FIC: One
Title: One
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy, mentioned Spock/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me.
Word Count: 3,997
Summary: Bones returns to the Enterprise. Jim finds out what he is to Bones.
Notes: Part of the still-unnamed series. Hard-Earned Rights, in which Jim was in a shuttle accident, Just About Time in which Jocelyn wonders whether or not Kirk's made his move yet, and The Graceful Waltz where Iowa and Winona Kirk happen and the boys dance.
Hard-Earned Rights // Just About Time // The Graceful Waltz // One // The Grave Memorial Of A Life Unlived // Houses & Heartwarmings // Guess Who's Coming To Dinner // Enterprise On My Mind // Your Fate's Not In The Stars // A World of Solemn Thought // Time Can Never Kill The True Heart
Coming home has never had such strange connotations as it does with another five-year mission slowly beginning to pull out of orbit and blasting away to the stars. McCoy doesn’t know what home is anymore. Home’s been Georgia for months, been a brief and exhilarating stay in Iowa. By all rights, the Enterprise should be impersonal. The black of space ought to afford none of the comforts of terra firma and yet, McCoy hasn’t felt the disappointment and despair (and disease and danger) and he’s not sure how much of that has been through the aid of Jim’s continual presence - 37 hours before he’d had to leave for requisitions on Earth.
Maybe it’s McCoy’s fault, maybe having Jim crash last night because they’d drank too much brandy had been a bad idea. Maybe he is that much of a goddamn tease. Maybe he’s trying to inaugurate home again while he’s missing Joanna and the horses and the house.
Maybe he just wants Jim Kirk in his life and in his bed.
That last one has too much of a ring of truth to it, so he avoids it carefully. He tucks it away in the back of a drawer and layers the fact of the matter with as many veils and socks as he can.
Everything is slowly finding its place once more. These are the same nooks and crannies that accompanied him on the last mission and each glance around the room can tell a story. There’s a blood stain he won’t allow to be taken out because it reminds him of their mirror counterparts. He has trinkets from every shore leave and the paintings in the room are ones he’s bought himself from various markets. It’s his home, but it never quite feels as right as it does as when Jim Kirk is lingering in the doorway and telling bad jokes that he’d heard from the Deltans.
McCoy dispels himself of the fantasy - some fantasies he’s got going on, he thinks sarcastically, of the utmost domesticity that a man of his age and situation can afford - and continues to unpack, rifling through vid-messages as he does.
Joanna checks in, tells him that she loves him and that she’s going away to a summer camp for teens who want to learn more about medicine. She tells him that if he’s not back for her birthday, he should just send a message and she’ll understand. She blows him a kiss and he lets the vid freeze on her face and marvels at how fast she’s growing up.
Jocelyn’s sent him a message with her new address and an update about the place. “And Clay’s just about as bad as you are with unpacking,” she sighs and harrumphs, but McCoy’s fairly sure this is mostly for show because there’s a hint of genuine love lurking in her features that he hasn’t seen on her since the early days of their courtship.
Uhura’s message is brief as she requests dinner with him that evening. McCoy doesn’t even hesitate to set aside all other plans and book her in. The crew of the Enterprise has become family to him so smoothly and swiftly that it seems so absolutely right. It’s as if he can’t imagine a universe in which they aren’t. He still recalls the clear epiphany of the moment when McCoy had realized he would do absolutely anything in the world for them.
The last message is Jim and he’s grinning broadly, as if he knows just how much charm and charisma he exudes from simply being. “Hi Bones,” he greets with a strange little wave. “I’m popping off to San Francisco to pick up some mission orders. I’ll get you the wine you like and some chocolates and be back tonight. Don’t miss me too much,” he adds with a cocky grin, which slowly dampens as he just stares at the screen. “I’ll see you later, okay?” he says, with more softness than his prior words.
McCoy turns off the screen and settles back into his chair while running a menu through his mind for dinner with Uhura. His fingers idly brush at the table beneath his fingers as he pointedly doesn’t think about Ghirardelli chocolates or his favorite Pinot being brought to him by…
By…
Well, what is Jim to him? He can’t define it except for the fact that Jim wants him and seems to be taking every one of McCoy’s reactions in stride. When it comes down to it, McCoy knows that he loves Jim and Jim knows it too. Hell, they’ve been best friends for eight years and nearly every drunken and debauched night back at the Academy had ended with a drowsy ‘I love you, Bones’, ‘Love you too, kid’ in which they meant it wholly and hadn’t meant it at once.
So now that Jim’s matured, now that he’s dancing around McCoy with such determined intent, what’s he become to McCoy?
Jim as his whole future sounds a little depressing while the divorce is still stinging as much as it does. He and Joce are better now, but the fact that it took them eight years to get to that point is something he doesn’t want to repeat. And hell, he doesn’t even know how long he’s going to live in this universe, let alone Jim.
