fic: there's only one thing i can start
Title: there's only one thing i can start
Characters: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2946
Fandom: STXI
Warnings: Rimming.
Summary: Companion fic to if i could just crash here tonight, from McCoy's point of view.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, pretty much. Title from gin blossom's 'hey jealousy'.
----
It’s after a particularly long night at the hospital, and he’s coming home in the dawn-lit morning, that he first notices anything. It’s a miracle that he does, actually, since his mind is so shut down, his body feeling numb and weightless, incapable of reacting to much of anything. He’s not sure if he’s slept in a few days.
Jim is nowhere to be found when he comes home, which isn’t a surprise. The kid comes and goes as he pleases, without so much as the decency to leave a note. Whenever Jim stays out for the night, Leonard generally stays awake, anxiety-ridden, and eventually falls asleep in his uncomfortable desk chair. He wakes up, without fail, to the sound of Jim walking into the door outside, swearing under his breath, and fumbling with the access code. Leonard always throws himself violently onto his bed and pretends to be asleep. It’s embarrassingly romantic-comedy behavior and Leonard, thinks, gruffly, that he’s about ready to start upchucking rainbows.
It’s pretty disgusting.
But tonight-or, today, really-Jim isn’t home and Leonard can’t actually bring himself to care. He’s too damn tired.
He doesn’t even bother to pour himself a drink. Instead, he pulls his clothes off, turns back the sheets, and sinks into bed. As he’s drifting off, however, something feels…off. He opens his eyes, glances around, unable to pinpoint anything. Disconcerted, but too tired to care, he closes his eyes again.
Jim.
That’s what it is. For some reason, his bed smells like Jim.
-Well, the mixture that makes up Jim’s scent: alcohol, someone else’s perfume, something heady and strangely unmistakable. It’s faint, but there, and although they’ve lived together for ages now, and the room practically reeks of Jim’s socks, Leonard’s bed has always only smelled like Leonard.
He’s too tired to really process this, so he tucks it away in his mind for another time and goes to sleep.
It’s not really until a few weeks later that anything comes up again. It’s another late night at work, but he’s had enough coffee (it’s his one health vice, other than booze) to keep him up for hours, so he’s fully alert when he crawls into bed with a book. Jim is home, sleeping peacefully in his own bunk, his mouth slack. Leonard grimaces at the drool. The kid’s been drinking, he notices, eyeing the eyeing the empty container near the bed. It’s his last bottle of the good bourbon, and he’ll read Jim the riot act in the morning. For now, however, he is content to simply burrow into his covers and get some reading done.
Except, okay. These aren’t the sheets that were on the bed when he woke up this morning. He knows this because Jim had dropped a piece of pizza on it around lunch time and Leonard hadn’t gotten around to changing them, but the sheets on his bed now are pristine. He glances over at his roommate, confused. Had Jim changed them while he was out?
But no, that wouldn’t make any sense. Jim had been out all night drinking-his leather jacket, which he fondly refers to as his “drinking costume”, is slung over his desk chair, and he’d only gotten so far as to strip down to his undershirt. He’s still wearing jeans, and he’s not even under the covers. If anything, he looks the way Leonard usually does on nights when Jim’s been out late-slung half on, half off the bed, face down.
Leonard thinks about it for another long second, then decides that there is no way that Jim changed Leonard’s sheets just before Leonard got home and then threw himself on to his bed and is now pretending to be asleep. He decides he’s reading too much into it and settles down with his PADD.
He only looks over at Jim every so often, which is a plus. There have been times, in the past, when Leonard has woken up before Jim, in time to see his face still, slack, unguarded. Even around Leonard, Jim tends to keep his walls up, nervous about letting anyone in. Leonard knows that when his guards do come down, Jim is breathtaking. Not that he isn’t beautiful all the time, Leonard has to admit, because Jim almost always manages to catch Leonard off-guard with a smile or a concentrated look from those stupid blue eyes. But when Jim is completely natural, has no masks on, Leonard wants to burrow inside Jim and never leave.
Jim wakes up with a start, manages to fall off the bed. He lays crumpled on the floor for a moment. Then he rolls over and throws an arm across his eyes. “Turn off the light, B’nes.”
Leonard eyes him with barely-concealed amusement. “That’s the sun, dumbass,” he replies.
“Hnng,” grumbles Jim, “Make it go away.”
“Absolutely,” Leonard replies, “Will do.” He goes back to his PADD.
