Big Bang Fic: Autopsy of the Heart, 4-7/24
All notes, disclaimers and thanks are in part 1.
Parts 1-3
Part 4
Authenticity
Or
It’s Easy to get what you Don’t Want
November 2255
1.
Kirk's self-esteem was an interesting animal. He knew he was good looking, really fucking smart, a great fighter and a great lay. He also had some notion that he might be a great leader of men.
What he wasn’t sure about was whether or not he was lovable. He knew this doubt was his ego's Achilles heel (fucking smart, remember?)
2.
In matters of seduction at least, (because he couldn’t honestly say, hand on heart, that he could draw on experience in matters of love), in these he was the king unparallel.
Thing is, if he met some woman, or on occasion a guy, who he liked or wanted to fuck, it rarely reached the rejection stage because Kirk had a radar - a 'sense' of being able to read people’s intent. The upshot was that if someone wasn't sexually attracted to him, chances are he wouldn't have made a move on them in the first place.
2.
McCoy he couldn't read.
It had crossed his mind that McCoy didn’t like guys; if so, that was fine of course, and he’d have to settle for friendship. It wasn't what his heart cried out for right now but it would do.
But tonight, something had happened which had really fucked with his head.
4.
It would be unfair to call this routine, not with this gorgeous woman’s legs wrapped round him in the alley but, fortunately for sexual etiquette, autopilot of the thighs and pelvis had taken over. Kirk grunted into her chest while she moaned and clawed at his arms; it didn’t make a difference to his rhythm that he was thinking about something entirely different - Bones in the shadows being blown by some guy in engineering class.
He’d seen them leave together; as far as he knew McCoy hadn’t pulled once in the three months he’d known him, so Kirk had to follow, to find out what was going on. He’d taken the girl’s hand- she’d been making eyes at him from the bar - and pulled her smiling through the crowd, pursuing the two men as they headed outside the club.
But he'd lost them and assumed McCoy had gone home.
It wasn’t until the girl’s panties had been removed and Kirk placed them thoughtfully around his wrist like a bracelet so they’d be easy to find later, it wasn’t until he’d positioned himself with her leg looped over his inner elbow ready to lift her with his ramrod cock waiting to go, that he’d heard a moan, and a thick southern drawl.
“Fuck - you got a sweet mouth.”
A shudder ran through Kirk, his mouth dropped open, he squinted in the dreadful light in the direction of that sexy voice and, with impeccable timing, the girl guided him into her very wet pussy.
Bones!
Jesus - he was going to come in one stroke but he really couldn’t let this sweet girl down.
10.
Thoughts like why him and not me went a long way to making Kirk last.
Kirk clenched his teeth and he rolled his hips for variety.
“Fucker,” he stated.
The girl hesitated, “I’m sorry?”
“No, no, not you sweetheart, sorry, I’m getting cramp in my thighs.” He kissed her on the cheek and continued grinding into her, imagining the wetness was Bones' mouth.
“How you doing?” He choked out.
It sounded like a chat with an old friend rather than a lustful liaison in a seedy alley - a realization that made Kirk ashamed of himself. He decided to focus one hundred percent on this girl. It was a challenge when what he really needed to do, was to wrap something around his head and shut out the sounds coming from his right.
“Oh Jesus, like that, yes.”
A mixture of lust and sorrow filled Kirk’s chest. Damn - he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get off like this. The girl was benefiting hugely from the fact that he’d had too much to drink and too much on his mind and was gasping short little breaths, her hair tangling around her neck and sticking to his face.
He couldn’t shut out Bones - couldn’t bear that he hadn’t chosen him. Why not him?
The sound of Bones moaning as he came into the other guy’s throat made Kirk’s world collapse into an all too familiar sense of lovelessness.
Still, he thought as the girl gave one last shudder and clung to him for dear life, this wasn’t so bad. She wanted him.
11.
It goes without saying that Kirk didn’t mention the other guy to McCoy; a bit of campus hacking and he soon knew more about the motherfucker than his own mother did.
Michael Connolly - high achieving, dark haired, teetotal, tall with a certain feminine quality about him. Maybe McCoy didn’t go for blond was all, Kirk thought, sipping his coffee in the canteen. Kirk had skipped breakfast. He’d skipped his morning wank.
He had to make plans. Kirk wasn’t about to lose to anyone. First, he’d have to work out what it was that McCoy liked about this guy then make Bones see that he had it better and bigger in him. Bones would have to make the first move. Knowing how proud McCoy was, how afraid he’d be, he’d have to invite him in, make sure Bones had no doubt it was an invitation. It was all going to be about timing.
The next day,
“You want to come over for a beer tonight?” McCoy said.
Kirk noted bitterly that he’d never seen his friend look so relaxed. He liked it and hated it at the same time. He gazed hungrily at the long limbs and post-coital eyes and at the same time felt like tearing out his own heart out and throwing it in McCoy’s face.