And he is not ever, not in his life, going to call Jim his ‘boyfriend’. He’s not sixteen anymore (with that one notable exception during the last five-year mission). He’s past that. He’s got a daughter and an ex-wife and a man after him. So maybe Jim’s just ‘the one’. The one he wants to spend his time with, the one he loves, the one who’s going to be there in the hard times. The one who understands that when McCoy reams him a new one, it doesn’t mean he loves him any the less.
As far as he’s concerned, if Jim’s the one for him, then McCoy’s got a rollicking life ahead of him, filled with adventure and chaos and despair and joy.
After five years of already having lived through those things, McCoy’s fairly inured to such highs and lows. In fact, he’s started to like them. He sits back and starts composing his replies, starting with Uhura and ending with Jim.
“Hey, Jim, bring back an extra bottle of the Cab this time, would you?” he speaks into the screen and lets his voice rumble, pretending that he can see clear blue eyes staring at him while he talks. “And I need a couple more sedatives and vaccines. Starfleet Medical ought to have them under my name. Just tell them I sent you. I’m having Uhura for dinner tonight, so do not crash in the middle, you got it?” He nods, offering a flicker of a genuine smile. “I’ll see you soon. Try not to mangle yourself until then.”
The one.
Good god, but McCoy feels almost embarrassed to think it. He’s got no idea how he’s going to even describe it to the other man, let alone how they’re going to have a discussion about how things are going to lift off from the ground between them.
He doesn’t really stop to consider that they might have already taken flight.
*
She’s dressed to the nines and if it weren’t for the slight fear McCoy’s got brewing in the back of his mind, he might make more of an outward comment about it past ‘that’s a very nice non-regulation piece of clothing, Lieutenant’. It’s only after this that Uhura assures him that Spock has allowed their bond to remain closed for the evening for the sake of her privacy.
The damn Vulcan marriage rituals are never going to make sense to Bones. Honestly, had he been able to read Jocelyn’s thoughts back in the bad days of the marriage, he doubts either one of them would have made it out alive. They sit to a dinner that might have been called romantic in any other lifetime.
There are cinnamon candles burning strong and home-cooked food made from McCoy’s family recipes (kept pressed in a book with paper so old that the tint has taken on a brown colour and it’s on paper, but his Grandma would be proud of him for cooking). They sit and they talk and they laugh over spiced wine and neither of them are thinking about either Spock or Jim at that moment.
That changes very quickly.
“It’s coming, you know,” is all she says.
McCoy doesn’t have to ask twice. For all that he’s envied Uhura and Spock their loving bond and their faithful marriage, he doesn’t envy the upcoming Pon Farr. He wonders if Uhura is scared, if she doubts their strength now that Spock is bound to experience things he’s never quite felt before.
“And once it arrives, we’ll be more bonded than ever.”
She doesn’t sound scared and McCoy only need take one look at her to see the way she’s positively glowing. They spend the next few moments discussing the plans that are inevitable and need to be made so that no one is harmed and Spock and Nyota are able to continue their service together. McCoy doesn’t settle until they’ve scribbled down the cobbled beginnings of a plan and he’s satisfied with what they’ve discussed. He can’t believe he’s going to be taking such an investment in Spock’s sex-life, but stranger things have happened.
Within the last five years, even.
“I saw the Captain before he left,” Uhura comments as she sets her wine down and pats at her lips lightly with her napkin. “He looked strangely happy. Would that have anything to do with you?”
McCoy shifts in his seat. It’s not a secret that he’s uncomfortable with the crew making conjecture about the both of them, even if they haven’t exactly tried to hide anything. They have no definition and there are no names applied to them, which just seems to make the rumors run wild.
“Leonard,” Uhura lightly chides. “Things are well between you two, aren’t they?”
He wants to be able to explain this properly, but words are failing him. So he goes back to an old image that he’s had in his mind since the days in the Academy that he’s always felt fit them perfectly, like a glove that molds to the hand.
“You remember those vids of early twenty-first century San Francisco? The pier and the animals there?” McCoy asks as he lets his wine slowly spin in the glass. It catches the light and sparkles, ruby reds catching the dimmed yellow of the candles. It’s romantic in every sense of the word and platonic with all its being.
Uhura raises a brow. “The extinct sea lions, of course.”
“There was always one or two out on a dock of their own. Then there was the pile of them all massed together on one dock like a giant orgy. Well, I’m like those lone lions. Jim’s like the orgy,” McCoy slowly speaks, trying to put it the best he can in terms that anyone could understand.
“Leonard…”
“What?”
Uhura laughs softly and offers him a twist of a sympathetic smile. She can speak most all of the Federation’s language, but it’s her body language that’s got such a graceful fluency to it that McCoy often sits back and admires it with awe. She seems in constant control of herself, of every twitch and smile, of every word and motion. “He’s really got you farflung and perplexed, hasn’t he?”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re comparing Jim to a sea lion orgy,” she points out and that makes McCoy laugh as well.
“Yeah, well.” And McCoy’s lips twist into a smirk and he downs the remainder of the wine, staining his lips that ruby red before he can think to reply. “The sounds are similar.”