After a moment, Jim opens his eyes. “Bones.”
Leonard ignores him, trying to focus on his reading. It’s for a class tomorrow, and the professor’s an idiot, so he does as much reading outside of class as possible.
“Bones. Bones. Booooones.” Jim is looking up at him now, and Leonard studiously does not return his gaze. “Booooooones. Bonesy. Bonesy-poo. Bonesy-pie. Bones-o-rama. Bones-pearl-of-my-heart. Bwooooooooooones-“
“What, Jim.”
Jim considers for a minute. Then, impishly, “I’m stuck.”
After a moment of silence, Leonard slowly turns to look at Jim, who is definitely not stuck. He raises an eyebrow at his friend, slowly, letting his incredulity sink in. Jim, Leonard is pleased to note, seems to wilt under the pressure. Finally, he turns his head away and goes back to his book. “Sure y’are, Jim-boy.”
“Really. I can’t get up. Help me up, Bones?”
“Jim. It’s five in the fucking morning. Leave me alone.”
“Why’re you still up?” Jim, when he glances over, his face half in shadow. Leonard makes himself look away, afraid to be caught staring, riveted by how the early-morning sunlight made his eyes shine, clear and blue.
“Why are you still up?” he retorts, childishly. “Go back to bed. You’ve got that exam tomorrow-today.”
Jim doesn’t move for a little while. Then, suddenly, he rolls over onto his stomach and then pushes himself up with his arms. Just to show off, he completes a ridiculous amount of push-ups before he jumps to his feet, a little unsteadily. “Look out, Bones! I’m a liiiiiittle drunk!” That’s the only warning Leonard gets before he finds himself the ungrateful possessor of some number of Jim-limbs.
“Jim, what the fuck?!” He shoves at his friend, but Jim simply rolls closer, flailing unnecessarily, face pressed between Leonard’s collarbones. “You are not drunk, you’re just being a pain, get off, get off!”
Jim stops moving, having managed to squirrel his arms around Leonard’s midriff. “Y’r my best friend, Bones,” he says, “Love you so much.” There’s a pause, in which Leonard can’t find anything to say, can only grip the PADD between his fingers tighter so he can’t curl them around Jim’s shoulders. They stay like this for a moment, until Jim huffs a sight into Leonard’s chest and rolls off of him. “’Night, Bones,” he mumbles, eyes sleepy again.
Leonard watches him crawl back into his own bed. Then he drops the PADD on the floor, since there’s no way he’ll be able to focus now. He hunkers down under the covers and tries to fall asleep. After all, it’s been a long day, and he has classes in a few hours. He tries not to think about Jim pressed against him just now as he drifts off to sleep.
He wakes to Jim pressed against him, again, wandering hands drifting over his chest and stomach and then farther down to his cock. “Jim, wha-“
Jim turns his face up to look at Leonard, eyes mischievous. “Shh, Bones. Let me do this for you.” He palms at Leonard through his boxers, grinning, and grinds his hips against Leonard’s leg but doesn’t do anything else towards his own cock. Instead, he slips his hand below the elastic waistband of Leonard’s boxers and Leonard arches into the touch, any protest dying on his lips. Jim grips him tightly, mouthing along his neck. “How long have you wanted this, Bones? For me to touch you?”
Leonard gasps, overwhelmed. “Too long, Jim-“ It’s impossible to stifle the moan Jim wrings out of him as his fingers wander down from his cock to tug at his balls and then farther still. They press against his perineum, making him shake and bury his face against Jim’s hair. He can’t believe this is happening. How did Jim know-? But he doesn’t complain, just spreads his legs wider so Jim can finger at his hole, rub around and around the rim as he sucks on Leonard’s earlobe. He doesn’t push in, just keeps rubbing and circling, running his fingers along his crack, occasionally moving back to press into the skin behind his balls, making Leonard jump.
“Turn over,” says Jim, whispers it hotly into Leonard’s ear. Leonard is about to protest, but Jim just drags his finger over Leonard’s hole and says, “Relax. This is about you, okay?”
“Okay,” moans Leonard, because that’s really the only option for him, as desperate as he is for more. He rolls over, loving the way Jim keeps his hands on him as he moves, trailing his fingers across his abdomen and sides. Then his fingers are back, trailing from the small of his back to his balls and back up again, making Leonard shiver.