“I have to study,” he said.
McCoy raised his eyebrow. “Eat somethin' didn’t agree with you?”
So where did that accent suddenly come from? Kirk would have to remember that - the more Bones was getting the more he drawled.
Kirk, for once, couldn’t think what to say. He didn’t feel himself and he didn’t like it one little bit. This being in love, if that’s what you could call it, was making him clumsy, stupid and well - needy.
“Nope.” He forced a smile. “Guess it just dawned on me that I need to take this stuff more seriously if I really want to make captain.”
McCoy folded his arms and frowned for the first time since he’d sat down. It had been at least ten minutes without a grimace or eye roll.
Shit what if McCoy had fallen for the engineer geek?
Kirk slumped slightly in his chair.
“I’m gonna get dessert. Fancy some pie?” Kirk stood up.
McCoy shook his head. “Nah, I need to give my system a break after the excesses of the past few days.” Kirk sat back down. “You get one though.” McCoy smiled.
Kirk shook his head. “Maybe I oughta do the same.”
“You’re not yourself today, kid. Want me to get my medical kit out, give you a once over?”
Kirk dug his nails into his thighs. Did the bastard even know what he was saying? A once over? Yeah - on his hands and knees - that'd fix him.
Part 5
Mind and Body
Or
Just Do It!
November 2255
1.
McCoy was well aware that he thought too much and too loud.
It dawned on him that he loved those qualities in Jim that he didn’t possess himself. For one, Jim never failed to decide; he knew what to do, and then he had the good grace to believe he’d done the right thing.
McCoy, on the other hand, prevaricated, went one way then the other, and doubted some. On those occasions when he was sure he'd done the right thing, he'd go and spoil it by adding helpings of guilt - big, stomach burning guilt.
2.
Jocelyn used to call him passive/aggressive. He decided she had a point the first time she threw objects at him; he’d sat and stared, only ducking when his instinct for self-preservation intervened.
She didn’t stop, so he walked out of the room.
"Leo! Just fucking say something!"
The next time she pitched at him, he left the house and walked around the neighborhood.
The perimeter of his exclusion zone grew over the months till he needed his car to escape and he'd come back in the small hours and sleep on the couch.
Then one time, he got a room and never came back.
Sometimes things were beyond his control.
3.
Like Michael in the alley the other night; that was out of his hands, literally. McCoy hadn’t planned that things would go as they did, but Jesus did he ever need to get off. He hadn’t realized quite how much until the following day; sex made each knot in his back and neck evaporate, like he’d been spread out in the sun. He was so full of smiles, more than one of the interns had given him a wide berth in case he was about to blow.
This went a long way to explaining Kirk’s easy movements. Damn, but sex was good for the limbs.
4.
It put into perspective how he felt about Jim. In the alley, the sensation of Michael pulling at his foreskin with an eager little mouth seemed more distant than how close he’d felt to Jim a few yards away, fucking that beautiful girl.
McCoy knew it was wrong, but when he’d talked dirty to Michael, the same guy who blew him, who had been kind enough to caress his balls, all the while in his heart it was to Jim he was saying, “Yes, yes, like that -“.
Yes, McCoy may have been a little surprised at how easily he’d submerged his guilt but, being fair to himself, this was all he was going to get of Jim, a mirage shimmering in his head while in reality someone whose name he pretty much struggled to remember blew him. Jim may have been his buddy but as far as this went, it was never going to happen. McCoy was sure that in order to get the little brat’s attention he’d have to grow tits. Jim simply wasn’t into guys by the looks of things.
5.
The following night, a very eager Michael turned up unannounced on McCoy’s doorstep. Shit. What if Jim should change his mind and call? Michael would just be in the way.
Despite how wrong this was, McCoy’s cock seemed to feel little guilt when Michael took the lead, pushed him to a seated position on the edge of the bed and knelt before him licking his lips. McCoy couldn’t have argued with that, could he? It would have been rude.
6.
Michael pulled McCoy’s cock out of his pants with one deft movement and took a moment to admire it.
Wondering what was going on in Michael’s head, McCoy looked down at himself. Was his a cock to admire? He’d seen plenty in his time as a doctor, in the showers in high school and later at college but none of them had been erect. He’d never thought of a cock as an object of beauty, never responded to the sight of one with lust.
He couldn’t really see what there was to like about his cock or any other. Yet when, despite his good intentions and his renewed promise that this time he would focus on Michael and be present with him in the moment, he didn’t fight the image in his head of Jim looking up at him, the fantasy that these were Jim's lips opening and closing around his shaft. And he ached to know what Jim's cock would look like, feel like and, God help him, taste like.
7.
McCoy placed his hands gently either side of Michael’s jaw and growled, “Hey, it’s my turn.” Which earned him an, ‘but-I- really-really-like doing this’ face. Nevertheless, Michael let go and stood up to wait for his next instruction.