Dinner isn’t tense at all after that. They don’t discuss Jim and McCoy’s burgeoning entrance into a terrifying new world. They don’t talk about the upcoming Vulcan rituals and Uhura’s dual excitement and fear of them. They laugh and share stories and jokes and light touches. It feels right and for the first time since he’s been back on the Enterprise, he truly feels like he’s come home.
*
The smoke from the candles idly drifts ceilingwards, filling McCoy’s quarters with the smell of cinnamon. He leans his hip against the table and pretends he can still smell Uhura’s perfume lingering. His mind sticks on some far-off, not-so-wanted fantasy in which he’s properly dating and marching step-by-step to an inevitable altar with some woman who shares his interests and catches his eye in all the most appealing of ways.
Instead, though, his future basks in the uncertainty of Jim Kirk.
Jim, who’s never dined a proper three-course meal in his life. The same man whose idea of romance is a holovid that’s best described as soft-core porn. The very same Captain Kirk whose only contact with weddings had been the almost-hurried coupling of his mother to his stepfather.
McCoy can look forward to being beered-and-hamburgered into bed with a side-showing of The Postman Rang Six Times At Her Back Door.
Of course, that’s Jim in his Academy days. The truth is that Jim hasn’t exactly dated while on the ship and when McCoy stops to think about it, he’s not sure just when it became a ‘Jim being responsible’ thing and turned into an ‘I’m coming for you, Bones’ thing. McCoy is trying to put these thoughts to rest while cleaning up the table when the doors glide open.
McCoy knows only two people who’d have the impudence to hack into the locks of the door and the brains to match. And Scotty’s not back on board just yet.
“Jim,” McCoy remarks without even looking up from scraping the lasagna off the plates into his sink, back turned to the door. “There’s wine and a little bit of salad left if you’re hungry.” Maybe Jim’s not going to take McCoy out for dinner and dancing, but he figures he can do something in turn. It’s safe ground. He knows what to do when it comes to a little conversation over candlelight and sharing secrets.
He knows how to do that.
What he doesn’t know how to do is to let himself be plundered and plowed over by Jim in bed. He needs to go at his own pace, even if it is driving himself crazy with desire at wondering what Jim’s hands are going to feel like when they both get naked enough for it to count. He’s woken up every morning since that day in Georgia (I’m coming for you) hard as anything with the dreams of Jim lingering at the forefront of his mind.
There are a couple extra pieces of dessert and McCoy easily transfers a piece of cheesecake onto plates and sets one down in front of Jim with a small cup of coffee. It’s met with an agreeable moan, so he figures he’s done something right.
“God, I love that you cook,” Jim mumbles with his mouth full, crumbs sitting precariously on the corner of his lips. McCoy nearly reaches out to brush them away, but Jim’s tongue flickers out and catches them before that can happen. He swallows and gestures next door with his fork. “Wine and chocolate and medical supplies are all waiting for you when you’ve got a minute.” He stands to reach across the table for the cup of coffee that McCoy’s extended to him. “How was dinner with Nyota?”
“Good,” McCoy says as he dries his hands and slides into a chair to pick at his dessert. “Spock’s coming up to Pon Farr fairly soon, so if you had any designs on the man, I’d make them now before he’s really off limits,” he jokes wryly.
“Spock would probably throttle me as foreplay,” Jim says, mouth still full.
“And you think I wouldn’t?” McCoy schools his face into passivity and something completely blank. Jim takes ages to study him before returning to his dessert and he doesn’t even say anything so much as offer a dismissive snort that says they both know that McCoy won’t be doing that anytime soon.
The coffee is drank in silence for a while as they both think over the ramifications of what’s coming on this second five-year mission. McCoy’s expecting injuries and strange alien worlds and strange alien-side-effects to strange-alien…well, everythings. He glances across the table to Jim and wonders if he’s thinking the same thing.
Except Jim’s just staring at him.
“Are we going to do this every night?” Jim asks quietly.
“What, you coming by to eat my leftovers?”
“Dinner, Bones. Dinner.”
McCoy hesitates and lets out a soft exhalation. When he breathes in, he can still smell the cinnamon from the candles and he sets aside his half-drank cup of coffee and pushes his empty plate aside as he reaches out and brushes his hand over Jim’s palm until his thumb locates the pulse in his wrist and simply feels it beating away. They’d been dining together three times a week before the last mission ended, but this is different. These would be…dates, he supposes.
McCoy twists his fingers lightly over Jim’s smooth skin and finds the scars and calluses easily, having a map of them in his mind. “Don’t know anyone else who’d put up with me,” McCoy admits with a gruff sound to his voice. “Still don’t know which knock on the head convinced you to want me romantically.”
“I think it was concussion number four,” Jim drawls lazily, grinning at McCoy as he stands up and perches on the table in front of him. “Knocked all my sense loose, let me fall for my best friend.”
“Yeah? She around here somewhere?”
