Fic: TLC 1/1 (Kir/McCoy, Star Trek, NC-17)
Title: TLC
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 2120
Disclaimer: They dont belong to me.The were envisioned many decades before my birth so I'm just happy to play with them.
Beta: Thanks to the lovely and talented guest_age
Summary: Written for a prompt on the st_xi_kink for One day, out of the blue, a headache starts creeping in on Kirk. At first he ignores it, but it starts to interfere with his work. Pills don't help, sleep doesn't help, and it only gets worse. Eventually, someone offers more personal care. How it goes from there is up in the air. Mindmeld cure? Scalp massage? Sex to release endorphins? One day it just goes away but hey he's got someone waiting on him all the time? Something more serious and angsty? Something completely different?. The fic is also deeply inspired by another prompt at st_xi_kink of McCoy makes the first move. bonus points for goddamnit-Jim-stop-nearly-getting yourself killed >:(. Originally posted here.
He’s on duty when sudden pain slams into him like a fist. It’s a headache like nothing he’s ever had before, throbbing behind his eyes, at the base of his skull, at his temples, and across his forehead. It's blinding and it is getting in the way of his work.
So Jim ignores it on the first day. It's just an ache, he tells himself, and totally manageable. After all, if he can just get through his shift on the bridge, he can retreat to his quarters, dim the lights, and sleep it off.
It's a good plan. It's foolproof in fact. But by the time Spock finally comes to relieve him, the steady pain is so bad that while he manages to walk calmly out of the bridge, he takes the rest of the trip at a run. It makes the pain worse, but it gets him to the comfort and darkness of his room in half the time.
He manages to make a wet compress for himself before he falls onto the bed, but that's about all he can manage. At least horizontal, the pain is steady enough that he can adjust and sleep.
The problem with his foolproof plan is that the fucking headache is still there when he wakes up. It’s not as bad as it was after the running, but it's still pretty fucking bad. He pops two standard issue pain pills and pockets the rest of the bottle. And even though Jim rinses his face twice before he heads out for work, he still looks like he's just come off a week-long bender.
Everyone on the bridge seems concerned. Spock gives him several perfectly logical reasons to go see Bones-which he ignores-and even Uhura asks if he's all right. He waves her off and slumps down in the captain's chair, chewing pain pills as often as he can get away with without one of his officers calling sick bay on him and praying for it to let up, even just a little.
On day three, he can't get up. He tries. Really he does. But he throws up from the vertigo and pain and ends up in a disgusting mess on the floor until he can crawl across the room and reach his comm.
"Bones? Can you hear me?"
"I'm busy, Jim."
"Bones, fuck," he groans and plants his forehead on the carpet, wishing he were back in the bathroom where there were cool, smooth surfaces everywhere. "I need you to come get me. I'm in my bunk."
"Are you all right?"
"Come get me," Jim mumbles, flipping it closed and closing his eyes. When he opens them again, Bones is shaking him with one hand and scanning him with the other. "Stop - I'm'a throw up on you," he groans and Bones obeys.
"How long has this been going on, Jim?"
He holds up three fingers.
"Three hours?"
"Days."
"Damnit, Jim," he snaps.
Honest to god, he can't deal with Bones being angry with him right now. His brain is screaming and he can't take it. An involuntary noise escapes from the back in his throat, making him feel pathetic and young, and Bones sighs. He drops all the way to the floor next to Jim, and with careful hands, Bones lifts his head so that it can rest in his lap. They're alone, and it's Bones and it’s been three fucking days without any respite. So he cuts himself a break and lets himself curl his hand around Bones' calf and press his face into his thigh.
"Damnit, Jim," Bones repeats, sad and soft this time, which is even worse. But he turns Jim's face up towards him and begins to rub his forehead and temples with strong, gentle fingers. It makes Jim want to cry, which he's sure is just because everything else on his head hurts so damn bad and not because he can look up at Bones worried face and it's the most beautiful thing he's seen in fucking ever. He resists, barely, so he won't be totally humiliated when the med team arrives to take him to sick bay.
"If anything lasts more twenty-four hours, you come to me. Last thing I need is for you to die of some strange alien disease and leave this ship without a captain." It's Bones for scare me like this again and I'll skin you alive but right now, Jim can't even smile.
"Didn't wanna bug you," he manages, and it’s a fucking feat.