“Get on your knees for me, Bones,” Jim says, quietly. Leonard doesn’t say anything, just acquiesces, scrambles up, ass in the air, head balanced against his arms, bent over. Jim hmms his approval and goes back to rubbing at Leonard’s hole. Then he runs his hands over Leonard’s cheeks and pulls them apart.
Jim first blows warm air against Leonard’s hole, and then Leonard groans, deep in his throat, as Jim leans forward and runs his tongue down his crack and to his entrance, feathering across it. He licks in circles, stopping to blow air against his clenching hole. Leonard is moaning and pushing back against Jim, wanting more than anything for Jim to fuck him with his tongue, press against his prostate, make him come. He reaches between his legs and slowly jerks himself off, his cock leaking.
Finally, Jim pushes inside Leonard with his tongue. He bobs his head against Leonard’s ass, his nose pushing at the top of his crack, tongue hot and wet, making him shiver. “Yes, Jim.” He makes a sound that can only be characterized as a whine and presses back against that tongue, jacking his cock seriously now, desperate. “Oh, fuck, oh-“
He comes almost violently, his back bowed, his eyes squeezed shut. Jim keeps tongue-fucking him through it, until it’s almost too much, and he pulls away and rolls onto his back, ignoring the stickiness on his sheets.
“Bones,” says Jim, and it sounds far away, and he thinks maybe he’s going to pass out, but then Jim says his name again, “Bones,” and it’s louder this time, and then he’s shaking his shoulder and Leonard wakes up with a jolt.
Jim is standing next to the bed, looking worried. When Leonard blinks blearily at him, still not sure what’s going on, Jim continues. “I had to wake you up, Bones. You were moaning.”
“Wh’t?” Leonard’s tongue feels thicker than usual.
Jim grins. “At first, I thought you were having a sex dream, which would have been awesome and hilarious, but then I remembered you were afraid of sex so I figured you were having a nightmare.”
It occurs to Leonard that yes, he was having a wet dream. He clamps down on the bitter disappointment and tries to reroute his brain functions to something more useful, like bitching out Jim. “Whattaya mean, I’m afraid of sex? How do you think Joanna was conceived? Don’t answer that.”
Jim doesn’t, just winks at him and goes back to his own bed, where he’s got PADDS up the wazoo. The kid usually doesn’t have to study, but when he does, he goes all out.
Leonard rolls over, facing away from Jim. He’s hard, but he doesn’t do anything about it, not when Jim’s right there. Instead, he tries desperately to get the images from his dream out of his head, not really wanting them gone. It had been so vivid.
He gets up and goes into the bathroom, taking care to keep himself turned away from Jim. Then he jacks off in the shower desperately, his eyes closed, thinking about the dream. When he comes he has to shove fingers into his mouth so he doesn’t make any noise, the need to moan Jim’s name overpowering. He finishes his shower without flourish and gets dressed without looking at himself in the mirror.
Two days later, Jim’s back in his bed, curled up against him, snoring. He’d said something about his ex-wife, hardly sure of what he was even talking about, too distracted by the way Jim is trying to take care of him, like he owes Leonard anything. Leonard knows he’s the one that owes Jim, for keeping him sane, for pushing him just far enough, stretching his comfort zones, sticking by him through everything. All he’s ever been able to do for Jim has been to patch him up after a night drinking and fighting. And have wet dreams about him. But Jim finds something in what he says to mean that he needs to crawl into bed with Leonard.
He’s awake for much longer than Jim seems to think, because after Jim is done staring at him (and what’s that about, exactly?) the kid falls asleep, curling into Leonard as he does so. Leonard waits a few minutes, body strung tight as a bow, his nerves alight from just the way Jim’s breath gusts across his neck. Then he presses closer, wraps his arms around Jim’s torso, closes his eyes. When he wakes up he’ll move away. He always wakes up before Jim.
--Which doesn’t end up being true, actually. He wakes up suddenly, feeling a little out of breath, and Jim is already back in his own bunk, reading something. “What…what time is it?”
“Time to get a watch,” says Jim, because he’s a jackass. Leonard groans. “1800 hours, or so,” says Jim.
Once he’s awake, the two head out to get something to eat, Leonard feeling like the whole world has shut off. For some reason, something has changed between the two of them. Jim keeps eyeing him, for one. Leonard is pretty sure Jim has figured it out-after all, he’d woken up to Leonard probably strangling him in his sleep with trying to crawl inside of his body-and now everything between them is going to change. Neither will confess that they know the other knows, but their relationship, which has always been, if nothing else, easy, will become awkward.