“Oh yeah. Super hot,” Jim easily goes with it. “A bit masculine for some people’s tastes, but I know she’s going to be…” And he leans in and goddamn waits until McCoy’s sipping his coffee. “…an absolute tiger when we fuck.” It’s enough that McCoy nearly chokes on his drink and he levels a glare at Jim. “I just screwed up my chances for sex tonight, didn’t I?”
“Oh yeah.”
Jim’s still grinning and he cups McCoy’s cheek as he leans in to press a slow kiss to his other cheek, to his forehead, to the soft curve of his lips, and then brushes his lips once more against McCoy’s. “It was worth it,” he exhales the words against McCoy’s lips, the warmth carrying. “I don’t want to be your flash in the pan, Bones,” he confesses. “You’re not giving in. You’re not settling. You’re going to be happy and it’s already starting,” Jim assures, eyes bright as a sun in the solar system and his belief in his own words is so powerful that it threatens to bowl McCoy over with their insistence. “I’ll make you so happy you don’t know what to do with all the sunshine coming out of your ass,” Jim playfully growls and presses a longer kiss to McCoy’s lips, hands sliding slowly around his neck and bringing him in closer, almost sitting up in his seat.
McCoy exhales deeply as he eases away and glances at Jim with half-lidded eyes. “We have to start making arrangements, Jim.”
“For us? I’m taking care of that.”
McCoy doesn’t ask, not right then, but the thought remains that he needs to figure out exactly what he means by that. “Not that, Jim. Spock’s Pon Farr. I need some things from Earth and you have to outfit a room and we have to prepare Nyota and the crew. It’s not going to be a very calm time, but we’ll be prepared.” He raises his eyes to Jim’s face and lets his fingers brush away at crow’s feet and laugh lines. “We’ve got time, Jim. We’ve got five years.”
Jim lets out a huff of impatience and bites on his lower lip before surging in and nearly knocking McCoy out of his chair with the force and the impatience and the need of the kiss.
“Bones,” Jim groans (and speaking requires him to retreat his tongue from where it had been shoved down McCoy’s throat). “Can’t we just close our eyes and pretend Spock isn’t about to succumb to Vulcan’s crazed rituals?”
“It could be any day, Jim. Better safe than sorry and that means tonight is the first night that you and I are going to start helping Nyota to train her body to endure what she’s going to go through.” McCoy catches the look that passes Jim’s face and he groans. “Not like that, you pervert,” he lashes out fondly. “You take the yoga, I’ll take the meditation exercises, and you can finish it off with cardio. Sulu’s volunteered to go through tai chi with her and your chief security guard is going to monitor her weight-lifting.”
“Ah, Cupcake,” Jim says with a fond grin. “I always did think he had a thing for her.”
“Well, he’s helping. We all are. So get out of my lap, Jim,” McCoy says pointedly, having noticed that Jim had slid off the table and into his lap about ten minutes ago, but he hadn’t exactly made a note of it. Jim’s definitely felt the stirrings of McCoy’s erection and he feels almost like that’s a promise to Jim that he wants this as much as the Captain does.
It just so happens that life is going to get in the way temporarily.
Though, McCoy is beginning to think that his analogy with Uhura had been wrong. Well, partially wrong. He doesn’t think he’s wrong about himself, but he thinks that maybe Jim’s slipped away from the chaos of the group ages ago and has slid himself right up to McCoy and made a home for himself. They’re going to be isolated together, but it’s never going to be lonely.
McCoy almost grins at the thought and gives Jim a light shove. “Come on, Captain. Your crew’s waiting for your lead.”
He’s the one who reaches out and offers Jim a hand on his back and a show of support. He offers the small smile and he leans in and brushes away a too-long hair from Jim’s forehead, deliberately not mentioning how young his current hairstyle makes him look. Courage strikes him then and he offers Jim a long look as he pulls him to the door and nearly lets him go without saying a word.
He doesn’t exactly know what compels him, but he suspects it’s the same thing that drove him to propose to Jocelyn and the same spirit that buoyed him onto a Starfleet shuttle. He keeps his hand on Jim’s waist and lets the door glide open until the hallway is open to them and a path is ready to be walked down.
His broad palm rests on Jim’s hip and they stand there in the doorway with the bright light of the hall juxtaposed by the dim light of his room.
“Hey Jim?”
“Bones?” Jim replies, breath catching in his throat.
McCoy wants to think this is retribution for Georgia and that the reason he’s doing it this way is because he owes Jim a panic attack and a near cardiac-arrest at once. It makes him smile and his lips curve up gently as he feels his courage bolstered and his mind made up.
“You’re the one for me, Jim,” he speaks quietly, voice a soft rumble and his accent is still lingering from his time in Georgia. “You’re the one and I’ll make sure you stay that way.” He squeezes Jim’s hip gently and strides away. His heart beats erratically and he feels like he can’t pull proper breath, but he’s said it and he means it and he feels like he’s turned a corner.
Whoever wanted a dull life, anyway?