"You live to annoy me. Why make an exception for this? McCoy to sick bay. I need medical transport, captain's chambers."
He feels himself being lifted and then someone, probably Bones, presses a hypospray to his neck, and his world goes blessedly dark.
When he wakes again, he's alone in the sick bay with Bones. He's holding a data pad in one hand, his foot tapping with nervous energy, while his other hand continues that amazing, soft stroking thing on his forehead that he'd done back in Jim's quarters.
"Bones?"
"Welcome back to the living, Sleeping Beauty," Bones growls, putting his data pad down. His jaw is clenched fairly hard but there's a note of relief in his eyes. Unfortunately, he stops the head thing, too, which is a damn shame, but Jim's head doesn't feel like it's exploding, so he figures he can live without it now.
"What?"
"You caught a pretty severe bug when we were planetside last. As far as I can tell it was in something you ate and it had a pretty long incubation period-long enough that we didn’t catch it when you first got back. We were able to treat it before it did any lasting harm to your brain, but you’ve been unconscious for the last four days.” The information is delivered brusquely, but Bones’ eyes are haunted in a way that makes Jim feel deeply uncomfortable.
"It was just a headache. I must've ate some bad seafood at that trading post, I guess." He gives Bones a sheepish grin, trying to play it off so he could get away from the look in Bones eyes. "Oops."
"No. Not oops. It was a microscopic parasite that could've turned you into a damn vegetable, if it didn’t just destroy all your involuntary life functions first. It's a good thing you called me when you did, Jim. It was attacking your nervous system. That's what was causing the pain. It's damn miracle you didn't suffer any permanent damage. You could've been-" Bones breaks off and takes a deep breath. "You’ve got to come see me if you have a problem that lasts twenty-four hours and one minute, do you understand me? Wake me up if you have to. Don't-" Another deep breath, hitching this time. "Don't you do this to me again."
"Bones," Jim says, sitting up way too fast.
The room spins and he reaches out for something solid, and his hand lands on Bones' shoulder. Bones' hands catch his other his arm and steady him, and they got close pretty fast. How did that happen?
"You can't do this to yourself," Bones hisses at him, his fingers digging in hard enough to hurt. "You can't scare me like that. You could've woken up a drooling idiot. You could’ve never woken up at all. And I-I couldn't-" he takes another of those slow inhalations and then shakes his head-against what Jim's not sure.
He doesn't get a chance to ask because suddenly Bones is kissing him, hard enough that he would fall backwards against the force of it if Bones didn't still have a nearly painful grip on his arms. The hand on Bones' shoulder slides to his neck and pulls him closer because God, Bones is kissing him like-
Like he could've died. Like it could've all been over and he'd never have known about what was wrong or what he was missing.
"Stop it," Bones breathes against his mouth. "Stop being so goddamn careless with yourself, Jim. You’re our captain, damnit. People need you."
And Jim's throat catches because it's not people. It's Bones. It's been Bones since the moment he sat down beside Jim in that shuttle and maybe his foolproof plan was a fucking awful idea and he’d scared the bejesus out of the one person on board who cared the most out of him.
"I know," Jim soothes.
"Do you?" Bones demands, shaking him. "Do you know?"
He hasn’t been conscious long enough to handle that question. It’s loaded with nearly four years of history and friendship and Jesus, if he answers it wrong, he could lose the best friend he’s ever had. He strokes the side of Bones’ strong neck with the pad of his thumb to give himself a few seconds to think and decides that yeah, he does know.
“I think I figured it out. I don’t know if you heard, but I’m pretty quick.”
“Stubborn, cocky son of a bitch,” Bones murmurs into his mouth as he pushes him back onto the bed.
It’s desperation, pure and quick burning, that leads Bones to be so impulsive that he’ll sprawl on top of him in the middle of the sickbay where anyone could just walk in looking for their doctor. It’s attractive as hell but deeply disturbing on a bunch of levels Jim’s not ready to look at. He’s still too worn out to do more than go with it. There’s nothing to do really but see what happens because Bones is kissing the breath out of him and has managed to line their bodies up so that they're rocking together through their clothes, steady and hard.
“Do it again, and I’ll kill you myself, Jim.” The words are punctuated with sucking kisses down the column of Jim’s neck and then back up towards his ear. He sucks the lobe into his mouth and grinds down hard, making Jim gasp and his head fall back.