“Lie on the bed,” McCoy said. He wanted to be able to sit up and have a good look at this cock; he needed to build a 'standard' so that, if ever he did see Kirk’s, he’d have a position on it much as he had on women’s legs or breasts.
8.
Next he helped Michael remove his pants. After he’d thrown them onto a nearby chair, he went about the task of examining him mentally while fellating him - much as if this were a medical procedure. He memorized the length and girth of Michael’s cock, the way the head sat against his flattened tongue, how much he needed to hollow his cheeks so that he could appease his gag reflex, the pattern of veins and the aesthetic relationship between the balls and everything else.
McCoy wasn’t surprised when, as he became more and more detached, his own erection disappeared.
Like he said, his problem in life, one of the reasons he was such an interminable grouch, was that he thought too damn much. This was a sure fire way of deflating everything, actually and metaphorically.
He had become an observer. This realization really wasn’t going to help him get that erection back.
Part 6
Marxism - one
Or
How Can Someone Better Than Me Love Me Back?
November 2255
1.
Jim suspected that people fell in love because they wanted/needed to escape themselves. The beloved offers a flight out of here on the wings of their amazing, awesome personality. He worked on the last read through of his assignment and grinned sardonically as he embellished this ludicrous image of Bones in his mind’s eye. That was why he he’d fallen in love with him. If he could just kiss Bones, just feel his body along his back while he slept at night, he would be somehow transported out of himself. He wouldn’t be alone anymore.
He wasn’t sure if he ached because he wanted this so much or because he knew it wasn’t ever going to happen.
Why couldn’t he be loved by someone like that? Kirk wasn’t given to feeling sorry for himself; since Sam left, he’d become an expert in moving on with ne’er a glance over his shoulder down the dusty track. Now that was a song lyric if ever he heard one! He put down the PADD and stretched out on his bed.
The beloved offers a free ticket out of town, he repeated to himself. The academy provided a structure he hadn’t experienced since his fleeting appearances in high school, but Kirk still didn’t feel part of things. He recognized that he lacked security, and a feeling of belonging. Nothing new there.
Sex was plentiful but there was no love. He still wasn’t sure why this bothered him and what he stood to gain from being loved. Did he even need transporting out of himself when he didn’t doubt his abilities nor his vision?
But shit, he really wanted Bones. It wasn’t just lust - he was sure of that. If it had been, he’d followed his needs and done something about it. What was the pull of this grouchy bastard? Was it that Bones was inadvertently putting up a fight? And Jim loved a fight; he knew that much about himself.
2.
At the same time, he wasn’t surprised that Bones wouldn’t want him like that. Really, had the guy even looked at himself in the mirror lately? Bones could have had the pick of the campus so why would he want Kirk? McCoy didn’t strike him as someone who would pick the immediately obvious, the easiest option. In other words, him. And, in a way, that’s why Kirk liked him. He rubbed the space between his eyebrows. Shit, if McCoy was attracted to him, he’d almost lose respect for him.
3.
Kirk knew there was a quote from Marx. He looked it up quickly on the PADD and smiled ruefully. Groucho Marx - not Karl.
"I wouldn't want to belong to a club that allows members like me.”
Well Kirk hadn’t exactly been picked yet but it pretty much summed up how he felt.
4.
Unrequited love. “You asshole.” He said to the empty room.
There were only two ways of dealing with this - sex or the gym. It was 2pm so he searched for his sweats.
Marxism - two
Balancing self-love and self-hatred
1.
McCoy stood in the shower thinking about Jim till the water turned cold. Thinking about how vital and positive he was and what a pathetic figure he, Leonard McCoy, cut. How could someone like that ever want someone like him?
2.
But, if someone like that did want someone like him, would it fix him, heal the damage from years of anger and disconnect? Would they somehow complement each other? What effect would Jim have on him - would he give McCoy that spark he’d lost with all the Jocelyn bullshit? Was it even fair to think along these lines? Kirk was just 22 for God’s sake. Did this make McCoy a vampire - wanting to be with someone to bleed them like this? Jesus, he was an intelligent man - what the fuck was going on with him? Then he was reminded of a quote by Marcel Proust:
People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the comma bacillus.
Well, he couldn’t help how he felt. He’d been infected. It was beyond his control.
Having Neil Young playing in the room didn’t fucking help his mood at all.
3.
He toweled himself dry and lay naked on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Why would someone as incredible as James Tiberius Kirk want a fucked up divorcee like him? To be honest, if he did, McCoy would have to question the genius label.
4.
He could call him. Maybe he should go for broke.
No, an evening of Bourbon and more work on preparing classes - then he wouldn’t even have time to think about his cock. First, he was going to eat something. Still naked, he looked in the refrigerator. Cheese and peanut butter. He cut a slice, picked up the jar and took it along with a spoon to his desk.
He dug the spoon in, licked it thoroughly and then had another.
“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love,” he wrote on his PADD, quoting the great, 20C philosopher, Charlie Brown. Then he deleted it.
