so wait for the stone at your window, 2/(2, probably?)
this is my comment-fic-a-day-all-through-december type story. each section is based off a daily captain, daily doctor post at jim_and_bones , starting on 11/30/10.
title: so wait for the stone on your window.
pairings: kirk/mccoy, possible eventual others.
warnings: other than blatant nondescription of what their actual jobs are? none, thus far.
summary: jim works for pike. mccoy works for pike. it's like a match made in heaven.
disclaimer: if they were mine, it'd be canon. also, title is from the decemberists' o, valencia!. i don't own that either.
first part here.
NOVEMBER 16th
McCoy comes back in once Chekov is gone. “Get the fuck outta my bed, Jim.”
“Nah,” Jim mutters, “It’s comfortable.” He rolls over, splays out invitingly. “Plenty of room for two, though.”
Much to Jim’s surprise, he seems to resign himself to his fate and actually comes to lay down next to him. “Quick thinking, that,” he says idly, twiddling his fingers together on his stomach. He turns his head to look at Jim.
“Thanks,” Jim says, quieter. “I figured you didn’t want him knowing I was here.”
McCoy bites his lip and looks up at the ceiling. “He’s so…whatever, for Sulu, and there’s no way to guarantee he won’t let something slip. He’s a good kid, but he’s too-“
“Passionate?”
“Yeah, something.”
Jim can’t stop looking at McCoy, only a foot or so from him. “Any news about when I can go home?” He doesn’t want to leave, really, but he is getting fucking restless. And he’d like to get some of his own clothes instead of wearing McCoy’s extras all the time.
McCoy huffs a sigh. “I’m deferring to Pike’s judgment on this one, and it’s not looking like he’s going to be letting you out any time soon.”
“Damnit.” He lifts an arm up and tucks it behind his head, stretching gratuitously. “Man, this bed. Sex must be awesome on it.”
For a moment, it seems likely that McCoy might punch him. He’s certainly glowering enough for two. But he just sits up and goes into the living room.
Jim watches him futz around with the things Jim’d moved out of place during the day. Before this week, Jim would never have believed McCoy to be a meticulous neat-freak. But he is. He so is. It’s gotten to the point where Jim has taken to switching the medical dramas around on the bookshelf to see if they’re moved back-they always are. It’s insane.
He’s lying there, trying to decide whether he wants to get off of the bed or not, when something makes a noise in the bedside drawer.
A vibrating something.
Jim scrambles onto his hands and knees, practically throwing himself across the bed. The drawer flies open under his grip.
It is, unfortunately, a cell phone. It’s vibrating, and the caller ID says Joanna. Jim considers picking it up and saying something suitably awkward like, “Leonard McCoy, wanton sex god, with a very bad man between his thighs,” but he doesn’t, because he’s too hung up on the item just behind the cell phone. Items, actually.
Lots and lots of them.
“Bones, who’s Joanna?”
McCoy is in the room faster than you can say, “Damnit, Jim!” He whisks the phone out of Jim’s unresisting hands and barrels out of the room, shoving the door shut behind him. Jim finds himself faced with a difficult decision: He can A) head over to the door and try to listen in on the conversation, or B) make a hat out of the gajillion condoms he just found in the nightstand.
He chooses B, of course.
McCoy turns beet red when he comes back into the room, which could be embarrassment but is mostly Terrifying Rage, so Jim stuffs the condoms back into the drawer and hightails it up to the roof for a smoke.
DECEMBER 17th
“All I’m saying,” Jim continues, tapping his fingers against his chest, “Is a lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”
McCoy is glowering, again. Jim wants to smooth the creases away with his tongue, but that would be a little weird at this juncture of their relationship, so he contents himself with licking his bottom lip. “Jim,” McCoy growls, which is pretty sexy, “Stop being a nancy and tell me what happened.”