THE END
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy, mentioned Spock/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me.
Word Count: 3,997
Summary: Bones returns to the Enterprise. Jim finds out what he is to Bones.
Notes: Part of the still-unnamed series. Hard-Earned Rights, in which Jim was in a shuttle accident, Just About Time in which Jocelyn wonders whether or not Kirk's made his move yet, and The Graceful Waltz where Iowa and Winona Kirk happen and the boys dance.
Hard-Earned Rights // Just About Time // The Graceful Waltz // One // The Grave Memorial Of A Life Unlived // Houses & Heartwarmings // Guess Who's Coming To Dinner // Enterprise On My Mind // Your Fate's Not In The Stars // A World of Solemn Thought // Time Can Never Kill The True Heart
Coming home has never had such strange connotations as it does with another five-year mission slowly beginning to pull out of orbit and blasting away to the stars. McCoy doesn’t know what home is anymore. Home’s been Georgia for months, been a brief and exhilarating stay in Iowa. By all rights, the Enterprise should be impersonal. The black of space ought to afford none of the comforts of terra firma and yet, McCoy hasn’t felt the disappointment and despair (and disease and danger) and he’s not sure how much of that has been through the aid of Jim’s continual presence - 37 hours before he’d had to leave for requisitions on Earth.
Maybe it’s McCoy’s fault, maybe having Jim crash last night because they’d drank too much brandy had been a bad idea. Maybe he is that much of a goddamn tease. Maybe he’s trying to inaugurate home again while he’s missing Joanna and the horses and the house.
Maybe he just wants Jim Kirk in his life and in his bed.
That last one has too much of a ring of truth to it, so he avoids it carefully. He tucks it away in the back of a drawer and layers the fact of the matter with as many veils and socks as he can.
Everything is slowly finding its place once more. These are the same nooks and crannies that accompanied him on the last mission and each glance around the room can tell a story. There’s a blood stain he won’t allow to be taken out because it reminds him of their mirror counterparts. He has trinkets from every shore leave and the paintings in the room are ones he’s bought himself from various markets. It’s his home, but it never quite feels as right as it does as when Jim Kirk is lingering in the doorway and telling bad jokes that he’d heard from the Deltans.
McCoy dispels himself of the fantasy - some fantasies he’s got going on, he thinks sarcastically, of the utmost domesticity that a man of his age and situation can afford - and continues to unpack, rifling through vid-messages as he does.
Joanna checks in, tells him that she loves him and that she’s going away to a summer camp for teens who want to learn more about medicine. She tells him that if he’s not back for her birthday, he should just send a message and she’ll understand. She blows him a kiss and he lets the vid freeze on her face and marvels at how fast she’s growing up.
Jocelyn’s sent him a message with her new address and an update about the place. “And Clay’s just about as bad as you are with unpacking,” she sighs and harrumphs, but McCoy’s fairly sure this is mostly for show because there’s a hint of genuine love lurking in her features that he hasn’t seen on her since the early days of their courtship.
Uhura’s message is brief as she requests dinner with him that evening. McCoy doesn’t even hesitate to set aside all other plans and book her in. The crew of the Enterprise has become family to him so smoothly and swiftly that it seems so absolutely right. It’s as if he can’t imagine a universe in which they aren’t. He still recalls the clear epiphany of the moment when McCoy had realized he would do absolutely anything in the world for them.
The last message is Jim and he’s grinning broadly, as if he knows just how much charm and charisma he exudes from simply being. “Hi Bones,” he greets with a strange little wave. “I’m popping off to San Francisco to pick up some mission orders. I’ll get you the wine you like and some chocolates and be back tonight. Don’t miss me too much,” he adds with a cocky grin, which slowly dampens as he just stares at the screen. “I’ll see you later, okay?” he says, with more softness than his prior words.
McCoy turns off the screen and settles back into his chair while running a menu through his mind for dinner with Uhura. His fingers idly brush at the table beneath his fingers as he pointedly doesn’t think about Ghirardelli chocolates or his favorite Pinot being brought to him by…
By…
Well, what is Jim to him? He can’t define it except for the fact that Jim wants him and seems to be taking every one of McCoy’s reactions in stride. When it comes down to it, McCoy knows that he loves Jim and Jim knows it too. Hell, they’ve been best friends for eight years and nearly every drunken and debauched night back at the Academy had ended with a drowsy ‘I love you, Bones’, ‘Love you too, kid’ in which they meant it wholly and hadn’t meant it at once.
So now that Jim’s matured, now that he’s dancing around McCoy with such determined intent, what’s he become to McCoy?
Jim as his whole future sounds a little depressing while the divorce is still stinging as much as it does. He and Joce are better now, but the fact that it took them eight years to get to that point is something he doesn’t want to repeat. And hell, he doesn’t even know how long he’s going to live in this universe, let alone Jim.