He has difficulty eating anything. Instead, he fills the gaps with rants about whatever can come to his mind, and as they get back to the dorms, he realizes he’s mentioned the fact that he knows Jim’s been sleeping in his bed. How he knows this, he has no idea, since the realization only comes to him as the words leave his mouth. But they’re true, apparently, because Jim flinches, and tries to change the subject.
“Fuck, Jim. I’m not pissed off. Stop standing there like a cow,” he says, when they get inside. Jim goes and sits on the desk, silently. Leonard watches him move, the way his limbs are stiff, like he’s conscious of everything his body is doing.
When the kid doesn’t say anything, he suddenly realizes he really, really needs to follow this conversation wherever it’s going to go. “Jim,” he prompts, crossing his arms over his chest, then thinking better of it.
“Okay! Okay. I sleep in your bed sometimes, okay? When I’m drunk. Or not. I don’t know.” Jim doesn’t look at him when he says this, but his admission makes Leonard go warm everywhere. His brain is racing at a hundred miles a minute but he’s not coming up with anything that makes any sense. Instead, all he can focus on is the nervous thing Jim’s doing with his tongue, whetting his lips. He looks away. “Why?”
Jim shrugs. “Fuck if I know.” It’s a typical Jim-answer, and it doesn’t give him anything. Suddenly he thinks of Tarsus, of Jim’s abandonment issues, and he takes a few steps closer, concerned now. But Jim brushes him off and just asks, stutteringly, how long he’s known.
“Awhile. Or, sort of. I’d come home and something would be different. I-it wasn’t until earlier, when you-when we- anyway, it all came together.”
Jim looks up at him for just a second, those blue eyes worried, biting his lip. In that instant, Leonard thinks, Jim could be twelve years old, terrified, awkward, alone. All he wants to do is curl up against him, let Jim share his body heat, soothe the cares away with his tongue. Jim is looking down, eyelashes fluttering, the way they do when he’s thinking hard. Leonard leans forward, heart racing, and before he can stop himself, he slides his fingers into place against Jim’s neck and jaw, pulls him a little bit closer, and presses his lips to Jim’s.
When Jim kisses him back, Leonard closes his eyes. Fucking years. Finally.
Characters: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2946
Fandom: STXI
Warnings: Rimming.
Summary: Companion fic to if i could just crash here tonight, from McCoy's point of view.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, pretty much. Title from gin blossom's 'hey jealousy'.
----
It’s after a particularly long night at the hospital, and he’s coming home in the dawn-lit morning, that he first notices anything. It’s a miracle that he does, actually, since his mind is so shut down, his body feeling numb and weightless, incapable of reacting to much of anything. He’s not sure if he’s slept in a few days.
Jim is nowhere to be found when he comes home, which isn’t a surprise. The kid comes and goes as he pleases, without so much as the decency to leave a note. Whenever Jim stays out for the night, Leonard generally stays awake, anxiety-ridden, and eventually falls asleep in his uncomfortable desk chair. He wakes up, without fail, to the sound of Jim walking into the door outside, swearing under his breath, and fumbling with the access code. Leonard always throws himself violently onto his bed and pretends to be asleep. It’s embarrassingly romantic-comedy behavior and Leonard, thinks, gruffly, that he’s about ready to start upchucking rainbows.
It’s pretty disgusting.
But tonight-or, today, really-Jim isn’t home and Leonard can’t actually bring himself to care. He’s too damn tired.
He doesn’t even bother to pour himself a drink. Instead, he pulls his clothes off, turns back the sheets, and sinks into bed. As he’s drifting off, however, something feels…off. He opens his eyes, glances around, unable to pinpoint anything. Disconcerted, but too tired to care, he closes his eyes again.
Jim.
That’s what it is. For some reason, his bed smells like Jim.
-Well, the mixture that makes up Jim’s scent: alcohol, someone else’s perfume, something heady and strangely unmistakable. It’s faint, but there, and although they’ve lived together for ages now, and the room practically reeks of Jim’s socks, Leonard’s bed has always only smelled like Leonard.
He’s too tired to really process this, so he tucks it away in his mind for another time and goes to sleep.