He’d have to be dead to lose the taste of bourbon, he grinned, pouring a glass then tucking the bottle under his chair.
Work. Fuck this shit. But first, change the music, Godammit.
Part 7
False Notes
Or
You Aren’t Going Out in That Are You?
December, 2255, (and 2250)
1.
Sometimes, McCoy watched Kirk sleep on his couch after a particularly heavy night’s drinking, and he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d known him before they’d met on the shuttle ride. As the romantic notion goes, (and McCoy couldn’t think it without an eye roll), it was as if they’d been separated in a previous life - hence this intense attraction, this need to be with him. It was like they were two broken, separated halves; then it was inevitable that they should eventually find each other and regain their strength once they joined.
Since McCoy neither believed in previous lives nor in destiny, he was the first to swat himself upside the head for such a foolish notion.
Yet…he did wonder what would happen if he spooned Jim. Would they fit together like the yin and yang symbol? And would he have time to even enjoy this before he got himself a black eye?
2.
They’d spent Thanksgiving apart. Kirk had visited with Pike’s family and he’d stayed and worked double shifts. McCoy had barely slept.
3.
When Kirk returned, McCoy had felt somehow annoyingly complete as soon as he cast eyes on Kirk’s sandy hair and plump lips.
With the faintest of flushes to his ears, McCoy accepted a one armed hug; it was the cue for a return into what had become their routine.
Despite over-crammed and over-scheduled lives, they nevertheless went out drinking a couple of nights a week, once to play pool, which McCoy found testing, (all the leaning over tables and butts in the air making him inwardly groan), once somewhere noisier. Sometimes Kirk would leave with a girl, sometimes he wouldn’t.
Other evenings, they’d share beers back at McCoy’s room while they studied. Out of the corner of his eye, McCoy would watch how a restless Kirk went through his routine: he speed read and then paced about; stood at the window; took a slash; allowed his reading to sink in only to return to his PADD for the next globule of information. He knew Kirk only needed to read something once and it was filed away permanently. No problems with memory loss. That is, until you asked him about home.
“What was he like? Frank? Oh…you know, just a jerk, I guess…can’t really remember, I used to go out a lot. Better things to do than make nice with him.” Kirk punctuated the statement with a leer which McCoy knew by now was deflection. Look at my lips, leave my brain the fuck alone. He also knew the leer wasn’t aimed at him, its purpose was to intimate that Kirk had better things on his mind and no need to think about some guy his mom hooked up with. So McCoy left it alone.
Things were perfect as they were and McCoy didn’t want anything to spoil that - least of all the fact that he had these fucking feelings.
4.
Finally, McCoy told himself as he watched Kirk at the pool table, he’d met someone who shared the same world views as he did. They were like brothers the way they bitched and snarked about the professors, found the same students to be jerks. They voted the same, loved the same movies, hell, they even found the same girls attractive. McCoy pushed aside the thought that brothers, especially in movies and the bible, often ended up killing each other; it was just he couldn’t think of another way to describe their pairing that didn’t make his groin twitch. Like now, the way Kirk leaned across the table, his t riding up to expose the small of his back. Holy fuck. McCoy looked away.
5.
He should have known by now, having fallen in love before, this never went well. He thought back to Jocelyn, during the period of time he couldn’t keep his hands off her, like the day she bought those new shoes.
“Don’t you like them, Leo?” she walked up and down the lounge floor, sashaying as best she could even thought she wasn’t a sashaying kind of girl and that’s one of the reasons he’d found her perfect.
He grunted.
“What kind of fool answer is that?”
“I’m a doctor, not a fashinista,” he grumbled.
If she hadn’t have loved her new shoes so much, he’d have probably received one right between the eyes. The question nagged him, how could she love those shoes and love him at the same time?
“I think you’re beautiful,” he drawled. And he had.
His eyes raked up and down Kirk’s body and he wondered if the day would come when he would hate Jim like he hated Jocelyn.
“Hey Bones, fancy a game?”
“What, you take me for, an idiot? I’m fine watching.”
6.
When Kirk got his coat, McCoy tried not to dwell on the sight of him struggling into it, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed, his t rode up again, this time providing a fleeting glimpse of belly, how his hands, such beautiful hands, took the zip up to his neck, guarding against the December cold outside.
McCoy decided he didn’t want to find out too much about Jim after all - in case he stopped being perfect. Then he’d fall out of love with him; and while being in love with Jim pissed him off royally, the thought of it ending, well - what would be left of their friendship?
Yet he knew falling out of love was inevitable, and as far out of his control as that moment his heart lurched towards Jim in the shuttle; as Jorge Luis Borges said:
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
McCoy felt a warmth in his belly and a hunger in his cock as he scowled at Jim who shook his shoulders against the cold, who winked at him amicably. McCoy watched Jim’s breath as it left his nostrils and mouth in a mist and he couldn’t imagine this lasting; best enjoy it while he could.
parts 8-13
Parts 1-3
Part 4
Authenticity
Or
It’s Easy to get what you Don’t Want
November 2255
1.