He’s close, so close. “Whatever you say, Doc,” Jim stutters against a sharp nip to his jaw and another of those grinding thrusts.
Then Bones’ hand is on him, stroking him hard and fast, moving easily inside the loose sickbay-issue pajama pants. Jim fumbles to find Bones’ mouth and wraps both arms around his neck because he wants to taste Bones when he comes-the stereo, multi-dimensional experience that he can have because he’s still here. That tiny fucker didn’t destroy his ability to feel this and fuck, he’s grateful and he really is sorry and he’s coming, hard and wet into Bones’ hand.
He misses Bones’ orgasm, which sucks, but he feels good on top of him-heavy and solid and caring about more than whether he lives or dies.
“You’re on bed rest for the next three days, and medical leave for the next five,” Bones says before he ever lifts his head from where he’s buried it on Jim’s shoulder.
“You’ll have to monitor me,” Jim says with a smile, his arms finally dropping from around Bones’ neck to rest on his back. “Make sure I actually follow protocol this time. I’m shit at that, so you’ll probably need to spend a lot of time in my quarters, just to make sure.”
Bones finally meets his eyes at that. There’s surprise, relief, and enough familiar annoyance in them to be a comfort. “I’ll take you back now.”
“Only if you’re planning to stay awhile.”
“I’ll stay,” Bones sighs. “Lord only knows what you’ll get yourself into if I leave you unattended.”
“Nothing good.”
“No. You never do learn.”
“Some things,” Jim says, running his hand up Bones’ back and into his dark hair. “I learn some things.”
“And look at that, miracles do happen,” Bones mutters.
He presses his lips to Jim’s again. The kiss is gentler and friendlier than any of the previous ones but it’s over quickly because Bones’ new priority is cleaning them both up so he can get Jim back to his own bed.
Jim refuses a wheelchair, so Bones holds him around the waist and half drags-half carries him with Jim’s arm draped over his shoulder like Bones did when he snuck him on board the Enterprise the first time. Jim is glad that this time, when Bones puts him down, he joins on the bed. They both fit easily, one of the perks of the rank, without needing to press tight together. Even so, under the blankets Jim’s foot rests lightly against the side of Bones’ leg and he drops into a real sleep without pain for the first time in a week to the sound of his best friend breathing.
(end)
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 2120
Disclaimer: They dont belong to me.The were envisioned many decades before my birth so I'm just happy to play with them.
Beta: Thanks to the lovely and talented guest_age
Summary: Written for a prompt on the st_xi_kink for One day, out of the blue, a headache starts creeping in on Kirk. At first he ignores it, but it starts to interfere with his work. Pills don't help, sleep doesn't help, and it only gets worse. Eventually, someone offers more personal care. How it goes from there is up in the air. Mindmeld cure? Scalp massage? Sex to release endorphins? One day it just goes away but hey he's got someone waiting on him all the time? Something more serious and angsty? Something completely different?. The fic is also deeply inspired by another prompt at st_xi_kink of McCoy makes the first move. bonus points for goddamnit-Jim-stop-nearly-getting yourself killed >:(. Originally posted here.
He’s on duty when sudden pain slams into him like a fist. It’s a headache like nothing he’s ever had before, throbbing behind his eyes, at the base of his skull, at his temples, and across his forehead. It's blinding and it is getting in the way of his work.
So Jim ignores it on the first day. It's just an ache, he tells himself, and totally manageable. After all, if he can just get through his shift on the bridge, he can retreat to his quarters, dim the lights, and sleep it off.
It's a good plan. It's foolproof in fact. But by the time Spock finally comes to relieve him, the steady pain is so bad that while he manages to walk calmly out of the bridge, he takes the rest of the trip at a run. It makes the pain worse, but it gets him to the comfort and darkness of his room in half the time.
He manages to make a wet compress for himself before he falls onto the bed, but that's about all he can manage. At least horizontal, the pain is steady enough that he can adjust and sleep.
The problem with his foolproof plan is that the fucking headache is still there when he wakes up. It’s not as bad as it was after the running, but it's still pretty fucking bad. He pops two standard issue pain pills and pockets the rest of the bottle. And even though Jim rinses his face twice before he heads out for work, he still looks like he's just come off a week-long bender.
Everyone on the bridge seems concerned. Spock gives him several perfectly logical reasons to go see Bones-which he ignores-and even Uhura asks if he's all right. He waves her off and slumps down in the captain's chair, chewing pain pills as often as he can get away with without one of his officers calling sick bay on him and praying for it to let up, even just a little.