The first night, after McCoy had patched Jim up a little, he’d explained what had occurred in the restaurant with Sulu and after, in the apartment. He hadn’t skipped the gory details of the flirting and small talk they’d exchanged; Jim had laughed outright at the rapid deterioration of McCoy’s good mood. Then he’d explained how the evening went after all that, which was like this:
Sulu had leveled him with a look and said, “Chris. Look, man. I know you’re working for Pike. Want to just tell me what he wants with me, and then we can take this back to my apartment?” And Jim had come up with something witty and irreverent, saying exactly nothing, and Sulu had just sighed and paid the bill when the waitress came over. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” he’d said, and made a tiny motion with his fingers. Almost instantly, a car had pulled up out front and Jim had become aware that Sulu did, in fact, have a gun on him. So Jim had followed him into the car and they’d driven to what McCoy’d been calling the East Apartment, where he’d been hustled into a stairwell, threatened a little, and then left in a room by himself. Then he’d broken out, found his way downstairs, and run.
Now, however, McCoy wants details. And Jim, well, he has no reason not to give them to him, other than it’s really hilarious when McCoy’s frustrated. He smirks and bats his lashes. “Give me a good reason to tell you the details of my date,” he purrs, just to be annoying.
McCoy looks like this is all he’s ever wanted to have been asked. “One,” he growls, counting out on his broad, manly-as-fuck-all hands, “You’re an idiot. Two, it wasn’t a date, it was recon. Learn to separate your work life with your love life. Three, this is my goddamned apartment and I can kick you out of it anytime I like, and four,” He takes a deep breath, “It’s relevant to your continued survival.”
Well, that was fucking hot.
Jim shifts in his seat a little; his pants have become a little bit uncomfortable, all of a sudden. He flashes McCoy a grin. “Aw, Bones, I didn’t know you cared.”
“Jim,” McCoy warns.
He holds up his hands. “Okay! Okay! Jesus. I didn’t break out of the room, alright? Sulu just passed me off to Uhura and they were going to package me off to some other location. I don’t know where. And Sulu said something about some guy named Nero. And then I gave them the slip, and fell down the stairs, and you know the rest.” He shrugs. “Happy?”
NOVEMBER 18th
On Saturday Jim drags McCoy up to the roof with him to watch the sunset. He’s been spending more time up here lately, restless and full of cabin fever. Thankfully, McCoy only complains a little, and he grabs a blanket from the couch on the way out.
Up here, everything feels cooler, calmer. Jim finds it restful. He helps McCoy spread the blanket out next to the wall and lights a cigarette up. Then he leans back, stares up at the sky. “Did you ever want to be an astronaut?” He asks.
“I’m terrified of heights,” McCoy supplies.
That seems to be all that he’s willing to say on the subject, so after a moment and two drags from the cigarette, Jim continues, “I totally wanted to. I’d sit out back and stare at the stars for hours at night-I was always catching cold-and wonder what it’d be like to be up there. You know, out of atmo. Not in a plane.”
He looks over at McCoy, who’s wearing some kind of loose shirt that looks like he bought it on an island somewhere in the South Pacific, unbuttoned at the top. McCoy ignores him, looks up at the sky, too. Jim swallows, watches the clean line of his exposed throat. “I wanted to be a doctor,” he says.
“That why you have all those medical books?”
McCoy hums a yes. Jim marvels at how relaxed he looks; since he’s met the guy, McCoy’s been nothing but a bundle of nerves and anger. Now, however, he’s almost smiling, the lines on his face barely there, scruff just starting to show. “I went to med school,” he adds.
Shocked, Jim stares at him. “What? Really?”
McCoy looks a little embarrassed. “Didn’t finish. Pike’s offer was too good.”
“Still,” he splutters, “That’s awesome! You have to be fucking smart to even get that far, right? And-“
“Yeah, yeah,” interrupts McCoy, reaching for Jim’s cigarette. That sets a jolt of heat through his spine, the informality of it. “Real great.”
Jim doesn’t watch him take a drag. Instead, he closes his eyes with his head tilted up, contemplates his next move. “So who’s Joanna?”
McCoy coughs, like he’s just choked on smoke. Jim opens his eyes and good-naturedly claps him on the back a few times, until McCoy glares at him. If he lingers a little before pulling his hand away, McCoy doesn’t say anything. Instead he stares at his knees for a few moments. Then he mumbles something.
“What?” asks Jim, leaning closer.
“My daughter,” says McCoy, quietly. “She’s my daughter.”