And he is not ever, not in his life, going to call Jim his ‘boyfriend’. He’s not sixteen anymore (with that one notable exception during the last five-year mission). He’s past that. He’s got a daughter and an ex-wife and a man after him. So maybe Jim’s just ‘the one’. The one he wants to spend his time with, the one he loves, the one who’s going to be there in the hard times. The one who understands that when McCoy reams him a new one, it doesn’t mean he loves him any the less.
As far as he’s concerned, if Jim’s the one for him, then McCoy’s got a rollicking life ahead of him, filled with adventure and chaos and despair and joy.
After five years of already having lived through those things, McCoy’s fairly inured to such highs and lows. In fact, he’s started to like them. He sits back and starts composing his replies, starting with Uhura and ending with Jim.
“Hey, Jim, bring back an extra bottle of the Cab this time, would you?” he speaks into the screen and lets his voice rumble, pretending that he can see clear blue eyes staring at him while he talks. “And I need a couple more sedatives and vaccines. Starfleet Medical ought to have them under my name. Just tell them I sent you. I’m having Uhura for dinner tonight, so do not crash in the middle, you got it?” He nods, offering a flicker of a genuine smile. “I’ll see you soon. Try not to mangle yourself until then.”
The one.
Good god, but McCoy feels almost embarrassed to think it. He’s got no idea how he’s going to even describe it to the other man, let alone how they’re going to have a discussion about how things are going to lift off from the ground between them.
He doesn’t really stop to consider that they might have already taken flight.
*
She’s dressed to the nines and if it weren’t for the slight fear McCoy’s got brewing in the back of his mind, he might make more of an outward comment about it past ‘that’s a very nice non-regulation piece of clothing, Lieutenant’. It’s only after this that Uhura assures him that Spock has allowed their bond to remain closed for the evening for the sake of her privacy.
The damn Vulcan marriage rituals are never going to make sense to Bones. Honestly, had he been able to read Jocelyn’s thoughts back in the bad days of the marriage, he doubts either one of them would have made it out alive. They sit to a dinner that might have been called romantic in any other lifetime.
There are cinnamon candles burning strong and home-cooked food made from McCoy’s family recipes (kept pressed in a book with paper so old that the tint has taken on a brown colour and it’s on paper, but his Grandma would be proud of him for cooking). They sit and they talk and they laugh over spiced wine and neither of them are thinking about either Spock or Jim at that moment.
That changes very quickly.
“It’s coming, you know,” is all she says.
McCoy doesn’t have to ask twice. For all that he’s envied Uhura and Spock their loving bond and their faithful marriage, he doesn’t envy the upcoming Pon Farr. He wonders if Uhura is scared, if she doubts their strength now that Spock is bound to experience things he’s never quite felt before.
“And once it arrives, we’ll be more bonded than ever.”
She doesn’t sound scared and McCoy only need take one look at her to see the way she’s positively glowing. They spend the next few moments discussing the plans that are inevitable and need to be made so that no one is harmed and Spock and Nyota are able to continue their service together. McCoy doesn’t settle until they’ve scribbled down the cobbled beginnings of a plan and he’s satisfied with what they’ve discussed. He can’t believe he’s going to be taking such an investment in Spock’s sex-life, but stranger things have happened.
Within the last five years, even.
“I saw the Captain before he left,” Uhura comments as she sets her wine down and pats at her lips lightly with her napkin. “He looked strangely happy. Would that have anything to do with you?”
McCoy shifts in his seat. It’s not a secret that he’s uncomfortable with the crew making conjecture about the both of them, even if they haven’t exactly tried to hide anything. They have no definition and there are no names applied to them, which just seems to make the rumors run wild.
“Leonard,” Uhura lightly chides. “Things are well between you two, aren’t they?”
He wants to be able to explain this properly, but words are failing him. So he goes back to an old image that he’s had in his mind since the days in the Academy that he’s always felt fit them perfectly, like a glove that molds to the hand.
“You remember those vids of early twenty-first century San Francisco? The pier and the animals there?” McCoy asks as he lets his wine slowly spin in the glass. It catches the light and sparkles, ruby reds catching the dimmed yellow of the candles. It’s romantic in every sense of the word and platonic with all its being.
Uhura raises a brow. “The extinct sea lions, of course.”
“There was always one or two out on a dock of their own. Then there was the pile of them all massed together on one dock like a giant orgy. Well, I’m like those lone lions. Jim’s like the orgy,” McCoy slowly speaks, trying to put it the best he can in terms that anyone could understand.
“Leonard…”
“What?”
Uhura laughs softly and offers him a twist of a sympathetic smile. She can speak most all of the Federation’s language, but it’s her body language that’s got such a graceful fluency to it that McCoy often sits back and admires it with awe. She seems in constant control of herself, of every twitch and smile, of every word and motion. “He’s really got you farflung and perplexed, hasn’t he?”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re comparing Jim to a sea lion orgy,” she points out and that makes McCoy laugh as well.
“Yeah, well.” And McCoy’s lips twist into a smirk and he downs the remainder of the wine, staining his lips that ruby red before he can think to reply. “The sounds are similar.”