It’s not really until a few weeks later that anything comes up again. It’s another late night at work, but he’s had enough coffee (it’s his one health vice, other than booze) to keep him up for hours, so he’s fully alert when he crawls into bed with a book. Jim is home, sleeping peacefully in his own bunk, his mouth slack. Leonard grimaces at the drool. The kid’s been drinking, he notices, eyeing the eyeing the empty container near the bed. It’s his last bottle of the good bourbon, and he’ll read Jim the riot act in the morning. For now, however, he is content to simply burrow into his covers and get some reading done.
Except, okay. These aren’t the sheets that were on the bed when he woke up this morning. He knows this because Jim had dropped a piece of pizza on it around lunch time and Leonard hadn’t gotten around to changing them, but the sheets on his bed now are pristine. He glances over at his roommate, confused. Had Jim changed them while he was out?
But no, that wouldn’t make any sense. Jim had been out all night drinking-his leather jacket, which he fondly refers to as his “drinking costume”, is slung over his desk chair, and he’d only gotten so far as to strip down to his undershirt. He’s still wearing jeans, and he’s not even under the covers. If anything, he looks the way Leonard usually does on nights when Jim’s been out late-slung half on, half off the bed, face down.
Leonard thinks about it for another long second, then decides that there is no way that Jim changed Leonard’s sheets just before Leonard got home and then threw himself on to his bed and is now pretending to be asleep. He decides he’s reading too much into it and settles down with his PADD.
He only looks over at Jim every so often, which is a plus. There have been times, in the past, when Leonard has woken up before Jim, in time to see his face still, slack, unguarded. Even around Leonard, Jim tends to keep his walls up, nervous about letting anyone in. Leonard knows that when his guards do come down, Jim is breathtaking. Not that he isn’t beautiful all the time, Leonard has to admit, because Jim almost always manages to catch Leonard off-guard with a smile or a concentrated look from those stupid blue eyes. But when Jim is completely natural, has no masks on, Leonard wants to burrow inside Jim and never leave.
Jim wakes up with a start, manages to fall off the bed. He lays crumpled on the floor for a moment. Then he rolls over and throws an arm across his eyes. “Turn off the light, B’nes.”
Leonard eyes him with barely-concealed amusement. “That’s the sun, dumbass,” he replies.
“Hnng,” grumbles Jim, “Make it go away.”
“Absolutely,” Leonard replies, “Will do.” He goes back to his PADD.
After a moment, Jim opens his eyes. “Bones.”
Leonard ignores him, trying to focus on his reading. It’s for a class tomorrow, and the professor’s an idiot, so he does as much reading outside of class as possible.
“Bones. Bones. Booooones.” Jim is looking up at him now, and Leonard studiously does not return his gaze. “Booooooones. Bonesy. Bonesy-poo. Bonesy-pie. Bones-o-rama. Bones-pearl-of-my-heart. Bwooooooooooones-“
“What, Jim.”
Jim considers for a minute. Then, impishly, “I’m stuck.”
After a moment of silence, Leonard slowly turns to look at Jim, who is definitely not stuck. He raises an eyebrow at his friend, slowly, letting his incredulity sink in. Jim, Leonard is pleased to note, seems to wilt under the pressure. Finally, he turns his head away and goes back to his book. “Sure y’are, Jim-boy.”
“Really. I can’t get up. Help me up, Bones?”
“Jim. It’s five in the fucking morning. Leave me alone.”
“Why’re you still up?” Jim, when he glances over, his face half in shadow. Leonard makes himself look away, afraid to be caught staring, riveted by how the early-morning sunlight made his eyes shine, clear and blue.
“Why are you still up?” he retorts, childishly. “Go back to bed. You’ve got that exam tomorrow-today.”
Jim doesn’t move for a little while. Then, suddenly, he rolls over onto his stomach and then pushes himself up with his arms. Just to show off, he completes a ridiculous amount of push-ups before he jumps to his feet, a little unsteadily. “Look out, Bones! I’m a liiiiiittle drunk!” That’s the only warning Leonard gets before he finds himself the ungrateful possessor of some number of Jim-limbs.
“Jim, what the fuck?!” He shoves at his friend, but Jim simply rolls closer, flailing unnecessarily, face pressed between Leonard’s collarbones. “You are not drunk, you’re just being a pain, get off, get off!”
Jim stops moving, having managed to squirrel his arms around Leonard’s midriff. “Y’r my best friend, Bones,” he says, “Love you so much.” There’s a pause, in which Leonard can’t find anything to say, can only grip the PADD between his fingers tighter so he can’t curl them around Jim’s shoulders. They stay like this for a moment, until Jim huffs a sight into Leonard’s chest and rolls off of him. “’Night, Bones,” he mumbles, eyes sleepy again.