Kirk's self-esteem was an interesting animal. He knew he was good looking, really fucking smart, a great fighter and a great lay. He also had some notion that he might be a great leader of men.
What he wasn’t sure about was whether or not he was lovable. He knew this doubt was his ego's Achilles heel (fucking smart, remember?)
2.
In matters of seduction at least, (because he couldn’t honestly say, hand on heart, that he could draw on experience in matters of love), in these he was the king unparallel.
Thing is, if he met some woman, or on occasion a guy, who he liked or wanted to fuck, it rarely reached the rejection stage because Kirk had a radar - a 'sense' of being able to read people’s intent. The upshot was that if someone wasn't sexually attracted to him, chances are he wouldn't have made a move on them in the first place.
2.
McCoy he couldn't read.
It had crossed his mind that McCoy didn’t like guys; if so, that was fine of course, and he’d have to settle for friendship. It wasn't what his heart cried out for right now but it would do.
But tonight, something had happened which had really fucked with his head.
4.
It would be unfair to call this routine, not with this gorgeous woman’s legs wrapped round him in the alley but, fortunately for sexual etiquette, autopilot of the thighs and pelvis had taken over. Kirk grunted into her chest while she moaned and clawed at his arms; it didn’t make a difference to his rhythm that he was thinking about something entirely different - Bones in the shadows being blown by some guy in engineering class.
He’d seen them leave together; as far as he knew McCoy hadn’t pulled once in the three months he’d known him, so Kirk had to follow, to find out what was going on. He’d taken the girl’s hand- she’d been making eyes at him from the bar - and pulled her smiling through the crowd, pursuing the two men as they headed outside the club.
But he'd lost them and assumed McCoy had gone home.
It wasn’t until the girl’s panties had been removed and Kirk placed them thoughtfully around his wrist like a bracelet so they’d be easy to find later, it wasn’t until he’d positioned himself with her leg looped over his inner elbow ready to lift her with his ramrod cock waiting to go, that he’d heard a moan, and a thick southern drawl.
“Fuck - you got a sweet mouth.”
A shudder ran through Kirk, his mouth dropped open, he squinted in the dreadful light in the direction of that sexy voice and, with impeccable timing, the girl guided him into her very wet pussy.
Bones!
Jesus - he was going to come in one stroke but he really couldn’t let this sweet girl down.
10.
Thoughts like why him and not me went a long way to making Kirk last.
Kirk clenched his teeth and he rolled his hips for variety.
“Fucker,” he stated.
The girl hesitated, “I’m sorry?”
“No, no, not you sweetheart, sorry, I’m getting cramp in my thighs.” He kissed her on the cheek and continued grinding into her, imagining the wetness was Bones' mouth.
“How you doing?” He choked out.
It sounded like a chat with an old friend rather than a lustful liaison in a seedy alley - a realization that made Kirk ashamed of himself. He decided to focus one hundred percent on this girl. It was a challenge when what he really needed to do, was to wrap something around his head and shut out the sounds coming from his right.
“Oh Jesus, like that, yes.”
A mixture of lust and sorrow filled Kirk’s chest. Damn - he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get off like this. The girl was benefiting hugely from the fact that he’d had too much to drink and too much on his mind and was gasping short little breaths, her hair tangling around her neck and sticking to his face.
He couldn’t shut out Bones - couldn’t bear that he hadn’t chosen him. Why not him?
The sound of Bones moaning as he came into the other guy’s throat made Kirk’s world collapse into an all too familiar sense of lovelessness.
Still, he thought as the girl gave one last shudder and clung to him for dear life, this wasn’t so bad. She wanted him.
11.
It goes without saying that Kirk didn’t mention the other guy to McCoy; a bit of campus hacking and he soon knew more about the motherfucker than his own mother did.
Michael Connolly - high achieving, dark haired, teetotal, tall with a certain feminine quality about him. Maybe McCoy didn’t go for blond was all, Kirk thought, sipping his coffee in the canteen. Kirk had skipped breakfast. He’d skipped his morning wank.
He had to make plans. Kirk wasn’t about to lose to anyone. First, he’d have to work out what it was that McCoy liked about this guy then make Bones see that he had it better and bigger in him. Bones would have to make the first move. Knowing how proud McCoy was, how afraid he’d be, he’d have to invite him in, make sure Bones had no doubt it was an invitation. It was all going to be about timing.
The next day,
“You want to come over for a beer tonight?” McCoy said.
Kirk noted bitterly that he’d never seen his friend look so relaxed. He liked it and hated it at the same time. He gazed hungrily at the long limbs and post-coital eyes and at the same time felt like tearing out his own heart out and throwing it in McCoy’s face.
“I have to study,” he said.