“Oh,” says Jim, and waits for McCoy to elaborate. He doesn’t. Instead they sit there, side-by-side, as the sun slips below the horizon.
DECEMBER 19th
What little talking about the past they did has reminded Jim of why he doesn’t talk about it in the first place. He hasn’t wanted to think about the reasons he spent so much time out of the house, the reasons he did his level best to get the hell out of his mother’s house as soon as he could. The fights between his mother and Sam, they’re over now, that part of his life pushed behind him. He doesn’t think about it.
It takes him a long time to fall asleep, the couch exceptionally uncomfortable. When he does, he dreams fitfully, memories seeping to the surface. He dreams that he’s back at home and Sam has been out drinking; his mother catches him on the way back in the house and their anger is explosive. Jim creeps out back and climbs into his treehouse, tilts his head back, stuffs his fingers in his ears. He can still hear them clearly from this far away.
He wakes up to McCoy’s hand on his shoulder. “B’nes? Wha-“
“C’mon,” mutters McCoy, pulling him off the couch. Jim lets himself be tugged into the bedroom and bundled under the covers. Through half-lidded eyes, he watches McCoy move around to the other side of the bed and climb in, too. “You were having a nightmare,” he says, simply. Jim groans and closes his eyes.
“I can’t believe I woke you up.”
McCoy shrugs, and then grins. “I’m used to getting woken up at all hours of the night by Jo. It’s no big thing.”
Jim closes his eyes. “What’s she like?”
“Jo? She’s-“
“-I mean you don’t have to feel like you have to tell me-“
“No, I want to.” He shifts a little on the bed. “She’s fucking adorable. She’s amazing. So smart, fucking tiny-she, I can pick her up with one arm, but not much longer-she can’t color for anything-I think she might be a little colorblind. She wants to be a doctor, like her daddy.”
Listening to this quiet description, Jim grips the comforter tighter because he can’t hold onto McCoy. “You miss her.”
There’s silence for a long moment. Then, “Yes.”
DECEMBER 19th
It’s so dark when the alarm goes off that Leonard thinks, for a moment, that he’s dreaming. It’s certainly plausible, given the way Jim is tucked up underneath his chin, nose and mouth pressed to his throat, eyelids fluttering. Leonard notices that first, and then the heavy warm weight of Jim’s body thrown across his own.
He drops a hand on the alarm next to him, surprised Jim hasn’t woken up. He wonders if the kid slept much last night.
“B’nes?” Jim mutters, and to Leonard’s shock and gratification, tugs him closer. The fingers of his right hand have wormed their way underneath the collar Leonard’s tee, curled against the fabric, pulling it down, and his breath ghosts across Leonard’s skin like a caress.
Leonard shouldn’t. He absolutely shouldn’t. But he does; he tilts his head a fraction forward, shifts just a little, and kisses the top of Jim’s head.
Jim snuffles, snorts, and comes awake. Leonard knows this because his body freezes and then relaxes against him for a quick instant before he rolls away, up and out of bed, grinning. “Morning!”
The sight of his happy, clear face in the dim light of the bedroom reminds Leonard of his morning wood, so he throws a hand over his eyes. “Mornin’,” he mutters.
The phone rings.
It’s the landline, so Jim jumps to get it, and isn’t that just a disgusting display of domesticity right there? He comes back into the room while Leonard is still trying to get himself out of bed. “It’s Pike.” He looks white-faced, and after he hands the phone to Leonard he goes into the other room and picks up the few things of his that are here.
“Leonard. She’s found you. I have a car on its way, you have to go now.” Pike sounds furious and maybe a little terrified. Leonard spares a glance into the living room, where Jim is pulling on the suit he’d worn on his ‘date’ with Sulu. Leonard stands up and moves to the closet, the phone cradled in his ear, not panicking. He’s trained himself not to panic.
Inside his closet is a pack, which he pulls out as he listens to Pike detail the plan. They’re to get into the car, which will take them to an air strip just outside the city. Pike doesn’t say where they’ll land, just tells him they’ll have a rental car available with directions to the safe house inside. “Be careful, Len,” he warns, and then he hangs up.