Dinner isn’t tense at all after that. They don’t discuss Jim and McCoy’s burgeoning entrance into a terrifying new world. They don’t talk about the upcoming Vulcan rituals and Uhura’s dual excitement and fear of them. They laugh and share stories and jokes and light touches. It feels right and for the first time since he’s been back on the Enterprise, he truly feels like he’s come home.
*
The smoke from the candles idly drifts ceilingwards, filling McCoy’s quarters with the smell of cinnamon. He leans his hip against the table and pretends he can still smell Uhura’s perfume lingering. His mind sticks on some far-off, not-so-wanted fantasy in which he’s properly dating and marching step-by-step to an inevitable altar with some woman who shares his interests and catches his eye in all the most appealing of ways.
Instead, though, his future basks in the uncertainty of Jim Kirk.
Jim, who’s never dined a proper three-course meal in his life. The same man whose idea of romance is a holovid that’s best described as soft-core porn. The very same Captain Kirk whose only contact with weddings had been the almost-hurried coupling of his mother to his stepfather.
McCoy can look forward to being beered-and-hamburgered into bed with a side-showing of The Postman Rang Six Times At Her Back Door.
Of course, that’s Jim in his Academy days. The truth is that Jim hasn’t exactly dated while on the ship and when McCoy stops to think about it, he’s not sure just when it became a ‘Jim being responsible’ thing and turned into an ‘I’m coming for you, Bones’ thing. McCoy is trying to put these thoughts to rest while cleaning up the table when the doors glide open.
McCoy knows only two people who’d have the impudence to hack into the locks of the door and the brains to match. And Scotty’s not back on board just yet.
“Jim,” McCoy remarks without even looking up from scraping the lasagna off the plates into his sink, back turned to the door. “There’s wine and a little bit of salad left if you’re hungry.” Maybe Jim’s not going to take McCoy out for dinner and dancing, but he figures he can do something in turn. It’s safe ground. He knows what to do when it comes to a little conversation over candlelight and sharing secrets.
He knows how to do that.
What he doesn’t know how to do is to let himself be plundered and plowed over by Jim in bed. He needs to go at his own pace, even if it is driving himself crazy with desire at wondering what Jim’s hands are going to feel like when they both get naked enough for it to count. He’s woken up every morning since that day in Georgia (I’m coming for you) hard as anything with the dreams of Jim lingering at the forefront of his mind.
There are a couple extra pieces of dessert and McCoy easily transfers a piece of cheesecake onto plates and sets one down in front of Jim with a small cup of coffee. It’s met with an agreeable moan, so he figures he’s done something right.
“God, I love that you cook,” Jim mumbles with his mouth full, crumbs sitting precariously on the corner of his lips. McCoy nearly reaches out to brush them away, but Jim’s tongue flickers out and catches them before that can happen. He swallows and gestures next door with his fork. “Wine and chocolate and medical supplies are all waiting for you when you’ve got a minute.” He stands to reach across the table for the cup of coffee that McCoy’s extended to him. “How was dinner with Nyota?”
“Good,” McCoy says as he dries his hands and slides into a chair to pick at his dessert. “Spock’s coming up to Pon Farr fairly soon, so if you had any designs on the man, I’d make them now before he’s really off limits,” he jokes wryly.
“Spock would probably throttle me as foreplay,” Jim says, mouth still full.
“And you think I wouldn’t?” McCoy schools his face into passivity and something completely blank. Jim takes ages to study him before returning to his dessert and he doesn’t even say anything so much as offer a dismissive snort that says they both know that McCoy won’t be doing that anytime soon.
The coffee is drank in silence for a while as they both think over the ramifications of what’s coming on this second five-year mission. McCoy’s expecting injuries and strange alien worlds and strange alien-side-effects to strange-alien…well, everythings. He glances across the table to Jim and wonders if he’s thinking the same thing.
Except Jim’s just staring at him.
“Are we going to do this every night?” Jim asks quietly.
“What, you coming by to eat my leftovers?”
“Dinner, Bones. Dinner.”
McCoy hesitates and lets out a soft exhalation. When he breathes in, he can still smell the cinnamon from the candles and he sets aside his half-drank cup of coffee and pushes his empty plate aside as he reaches out and brushes his hand over Jim’s palm until his thumb locates the pulse in his wrist and simply feels it beating away. They’d been dining together three times a week before the last mission ended, but this is different. These would be…dates, he supposes.
McCoy twists his fingers lightly over Jim’s smooth skin and finds the scars and calluses easily, having a map of them in his mind. “Don’t know anyone else who’d put up with me,” McCoy admits with a gruff sound to his voice. “Still don’t know which knock on the head convinced you to want me romantically.”
“I think it was concussion number four,” Jim drawls lazily, grinning at McCoy as he stands up and perches on the table in front of him. “Knocked all my sense loose, let me fall for my best friend.”
“Yeah? She around here somewhere?”