McCoy raised his eyebrow. “Eat somethin' didn’t agree with you?”
So where did that accent suddenly come from? Kirk would have to remember that - the more Bones was getting the more he drawled.
Kirk, for once, couldn’t think what to say. He didn’t feel himself and he didn’t like it one little bit. This being in love, if that’s what you could call it, was making him clumsy, stupid and well - needy.
“Nope.” He forced a smile. “Guess it just dawned on me that I need to take this stuff more seriously if I really want to make captain.”
McCoy folded his arms and frowned for the first time since he’d sat down. It had been at least ten minutes without a grimace or eye roll.
Shit what if McCoy had fallen for the engineer geek?
Kirk slumped slightly in his chair.
“I’m gonna get dessert. Fancy some pie?” Kirk stood up.
McCoy shook his head. “Nah, I need to give my system a break after the excesses of the past few days.” Kirk sat back down. “You get one though.” McCoy smiled.
Kirk shook his head. “Maybe I oughta do the same.”
“You’re not yourself today, kid. Want me to get my medical kit out, give you a once over?”
Kirk dug his nails into his thighs. Did the bastard even know what he was saying? A once over? Yeah - on his hands and knees - that'd fix him.
Part 5
Mind and Body
Or
Just Do It!
November 2255
1.
McCoy was well aware that he thought too much and too loud.
It dawned on him that he loved those qualities in Jim that he didn’t possess himself. For one, Jim never failed to decide; he knew what to do, and then he had the good grace to believe he’d done the right thing.
McCoy, on the other hand, prevaricated, went one way then the other, and doubted some. On those occasions when he was sure he'd done the right thing, he'd go and spoil it by adding helpings of guilt - big, stomach burning guilt.
2.
Jocelyn used to call him passive/aggressive. He decided she had a point the first time she threw objects at him; he’d sat and stared, only ducking when his instinct for self-preservation intervened.
She didn’t stop, so he walked out of the room.
"Leo! Just fucking say something!"
The next time she pitched at him, he left the house and walked around the neighborhood.
The perimeter of his exclusion zone grew over the months till he needed his car to escape and he'd come back in the small hours and sleep on the couch.
Then one time, he got a room and never came back.
Sometimes things were beyond his control.
3.
Like Michael in the alley the other night; that was out of his hands, literally. McCoy hadn’t planned that things would go as they did, but Jesus did he ever need to get off. He hadn’t realized quite how much until the following day; sex made each knot in his back and neck evaporate, like he’d been spread out in the sun. He was so full of smiles, more than one of the interns had given him a wide berth in case he was about to blow.
This went a long way to explaining Kirk’s easy movements. Damn, but sex was good for the limbs.
4.
It put into perspective how he felt about Jim. In the alley, the sensation of Michael pulling at his foreskin with an eager little mouth seemed more distant than how close he’d felt to Jim a few yards away, fucking that beautiful girl.
McCoy knew it was wrong, but when he’d talked dirty to Michael, the same guy who blew him, who had been kind enough to caress his balls, all the while in his heart it was to Jim he was saying, “Yes, yes, like that -“.
Yes, McCoy may have been a little surprised at how easily he’d submerged his guilt but, being fair to himself, this was all he was going to get of Jim, a mirage shimmering in his head while in reality someone whose name he pretty much struggled to remember blew him. Jim may have been his buddy but as far as this went, it was never going to happen. McCoy was sure that in order to get the little brat’s attention he’d have to grow tits. Jim simply wasn’t into guys by the looks of things.
5.
The following night, a very eager Michael turned up unannounced on McCoy’s doorstep. Shit. What if Jim should change his mind and call? Michael would just be in the way.
Despite how wrong this was, McCoy’s cock seemed to feel little guilt when Michael took the lead, pushed him to a seated position on the edge of the bed and knelt before him licking his lips. McCoy couldn’t have argued with that, could he? It would have been rude.
6.
Michael pulled McCoy’s cock out of his pants with one deft movement and took a moment to admire it.
Wondering what was going on in Michael’s head, McCoy looked down at himself. Was his a cock to admire? He’d seen plenty in his time as a doctor, in the showers in high school and later at college but none of them had been erect. He’d never thought of a cock as an object of beauty, never responded to the sight of one with lust.
He couldn’t really see what there was to like about his cock or any other. Yet when, despite his good intentions and his renewed promise that this time he would focus on Michael and be present with him in the moment, he didn’t fight the image in his head of Jim looking up at him, the fantasy that these were Jim's lips opening and closing around his shaft. And he ached to know what Jim's cock would look like, feel like and, God help him, taste like.
7.
McCoy placed his hands gently either side of Michael’s jaw and growled, “Hey, it’s my turn.” Which earned him an, ‘but-I- really-really-like doing this’ face. Nevertheless, Michael let go and stood up to wait for his next instruction.