“Jim, we have to-“
“I know,” Jim interrupts, jumping on one foot in an attempt to get his second shoe on, “Car, Plane, Safe House. I got it.” He straightens, and Leonard pauses in his motions to look at him. There’s a tiny strand of hair that’s fallen over his forehead, but he looks dead serious, the blue of his eyes shattering, his body poised under the clean lines of the suit. In the intensity of the last few moments, Leonard’s erection has pretty much subsided, but his chest still clenches at the power Jim seems to be holding back with his body and mind. For the first time, the doubts that Leonard’s secretly been carrying about Jim’s ability to take over for Pike are shot to hell. The kid-no, man-looks, at this moment, like he could do anything.
Leonard turns away and gets dressed quickly, and then grabs the pack, which has clothing and supplies. He’s had this for In Cases of Emergency for ages and he’s glad that this is the first time he’s had to use it. The last thing he does is reach into the dresser drawer and grab the cell phone that he only uses to keep in touch with his daughter, and then he follows Jim out the door. He’s sure he looks absurd, since he hasn’t even gotten the chance to run his fingers through his hair to tame the bedhead, but there are more pressing matters at hand.
He fingers his gun as they pelt down the stairs but he doesn’t have to use it, thankfully, as they get into the company car and peel away from his apartment.
DECEMBER 20th
When the plane lands, Jim watches McCoy’s face, which looks on the upside of ‘slightly green’. In fact, the man looks this close to vomiting. But he admirably just shoulders his backpack and nods his head at Jim in a manner that means he expects to be followed. Jim grins, pulls his own shoulderbag over his shoulders. Someone had managed to get into his apartment at some point over the past week and get some clothes and personal belongings, which he’d discovered in the car on the way to the plane. During the flight they’d both changed into jeans and, in McCoy’s case, an adorably large sweatshirt and jacket, and Jim’s, a tee, hoodie, and leather jacket. McCoy looks disarmingly adorable. Like a puppy. That secretly has really sharp fangs.
He follows him off the plane and into the airport, where they blend in easily with the crowds of tourists, businessmen and women, and assorted others. McCoy weaves through the congestion near the car pick-up and waves to the redhead at the counter, who waves back. “C’mon,” he says to Jim, “Car’s waiting.”
It is, right outside. It’s a Jeep Grand Cherokee, nothing special, and Jim doesn’t bother attempting to fight McCoy for driving privileges. That can wait for another day. Instead he just says, unnecessarily, “I call shotgun!” and smirks at McCoy’s rolled eyes.
He does appoint himself Master of Directions, snatching up the notebook on the passenger’s seat and flipping through it. The first page is the directions to the house, and after that seems to be a hastily compiled info packet on Uhura, Sulu, and their new domicile. There’s also two sets of keys and a gun in the front compartment.
Obviously, he gets them lost. And, just as obviously, McCoy isn’t prone to asking for directions. Thankfully, they have GPS, so after wrestling with it for almost half an hour in a parking lot of a Wendy’s, they get on the right track and actually get to where they’re going.
The house is tiny, and kind of tacky, in a Norman Rockwell kind of way. McCoy parks the car in the garage and bustles Jim inside. “Ooh, linoleum!” Jim exclaims, “Shag carpeting!”
McCoy snorts. “Your sense of situational-appropriateness is odd, Jim.”
“Thanks,” he replies, dropping his bag on the kitchen table. He heads straight for the living room on the other side, gaping at the sound system. “Bones! This is-“ He throws his hands up. “Any chance you want to throw a house party with me?”
McCoy actually laughs, his hand on the strap of his bag. It’s exceptionally appealing. Recently Jim’s been keeping track of all the times McCoy’s face does something other than scowl, and he’s glad he has been, because this one blows them all out of the water.
“So,” he says, to distract himself, “Any idea where the bathroom is?”
DECEMBER 21st
There are two bedrooms, so there isn’t any awkward who-gets-the-couch discussion. Jim takes the opportunity of privacy to get himself off, wondering if maybe McCoy-Bones-is doing the same thing in his room, maybe picturing Jim while he does so. There have been a few times recently that Jim’s caught McCoy staring when he thinks Jim isn’t looking, and Jim wonders if maybe-
The next morning they have cold cereal and watch the news.