On day three, he can't get up. He tries. Really he does. But he throws up from the vertigo and pain and ends up in a disgusting mess on the floor until he can crawl across the room and reach his comm.
"Bones? Can you hear me?"
"I'm busy, Jim."
"Bones, fuck," he groans and plants his forehead on the carpet, wishing he were back in the bathroom where there were cool, smooth surfaces everywhere. "I need you to come get me. I'm in my bunk."
"Are you all right?"
"Come get me," Jim mumbles, flipping it closed and closing his eyes. When he opens them again, Bones is shaking him with one hand and scanning him with the other. "Stop - I'm'a throw up on you," he groans and Bones obeys.
"How long has this been going on, Jim?"
He holds up three fingers.
"Three hours?"
"Days."
"Damnit, Jim," he snaps.
Honest to god, he can't deal with Bones being angry with him right now. His brain is screaming and he can't take it. An involuntary noise escapes from the back in his throat, making him feel pathetic and young, and Bones sighs. He drops all the way to the floor next to Jim, and with careful hands, Bones lifts his head so that it can rest in his lap. They're alone, and it's Bones and it’s been three fucking days without any respite. So he cuts himself a break and lets himself curl his hand around Bones' calf and press his face into his thigh.
"Damnit, Jim," Bones repeats, sad and soft this time, which is even worse. But he turns Jim's face up towards him and begins to rub his forehead and temples with strong, gentle fingers. It makes Jim want to cry, which he's sure is just because everything else on his head hurts so damn bad and not because he can look up at Bones worried face and it's the most beautiful thing he's seen in fucking ever. He resists, barely, so he won't be totally humiliated when the med team arrives to take him to sick bay.
"If anything lasts more twenty-four hours, you come to me. Last thing I need is for you to die of some strange alien disease and leave this ship without a captain." It's Bones for scare me like this again and I'll skin you alive but right now, Jim can't even smile.
"Didn't wanna bug you," he manages, and it’s a fucking feat.
"You live to annoy me. Why make an exception for this? McCoy to sick bay. I need medical transport, captain's chambers."
He feels himself being lifted and then someone, probably Bones, presses a hypospray to his neck, and his world goes blessedly dark.
When he wakes again, he's alone in the sick bay with Bones. He's holding a data pad in one hand, his foot tapping with nervous energy, while his other hand continues that amazing, soft stroking thing on his forehead that he'd done back in Jim's quarters.
"Bones?"
"Welcome back to the living, Sleeping Beauty," Bones growls, putting his data pad down. His jaw is clenched fairly hard but there's a note of relief in his eyes. Unfortunately, he stops the head thing, too, which is a damn shame, but Jim's head doesn't feel like it's exploding, so he figures he can live without it now.
"What?"
"You caught a pretty severe bug when we were planetside last. As far as I can tell it was in something you ate and it had a pretty long incubation period-long enough that we didn’t catch it when you first got back. We were able to treat it before it did any lasting harm to your brain, but you’ve been unconscious for the last four days.” The information is delivered brusquely, but Bones’ eyes are haunted in a way that makes Jim feel deeply uncomfortable.
"It was just a headache. I must've ate some bad seafood at that trading post, I guess." He gives Bones a sheepish grin, trying to play it off so he could get away from the look in Bones eyes. "Oops."
"No. Not oops. It was a microscopic parasite that could've turned you into a damn vegetable, if it didn’t just destroy all your involuntary life functions first. It's a good thing you called me when you did, Jim. It was attacking your nervous system. That's what was causing the pain. It's damn miracle you didn't suffer any permanent damage. You could've been-" Bones breaks off and takes a deep breath. "You’ve got to come see me if you have a problem that lasts twenty-four hours and one minute, do you understand me? Wake me up if you have to. Don't-" Another deep breath, hitching this time. "Don't you do this to me again."
"Bones," Jim says, sitting up way too fast.
The room spins and he reaches out for something solid, and his hand lands on Bones' shoulder. Bones' hands catch his other his arm and steady him, and they got close pretty fast. How did that happen?
"You can't do this to yourself," Bones hisses at him, his fingers digging in hard enough to hurt. "You can't scare me like that. You could've woken up a drooling idiot. You could’ve never woken up at all. And I-I couldn't-" he takes another of those slow inhalations and then shakes his head-against what Jim's not sure.