“Lie on the bed,” McCoy said. He wanted to be able to sit up and have a good look at this cock; he needed to build a 'standard' so that, if ever he did see Kirk’s, he’d have a position on it much as he had on women’s legs or breasts.
8.
Next he helped Michael remove his pants. After he’d thrown them onto a nearby chair, he went about the task of examining him mentally while fellating him - much as if this were a medical procedure. He memorized the length and girth of Michael’s cock, the way the head sat against his flattened tongue, how much he needed to hollow his cheeks so that he could appease his gag reflex, the pattern of veins and the aesthetic relationship between the balls and everything else.
McCoy wasn’t surprised when, as he became more and more detached, his own erection disappeared.
Like he said, his problem in life, one of the reasons he was such an interminable grouch, was that he thought too damn much. This was a sure fire way of deflating everything, actually and metaphorically.
He had become an observer. This realization really wasn’t going to help him get that erection back.
Part 6
Marxism - one
Or
How Can Someone Better Than Me Love Me Back?
November 2255
1.
Jim suspected that people fell in love because they wanted/needed to escape themselves. The beloved offers a flight out of here on the wings of their amazing, awesome personality. He worked on the last read through of his assignment and grinned sardonically as he embellished this ludicrous image of Bones in his mind’s eye. That was why he he’d fallen in love with him. If he could just kiss Bones, just feel his body along his back while he slept at night, he would be somehow transported out of himself. He wouldn’t be alone anymore.
He wasn’t sure if he ached because he wanted this so much or because he knew it wasn’t ever going to happen.
Why couldn’t he be loved by someone like that? Kirk wasn’t given to feeling sorry for himself; since Sam left, he’d become an expert in moving on with ne’er a glance over his shoulder down the dusty track. Now that was a song lyric if ever he heard one! He put down the PADD and stretched out on his bed.
The beloved offers a free ticket out of town, he repeated to himself. The academy provided a structure he hadn’t experienced since his fleeting appearances in high school, but Kirk still didn’t feel part of things. He recognized that he lacked security, and a feeling of belonging. Nothing new there.
Sex was plentiful but there was no love. He still wasn’t sure why this bothered him and what he stood to gain from being loved. Did he even need transporting out of himself when he didn’t doubt his abilities nor his vision?
But shit, he really wanted Bones. It wasn’t just lust - he was sure of that. If it had been, he’d followed his needs and done something about it. What was the pull of this grouchy bastard? Was it that Bones was inadvertently putting up a fight? And Jim loved a fight; he knew that much about himself.
2.
At the same time, he wasn’t surprised that Bones wouldn’t want him like that. Really, had the guy even looked at himself in the mirror lately? Bones could have had the pick of the campus so why would he want Kirk? McCoy didn’t strike him as someone who would pick the immediately obvious, the easiest option. In other words, him. And, in a way, that’s why Kirk liked him. He rubbed the space between his eyebrows. Shit, if McCoy was attracted to him, he’d almost lose respect for him.
3.
Kirk knew there was a quote from Marx. He looked it up quickly on the PADD and smiled ruefully. Groucho Marx - not Karl.
"I wouldn't want to belong to a club that allows members like me.”
Well Kirk hadn’t exactly been picked yet but it pretty much summed up how he felt.
4.
Unrequited love. “You asshole.” He said to the empty room.
There were only two ways of dealing with this - sex or the gym. It was 2pm so he searched for his sweats.
Marxism - two
Balancing self-love and self-hatred
1.
McCoy stood in the shower thinking about Jim till the water turned cold. Thinking about how vital and positive he was and what a pathetic figure he, Leonard McCoy, cut. How could someone like that ever want someone like him?
2.
But, if someone like that did want someone like him, would it fix him, heal the damage from years of anger and disconnect? Would they somehow complement each other? What effect would Jim have on him - would he give McCoy that spark he’d lost with all the Jocelyn bullshit? Was it even fair to think along these lines? Kirk was just 22 for God’s sake. Did this make McCoy a vampire - wanting to be with someone to bleed them like this? Jesus, he was an intelligent man - what the fuck was going on with him? Then he was reminded of a quote by Marcel Proust:
People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the comma bacillus.
Well, he couldn’t help how he felt. He’d been infected. It was beyond his control.
Having Neil Young playing in the room didn’t fucking help his mood at all.
3.
He toweled himself dry and lay naked on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Why would someone as incredible as James Tiberius Kirk want a fucked up divorcee like him? To be honest, if he did, McCoy would have to question the genius label.
4.
He could call him. Maybe he should go for broke.
No, an evening of Bourbon and more work on preparing classes - then he wouldn’t even have time to think about his cock. First, he was going to eat something. Still naked, he looked in the refrigerator. Cheese and peanut butter. He cut a slice, picked up the jar and took it along with a spoon to his desk.
He dug the spoon in, licked it thoroughly and then had another.
“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love,” he wrote on his PADD, quoting the great, 20C philosopher, Charlie Brown. Then he deleted it.