Neither of them leave the house all day, because although Pike’d assured them no one except him and his contact in this city knows where they are, it’s still a precaution they need to take. McCoy reads a book he’d found upstairs while Jim pores over the file they’d been left in the car.
Uhura, from what he can tell, seems to have previously unknown ties to Ambassador Spock’s son. No one’s sure whether it’s business or pleasure, but it gives her a distinct advantage and also a distinct weakness; she has the Ambassador’s political sway on her side, but is also extremely vulnerable to exposure. This seems to be, unfortunately, the only thing they’ve got on her, which Jim already knows about.
He silently curses their investigative team and steals a glance at McCoy, who seems fidgety. He keeps loosening his tie. Jim’s still not sure why McCoy felt the need to dress nice today, but his theory is that he’d gotten up, dressed for work, and come downstairs only to remember blearily that he didn’t have to go to work and had been too embarrassed to change. Jim wants to ask him about it, but he doesn’t. He’s very aware that Jim is the reason McCoy’s here, and he’s grateful.
He’s halfway through reading up on Sulu, who has significantly more information in this file, when McCoy groans and drops the book on the ground. Jim watches him sit up and plant his elbows on his knees.
Jim, who is stretched out on the couch, raises an eyebrow at him. “Bored?”
“Yeah.” McCoy loosens his tie some more and rolls his neck. “Only a few hours into this and I’m already pretty sure I’m going batshit.”
If this were a porn, Jim would say, “I think I can help you relax,” but it isn’t, so he just tilts his head onto his hand and says, “I saw some board games upstairs-you any good at Sorry?”
McCoy snorts, but his gaze wanders down from Jim’s face to where Jim had forgotten to button the top of his Henley tee this morning. He lingers there for just a second before Jim clears his throat and he snaps his eyes up again, and then away. “Uh, yeah,” he says, “I mean, no, I’ve never played. You have to go get it, though.”
“Ugh,” groans Jim, making a show of getting up on the couch and dragging his feet, but he goes and gets it.
McCoy whups his ass.
DECEMBER 22nd
Jim wakes up early one morning after they’ve been here about a week. McCoy’s still in bed, and it’s dark outside, so he goes downstairs and makes himself a cup of coffee. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, staring blearily out the back window, when he hears the front door creak open.
He’s out of the chair in an instant, scrambling for a kitchen knife, anything; he ends up with a plate.
Before he can get properly upset about this, Uhura stalks into the kitchen, gun pointed almost lazily at his chest. “Drop your gun,” Jim says, menacingly.
“Drop your plate,” she counters. Then she lowers her gun and places a hand on her hip. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
He does. “So you, ah, going to kill me? Or what?”
She snorts, which somehow sounds almost ladylike. “No, of course not.” Sighing, Uhura pushes past Jim and sits down at the table. “I need to talk to you.”
Jim, for lack of anything better to do, gestures weakly at the pot. “Coffee?”
“No,” she says, “I’m fine.”
He grins at that. Despite her surroundings, Uhura looks absolutely fierce, her hair stick straight, eyes dark in her beautiful, angular face. “You are fine.” He sits down across from her, trying to decide whether she’s playing a game and is actually going to whip out the gun. “How did you find us?”
“Us?
Whoops.
Jim gestures vaguely. “That’s the royal we,” he explains, but stops at her raised eyebrow.
“It was a fairly simple job to find you,” she explains, “But that’s not what we’re worried about, here. I’m here because I need your help.”
Jim holds up one finger, backing towards the hall. “Hold that thought. Just-hold on.” He tumbles into the hallway and up the stairs, barrels into McCoy’s room.
The guy is still asleep. Jim has been having coffee with an assassin downstairs in the kitchen, and McCoy has just been snoozing away. Jim takes just a moment to take in the dark hair fanning out on the pillow before he leans over him and shakes him awake.
McCoy comes awake flailing, grips Jim, like he’s under attack. “Shh,” says Jim, dropping his arms to settle around McCoy’s shoulders, “It’s me. Hey, guess who’s downstairs.”
McCoy looks up at him. His eyes, deep and sleep-heavy, make Jim shiver. “Who?”
“Uhura,” he says, and waits for the fallout.