Leonard watches him crawl back into his own bed. Then he drops the PADD on the floor, since there’s no way he’ll be able to focus now. He hunkers down under the covers and tries to fall asleep. After all, it’s been a long day, and he has classes in a few hours. He tries not to think about Jim pressed against him just now as he drifts off to sleep.
He wakes to Jim pressed against him, again, wandering hands drifting over his chest and stomach and then farther down to his cock. “Jim, wha-“
Jim turns his face up to look at Leonard, eyes mischievous. “Shh, Bones. Let me do this for you.” He palms at Leonard through his boxers, grinning, and grinds his hips against Leonard’s leg but doesn’t do anything else towards his own cock. Instead, he slips his hand below the elastic waistband of Leonard’s boxers and Leonard arches into the touch, any protest dying on his lips. Jim grips him tightly, mouthing along his neck. “How long have you wanted this, Bones? For me to touch you?”
Leonard gasps, overwhelmed. “Too long, Jim-“ It’s impossible to stifle the moan Jim wrings out of him as his fingers wander down from his cock to tug at his balls and then farther still. They press against his perineum, making him shake and bury his face against Jim’s hair. He can’t believe this is happening. How did Jim know-? But he doesn’t complain, just spreads his legs wider so Jim can finger at his hole, rub around and around the rim as he sucks on Leonard’s earlobe. He doesn’t push in, just keeps rubbing and circling, running his fingers along his crack, occasionally moving back to press into the skin behind his balls, making Leonard jump.
“Turn over,” says Jim, whispers it hotly into Leonard’s ear. Leonard is about to protest, but Jim just drags his finger over Leonard’s hole and says, “Relax. This is about you, okay?”
“Okay,” moans Leonard, because that’s really the only option for him, as desperate as he is for more. He rolls over, loving the way Jim keeps his hands on him as he moves, trailing his fingers across his abdomen and sides. Then his fingers are back, trailing from the small of his back to his balls and back up again, making Leonard shiver.
“Get on your knees for me, Bones,” Jim says, quietly. Leonard doesn’t say anything, just acquiesces, scrambles up, ass in the air, head balanced against his arms, bent over. Jim hmms his approval and goes back to rubbing at Leonard’s hole. Then he runs his hands over Leonard’s cheeks and pulls them apart.
Jim first blows warm air against Leonard’s hole, and then Leonard groans, deep in his throat, as Jim leans forward and runs his tongue down his crack and to his entrance, feathering across it. He licks in circles, stopping to blow air against his clenching hole. Leonard is moaning and pushing back against Jim, wanting more than anything for Jim to fuck him with his tongue, press against his prostate, make him come. He reaches between his legs and slowly jerks himself off, his cock leaking.
Finally, Jim pushes inside Leonard with his tongue. He bobs his head against Leonard’s ass, his nose pushing at the top of his crack, tongue hot and wet, making him shiver. “Yes, Jim.” He makes a sound that can only be characterized as a whine and presses back against that tongue, jacking his cock seriously now, desperate. “Oh, fuck, oh-“
He comes almost violently, his back bowed, his eyes squeezed shut. Jim keeps tongue-fucking him through it, until it’s almost too much, and he pulls away and rolls onto his back, ignoring the stickiness on his sheets.
“Bones,” says Jim, and it sounds far away, and he thinks maybe he’s going to pass out, but then Jim says his name again, “Bones,” and it’s louder this time, and then he’s shaking his shoulder and Leonard wakes up with a jolt.
Jim is standing next to the bed, looking worried. When Leonard blinks blearily at him, still not sure what’s going on, Jim continues. “I had to wake you up, Bones. You were moaning.”
“Wh’t?” Leonard’s tongue feels thicker than usual.
Jim grins. “At first, I thought you were having a sex dream, which would have been awesome and hilarious, but then I remembered you were afraid of sex so I figured you were having a nightmare.”
It occurs to Leonard that yes, he was having a wet dream. He clamps down on the bitter disappointment and tries to reroute his brain functions to something more useful, like bitching out Jim. “Whattaya mean, I’m afraid of sex? How do you think Joanna was conceived? Don’t answer that.”
Jim doesn’t, just winks at him and goes back to his own bed, where he’s got PADDS up the wazoo. The kid usually doesn’t have to study, but when he does, he goes all out.