He doesn't get a chance to ask because suddenly Bones is kissing him, hard enough that he would fall backwards against the force of it if Bones didn't still have a nearly painful grip on his arms. The hand on Bones' shoulder slides to his neck and pulls him closer because God, Bones is kissing him like-
Like he could've died. Like it could've all been over and he'd never have known about what was wrong or what he was missing.
"Stop it," Bones breathes against his mouth. "Stop being so goddamn careless with yourself, Jim. You’re our captain, damnit. People need you."
And Jim's throat catches because it's not people. It's Bones. It's been Bones since the moment he sat down beside Jim in that shuttle and maybe his foolproof plan was a fucking awful idea and he’d scared the bejesus out of the one person on board who cared the most out of him.
"I know," Jim soothes.
"Do you?" Bones demands, shaking him. "Do you know?"
He hasn’t been conscious long enough to handle that question. It’s loaded with nearly four years of history and friendship and Jesus, if he answers it wrong, he could lose the best friend he’s ever had. He strokes the side of Bones’ strong neck with the pad of his thumb to give himself a few seconds to think and decides that yeah, he does know.
“I think I figured it out. I don’t know if you heard, but I’m pretty quick.”
“Stubborn, cocky son of a bitch,” Bones murmurs into his mouth as he pushes him back onto the bed.
It’s desperation, pure and quick burning, that leads Bones to be so impulsive that he’ll sprawl on top of him in the middle of the sickbay where anyone could just walk in looking for their doctor. It’s attractive as hell but deeply disturbing on a bunch of levels Jim’s not ready to look at. He’s still too worn out to do more than go with it. There’s nothing to do really but see what happens because Bones is kissing the breath out of him and has managed to line their bodies up so that they're rocking together through their clothes, steady and hard.
“Do it again, and I’ll kill you myself, Jim.” The words are punctuated with sucking kisses down the column of Jim’s neck and then back up towards his ear. He sucks the lobe into his mouth and grinds down hard, making Jim gasp and his head fall back.
He’s close, so close. “Whatever you say, Doc,” Jim stutters against a sharp nip to his jaw and another of those grinding thrusts.
Then Bones’ hand is on him, stroking him hard and fast, moving easily inside the loose sickbay-issue pajama pants. Jim fumbles to find Bones’ mouth and wraps both arms around his neck because he wants to taste Bones when he comes-the stereo, multi-dimensional experience that he can have because he’s still here. That tiny fucker didn’t destroy his ability to feel this and fuck, he’s grateful and he really is sorry and he’s coming, hard and wet into Bones’ hand.
He misses Bones’ orgasm, which sucks, but he feels good on top of him-heavy and solid and caring about more than whether he lives or dies.
“You’re on bed rest for the next three days, and medical leave for the next five,” Bones says before he ever lifts his head from where he’s buried it on Jim’s shoulder.
“You’ll have to monitor me,” Jim says with a smile, his arms finally dropping from around Bones’ neck to rest on his back. “Make sure I actually follow protocol this time. I’m shit at that, so you’ll probably need to spend a lot of time in my quarters, just to make sure.”
Bones finally meets his eyes at that. There’s surprise, relief, and enough familiar annoyance in them to be a comfort. “I’ll take you back now.”
“Only if you’re planning to stay awhile.”
“I’ll stay,” Bones sighs. “Lord only knows what you’ll get yourself into if I leave you unattended.”
“Nothing good.”
“No. You never do learn.”
“Some things,” Jim says, running his hand up Bones’ back and into his dark hair. “I learn some things.”
“And look at that, miracles do happen,” Bones mutters.
He presses his lips to Jim’s again. The kiss is gentler and friendlier than any of the previous ones but it’s over quickly because Bones’ new priority is cleaning them both up so he can get Jim back to his own bed.
Jim refuses a wheelchair, so Bones holds him around the waist and half drags-half carries him with Jim’s arm draped over his shoulder like Bones did when he snuck him on board the Enterprise the first time. Jim is glad that this time, when Bones puts him down, he joins on the bed. They both fit easily, one of the perks of the rank, without needing to press tight together. Even so, under the blankets Jim’s foot rests lightly against the side of Bones’ leg and he drops into a real sleep without pain for the first time in a week to the sound of his best friend breathing.
(end)