’s a lot more hurt-sounding than he had anticipated. “Bones wouldn’t do that. He isn’t like that - he doesn’t fuck other guys, and he hates you anyway.”
Bones didn’t fuck anybody but Jim, not since his divorce was finalized the year before. Jim knows this.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Gary shrugs again. The smugness leaves his voice, leaving something like sympathy hiding in the lines of his face. Jim doesn’t recognize it right away; his head is too busy putting dates and locations together like jigsaw pieces. “He seemed pretty fine about it when we were fucking in the alleyway.”
The thought of it is surreal and ugly in a way that Jim can’t quite pin down. Bones and Gary, outside some bar, silhouetted in his mind in bright flashes of curled fingers and tongues, the wet sound of breathing and grunting hanging in the dark between them. Bones’ hands on Gary’s dick, Gary’s dick between his lips, dirt on his knees, letting himself be fucked in some alley. Bones wasn’t like that. Bones was better than that.
Jim finds his gut suddenly tight, a little sick, from something other than the alcohol on his empty stomach. Gary puts a hand on his shoulder, heavier than it should’ve been, and it makes Jim’s face feel hot.
“Hey,” Gary says, and smiles. It’s too slick, too cold, but he tries to look sympathetic anyway. “Forget him, alright? He’s being an asshole. Either he’ll get over it or he won’t.”
Jim nods dumbly, licks his bottom lip in a quick swipe. Tips back his beer and swallows the rest of it before the thought of Bones making Gary come can settle in too snugly behind his eyes. He already knows before Gary gestures towards the door with his chin that he’s going to fuck him again tonight, because Gary is close and it’s easy.
They don’t quite make it to the dorm before Jim is kissing him, hard and sloppy and more than just a little mad. Gary just opens up to it, threads his fingers into Jim’s hair with a tug and a soft purr of a laugh. Tells Jim “Easy there, tiger,” and smirks when he pins Jim against the door. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”
Sucking on Gary’s tongue, Jim doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care about redheads in bars or Bones, or the way Bones’ mouth must look on Gary’s cock. He just plucks open the first two buttons of Gary’s shirt and moves them back when the door slides open behind them.
“Fuck it,” he murmurs, dry, husky. “Let them listen.”
--
The next morning Jim smells like sweat and beer and Gary’s come. It sticks to his stomach and under his clothes, uncomfortable, almost prickly in a way that Jim isn’t used to, and tries to ignore. When he gets back to the dorm Bones is there and awake, sitting on his bed with a textbook in his lap. Jim can’t look him in the eye, he finds as the door slides shut behind him. So he just shrugs off his boots and his jacket, and doesn’t.
“Where were you last night?” If Bones is mad, he’s doing a pretty good job of hiding it for now.
“Out late. Drank a little too much,” Jim answers blithely. Slips out of his shirt, throws it at the laundry hamper across the room and misses. “Had to get a ride home. I probably should’ve called, sorry.”
“Yeah.” Bones looks at the bites on his neck, the bruises on his hipbone from Gary’s fingers. “Next time you should. I thought something happened, or you got yourself busted for fighting again.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Jim lies with a smile, however small and pale. “Hey I need a shower, but after you wanna get breakfast? Don’t tell me you’re broke because I can pay, you cheap bitch.”
“Sure,” Bones nods, and thumbs through the textbook to avoid looking at the imprints of Gary’s fingers in Jim’s flesh.
They say nothing about Gary, and Jim never brings it up.
--
“So what’s your damage?”
It’s almost noon and unseasonably warm in San Francisco. The heat makes his cadet reds all the more stiff and uncomfortable, and Leonard is making his way to Xenobiology when Gary turns up over his shoulder. Gary matches Leonard’s quick steps across the quad to the hospital complex, giving the doctor a look that he can’t quite read at this angle. It takes every ounce of Leonard’s resolve to keep from smashing his medical case across the helmsman’s face, break his nose and his irritatingly straight teeth.
“I don’t have any damage,” he all but snarls instead, “and just because you want to try this shit in public doesn’t mean I won’t knock your lights out. I don’t care if half of Starfleet sees me do it, either.”
Leonard knew where Jim was sleeping. He wasn’t blind and he wasn’t dumb. He certainly wasn’t dumb enough to pretend that he didn’t see it coming, and that if it weren’t for him, Jim wouldn’t have gone to Gary. That still didn’t mean that he felt like talking about.
“Either you’re fucking Kirk or not, McCoy,” Gary says, doing his best to keep up, “Make up your mind, because this shit is getting old.”
“What’re you even talking about?” Leonard snaps over his shoulder. It earns him a few curious glances from some passing cadets, and he takes a breath to steady himself.
Gary puts a hand on his arm, pulling Leonard close, slowing down his steps. Leonard immediately shrugs the hand away.
“I’m talking about your jealous bullshit,” Gary says accusingly, voice low to keep dissuade eavesdroppers. “You storm around like you’ve been wounded, even after you fuck me behind Jim’s back, then act like Jim’s the one being an asshole. It was alright for a while, but you’ve got Jim pining over you like some lovesick puppy. It’s getting kind of pathetic.”
“What goes on between me and Jim is our business,” Leonard all but spits at Gary, not caring who hears, “so stay out of it, or I swear to God-”
“Either you want him or you don’t. Otherwise you’re kind of being psychotic about this.” Gary gets in Leonard’s space, crowding him the way Jim does, and it makes Leonard bristle. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“Jim isn’t a poker-chip, or a prize, Mitchell - and this isn’t a goddamn bet.”
“And I don’t see it that way.”
“What’re you getting out of all this?” Leonard asks, hand gripping his case tightly, although he already knows the answer. “If you’ve got something to settle with me, then do it. Because this fucking game you’re playing? It’s sick.”
“You know what I want, McCoy,” Gary says, straight-faced and a little dangerous. His eyes look silver in the sunlight, caught in his lashes like splinters. “If you want Jim, make a move for him.”
Leonard’s jaw tics. “And if I don’t?”
“You do. Which is why you can’t stand me having him. But if you don’t have the balls to do it, then stay out of my way.” Gary smiles, just with one side of his mouth where no one else will see it, and gives Leonard a soft pat on the chest, beneath the collar bone. “Otherwise, we’ll have to make other arrangements.”
Leonard stiffens at the contact, swallows thickly.
“What’re you talking about?”
Gary’s smile broadens.
“Be seeing you, Doctor.”
Watching Gary first blend and then fade into the red silhouettes scattered across the quad, Leonard is counting on it.