Leonard rolls over, facing away from Jim. He’s hard, but he doesn’t do anything about it, not when Jim’s right there. Instead, he tries desperately to get the images from his dream out of his head, not really wanting them gone. It had been so vivid.
He gets up and goes into the bathroom, taking care to keep himself turned away from Jim. Then he jacks off in the shower desperately, his eyes closed, thinking about the dream. When he comes he has to shove fingers into his mouth so he doesn’t make any noise, the need to moan Jim’s name overpowering. He finishes his shower without flourish and gets dressed without looking at himself in the mirror.
Two days later, Jim’s back in his bed, curled up against him, snoring. He’d said something about his ex-wife, hardly sure of what he was even talking about, too distracted by the way Jim is trying to take care of him, like he owes Leonard anything. Leonard knows he’s the one that owes Jim, for keeping him sane, for pushing him just far enough, stretching his comfort zones, sticking by him through everything. All he’s ever been able to do for Jim has been to patch him up after a night drinking and fighting. And have wet dreams about him. But Jim finds something in what he says to mean that he needs to crawl into bed with Leonard.
He’s awake for much longer than Jim seems to think, because after Jim is done staring at him (and what’s that about, exactly?) the kid falls asleep, curling into Leonard as he does so. Leonard waits a few minutes, body strung tight as a bow, his nerves alight from just the way Jim’s breath gusts across his neck. Then he presses closer, wraps his arms around Jim’s torso, closes his eyes. When he wakes up he’ll move away. He always wakes up before Jim.
--Which doesn’t end up being true, actually. He wakes up suddenly, feeling a little out of breath, and Jim is already back in his own bunk, reading something. “What…what time is it?”
“Time to get a watch,” says Jim, because he’s a jackass. Leonard groans. “1800 hours, or so,” says Jim.
Once he’s awake, the two head out to get something to eat, Leonard feeling like the whole world has shut off. For some reason, something has changed between the two of them. Jim keeps eyeing him, for one. Leonard is pretty sure Jim has figured it out-after all, he’d woken up to Leonard probably strangling him in his sleep with trying to crawl inside of his body-and now everything between them is going to change. Neither will confess that they know the other knows, but their relationship, which has always been, if nothing else, easy, will become awkward.
He has difficulty eating anything. Instead, he fills the gaps with rants about whatever can come to his mind, and as they get back to the dorms, he realizes he’s mentioned the fact that he knows Jim’s been sleeping in his bed. How he knows this, he has no idea, since the realization only comes to him as the words leave his mouth. But they’re true, apparently, because Jim flinches, and tries to change the subject.
“Fuck, Jim. I’m not pissed off. Stop standing there like a cow,” he says, when they get inside. Jim goes and sits on the desk, silently. Leonard watches him move, the way his limbs are stiff, like he’s conscious of everything his body is doing.
When the kid doesn’t say anything, he suddenly realizes he really, really needs to follow this conversation wherever it’s going to go. “Jim,” he prompts, crossing his arms over his chest, then thinking better of it.
“Okay! Okay. I sleep in your bed sometimes, okay? When I’m drunk. Or not. I don’t know.” Jim doesn’t look at him when he says this, but his admission makes Leonard go warm everywhere. His brain is racing at a hundred miles a minute but he’s not coming up with anything that makes any sense. Instead, all he can focus on is the nervous thing Jim’s doing with his tongue, whetting his lips. He looks away. “Why?”
Jim shrugs. “Fuck if I know.” It’s a typical Jim-answer, and it doesn’t give him anything. Suddenly he thinks of Tarsus, of Jim’s abandonment issues, and he takes a few steps closer, concerned now. But Jim brushes him off and just asks, stutteringly, how long he’s known.
“Awhile. Or, sort of. I’d come home and something would be different. I-it wasn’t until earlier, when you-when we- anyway, it all came together.”
Jim looks up at him for just a second, those blue eyes worried, biting his lip. In that instant, Leonard thinks, Jim could be twelve years old, terrified, awkward, alone. All he wants to do is curl up against him, let Jim share his body heat, soothe the cares away with his tongue. Jim is looking down, eyelashes fluttering, the way they do when he’s thinking hard. Leonard leans forward, heart racing, and before he can stop himself, he slides his fingers into place against Jim’s neck and jaw, pulls him a little bit closer, and presses his lips to Jim’s.
When Jim kisses him back, Leonard closes his eyes. Fucking years. Finally.