“Oh yeah. Super hot,” Jim easily goes with it. “A bit masculine for some people’s tastes, but I know she’s going to be…” And he leans in and goddamn waits until McCoy’s sipping his coffee. “…an absolute tiger when we fuck.” It’s enough that McCoy nearly chokes on his drink and he levels a glare at Jim. “I just screwed up my chances for sex tonight, didn’t I?”
“Oh yeah.”
Jim’s still grinning and he cups McCoy’s cheek as he leans in to press a slow kiss to his other cheek, to his forehead, to the soft curve of his lips, and then brushes his lips once more against McCoy’s. “It was worth it,” he exhales the words against McCoy’s lips, the warmth carrying. “I don’t want to be your flash in the pan, Bones,” he confesses. “You’re not giving in. You’re not settling. You’re going to be happy and it’s already starting,” Jim assures, eyes bright as a sun in the solar system and his belief in his own words is so powerful that it threatens to bowl McCoy over with their insistence. “I’ll make you so happy you don’t know what to do with all the sunshine coming out of your ass,” Jim playfully growls and presses a longer kiss to McCoy’s lips, hands sliding slowly around his neck and bringing him in closer, almost sitting up in his seat.
McCoy exhales deeply as he eases away and glances at Jim with half-lidded eyes. “We have to start making arrangements, Jim.”
“For us? I’m taking care of that.”
McCoy doesn’t ask, not right then, but the thought remains that he needs to figure out exactly what he means by that. “Not that, Jim. Spock’s Pon Farr. I need some things from Earth and you have to outfit a room and we have to prepare Nyota and the crew. It’s not going to be a very calm time, but we’ll be prepared.” He raises his eyes to Jim’s face and lets his fingers brush away at crow’s feet and laugh lines. “We’ve got time, Jim. We’ve got five years.”
Jim lets out a huff of impatience and bites on his lower lip before surging in and nearly knocking McCoy out of his chair with the force and the impatience and the need of the kiss.
“Bones,” Jim groans (and speaking requires him to retreat his tongue from where it had been shoved down McCoy’s throat). “Can’t we just close our eyes and pretend Spock isn’t about to succumb to Vulcan’s crazed rituals?”
“It could be any day, Jim. Better safe than sorry and that means tonight is the first night that you and I are going to start helping Nyota to train her body to endure what she’s going to go through.” McCoy catches the look that passes Jim’s face and he groans. “Not like that, you pervert,” he lashes out fondly. “You take the yoga, I’ll take the meditation exercises, and you can finish it off with cardio. Sulu’s volunteered to go through tai chi with her and your chief security guard is going to monitor her weight-lifting.”
“Ah, Cupcake,” Jim says with a fond grin. “I always did think he had a thing for her.”
“Well, he’s helping. We all are. So get out of my lap, Jim,” McCoy says pointedly, having noticed that Jim had slid off the table and into his lap about ten minutes ago, but he hadn’t exactly made a note of it. Jim’s definitely felt the stirrings of McCoy’s erection and he feels almost like that’s a promise to Jim that he wants this as much as the Captain does.
It just so happens that life is going to get in the way temporarily.
Though, McCoy is beginning to think that his analogy with Uhura had been wrong. Well, partially wrong. He doesn’t think he’s wrong about himself, but he thinks that maybe Jim’s slipped away from the chaos of the group ages ago and has slid himself right up to McCoy and made a home for himself. They’re going to be isolated together, but it’s never going to be lonely.
McCoy almost grins at the thought and gives Jim a light shove. “Come on, Captain. Your crew’s waiting for your lead.”
He’s the one who reaches out and offers Jim a hand on his back and a show of support. He offers the small smile and he leans in and brushes away a too-long hair from Jim’s forehead, deliberately not mentioning how young his current hairstyle makes him look. Courage strikes him then and he offers Jim a long look as he pulls him to the door and nearly lets him go without saying a word.
He doesn’t exactly know what compels him, but he suspects it’s the same thing that drove him to propose to Jocelyn and the same spirit that buoyed him onto a Starfleet shuttle. He keeps his hand on Jim’s waist and lets the door glide open until the hallway is open to them and a path is ready to be walked down.
His broad palm rests on Jim’s hip and they stand there in the doorway with the bright light of the hall juxtaposed by the dim light of his room.
“Hey Jim?”
“Bones?” Jim replies, breath catching in his throat.
McCoy wants to think this is retribution for Georgia and that the reason he’s doing it this way is because he owes Jim a panic attack and a near cardiac-arrest at once. It makes him smile and his lips curve up gently as he feels his courage bolstered and his mind made up.
“You’re the one for me, Jim,” he speaks quietly, voice a soft rumble and his accent is still lingering from his time in Georgia. “You’re the one and I’ll make sure you stay that way.” He squeezes Jim’s hip gently and strides away. His heart beats erratically and he feels like he can’t pull proper breath, but he’s said it and he means it and he feels like he’s turned a corner.
Whoever wanted a dull life, anyway?
THE END