He’d have to be dead to lose the taste of bourbon, he grinned, pouring a glass then tucking the bottle under his chair.
Work. Fuck this shit. But first, change the music, Godammit.
Part 7
False Notes
Or
You Aren’t Going Out in That Are You?
December, 2255, (and 2250)
1.
Sometimes, McCoy watched Kirk sleep on his couch after a particularly heavy night’s drinking, and he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d known him before they’d met on the shuttle ride. As the romantic notion goes, (and McCoy couldn’t think it without an eye roll), it was as if they’d been separated in a previous life - hence this intense attraction, this need to be with him. It was like they were two broken, separated halves; then it was inevitable that they should eventually find each other and regain their strength once they joined.
Since McCoy neither believed in previous lives nor in destiny, he was the first to swat himself upside the head for such a foolish notion.
Yet…he did wonder what would happen if he spooned Jim. Would they fit together like the yin and yang symbol? And would he have time to even enjoy this before he got himself a black eye?
2.
They’d spent Thanksgiving apart. Kirk had visited with Pike’s family and he’d stayed and worked double shifts. McCoy had barely slept.
3.
When Kirk returned, McCoy had felt somehow annoyingly complete as soon as he cast eyes on Kirk’s sandy hair and plump lips.
With the faintest of flushes to his ears, McCoy accepted a one armed hug; it was the cue for a return into what had become their routine.
Despite over-crammed and over-scheduled lives, they nevertheless went out drinking a couple of nights a week, once to play pool, which McCoy found testing, (all the leaning over tables and butts in the air making him inwardly groan), once somewhere noisier. Sometimes Kirk would leave with a girl, sometimes he wouldn’t.
Other evenings, they’d share beers back at McCoy’s room while they studied. Out of the corner of his eye, McCoy would watch how a restless Kirk went through his routine: he speed read and then paced about; stood at the window; took a slash; allowed his reading to sink in only to return to his PADD for the next globule of information. He knew Kirk only needed to read something once and it was filed away permanently. No problems with memory loss. That is, until you asked him about home.
“What was he like? Frank? Oh…you know, just a jerk, I guess…can’t really remember, I used to go out a lot. Better things to do than make nice with him.” Kirk punctuated the statement with a leer which McCoy knew by now was deflection. Look at my lips, leave my brain the fuck alone. He also knew the leer wasn’t aimed at him, its purpose was to intimate that Kirk had better things on his mind and no need to think about some guy his mom hooked up with. So McCoy left it alone.
Things were perfect as they were and McCoy didn’t want anything to spoil that - least of all the fact that he had these fucking feelings.
4.
Finally, McCoy told himself as he watched Kirk at the pool table, he’d met someone who shared the same world views as he did. They were like brothers the way they bitched and snarked about the professors, found the same students to be jerks. They voted the same, loved the same movies, hell, they even found the same girls attractive. McCoy pushed aside the thought that brothers, especially in movies and the bible, often ended up killing each other; it was just he couldn’t think of another way to describe their pairing that didn’t make his groin twitch. Like now, the way Kirk leaned across the table, his t riding up to expose the small of his back. Holy fuck. McCoy looked away.
5.
He should have known by now, having fallen in love before, this never went well. He thought back to Jocelyn, during the period of time he couldn’t keep his hands off her, like the day she bought those new shoes.
“Don’t you like them, Leo?” she walked up and down the lounge floor, sashaying as best she could even thought she wasn’t a sashaying kind of girl and that’s one of the reasons he’d found her perfect.
He grunted.
“What kind of fool answer is that?”
“I’m a doctor, not a fashinista,” he grumbled.
If she hadn’t have loved her new shoes so much, he’d have probably received one right between the eyes. The question nagged him, how could she love those shoes and love him at the same time?
“I think you’re beautiful,” he drawled. And he had.
His eyes raked up and down Kirk’s body and he wondered if the day would come when he would hate Jim like he hated Jocelyn.
“Hey Bones, fancy a game?”
“What, you take me for, an idiot? I’m fine watching.”
6.
When Kirk got his coat, McCoy tried not to dwell on the sight of him struggling into it, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed, his t rode up again, this time providing a fleeting glimpse of belly, how his hands, such beautiful hands, took the zip up to his neck, guarding against the December cold outside.
McCoy decided he didn’t want to find out too much about Jim after all - in case he stopped being perfect. Then he’d fall out of love with him; and while being in love with Jim pissed him off royally, the thought of it ending, well - what would be left of their friendship?
Yet he knew falling out of love was inevitable, and as far out of his control as that moment his heart lurched towards Jim in the shuttle; as Jorge Luis Borges said:
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
McCoy felt a warmth in his belly and a hunger in his cock as he scowled at Jim who shook his shoulders against the cold, who winked at him amicably. McCoy watched Jim’s breath as it left his nostrils and mouth in a mist and he couldn’t imagine this lasting; best enjoy it while he could.
parts 8-13