Fic: The One With the Romulan Ale 1/1 (Kirk/McCoy, Star Trek, NC-17)
Title: The One With the Romulan Ale
Series: 1st in the Fools Rush In series
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: NC-17
Word count: roughly 6,200 words
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 and ariadne83
Summary: What better way to celebrate the end of your first year at the Starfleet Academy than with a trip to Las Vegas? Lose some money, get a little drunk, get a little impulsive. Too bad what happens there doesnt always stay there. Written for comically_so's awesome prompt over at affectingly's McCoy-A-Thon.
Things are easy and hard at the same time. That’s the way it works for them. Being around Jim is the most natural thing on every planet, but it’s also so fucking difficult that sometimes Leonard McCoy wonders if it’s even worth it.
But then Jim laughs and throws his arm around his neck and calls him Bones and damnit, there’s nothing really he can do, is there, but go with him.
And that’s the choice-to go with him or not. Take the ride or leave the park, but bottom line is, you have to choose. And when McCoy decides, really and truly decides that he can try to hang on and enjoy it, that's when things shift.
So for the last year, he’s been taking the ride with Jim and he’s been better for it. He’s had more fun than he has since before he started college, though he’d never admit it to Jim because that would make him right and therefore insufferable.
Point is, he’s got a best friend for the first time since he was about six years old. Hell, Jim is someone he can trust and talk to like nobody he’s ever known in his life, not even his wife back when things were good. It makes the frustration and the headache and the extra work Jim creates more than worth it.
Right now though, he doesn’t want to deal with Jim. He just wants to sleep. He’s been up to his elbows in blood and old death and real sickness for countless hours trying to pass his first year final practicum and exams and he’s tired.
“No,” is the first word out of mouth when he sees Jim waiting for him in a hallway of the Academy hospital. “Jim, whatever it is, no. Unless it’s a shower and eighteen hours of sleeping, no.”
“You can sleep on the shuttle.”
“Shuttle? What shuttle? I’m not getting on a shuttle, Jim. I’m going to sleep. Right here, standing up, if you don’t get out of my way.”
“Look,” Jim says, slinging an arm around McCoy’s shoulders in a patented move that never seems to fail. “I packed you a bag, I got you a ticket, but we gotta be at the shuttle in twenty minutes. You’ll thank me.”
“When, Jim? When have I ever thanked you?”
“This time you will. We’re going to Vegas, Bones. Las fucking Vegas. Just trust me and keep your eyes shut. I’ll make sure the fight attendants don’t pull you out of the bathroom.”
He turns his head to stare at Jim. “You swear?”
“On my mother’s life. So just quit bitching and pick up your bag already,” Jim says, giving the bag at his feet a kick. “We’ve only got like…fifteen minutes now.”
Which is how he ends up locked in the bathroom of a small cramped shuttle flying east to Sin City with his head between his knees. Jim bangs on the door from the outside in three sharp hits.
“I hate you,” he groans.
“Just checking to make sure you’re alive in there.”
“You keep bangin’ on the door and you won’t be.”
“I’ll save you my peanuts.”
“Son of a bitch,” McCoy mutters but when they land, he takes the peanuts anyway.
Jim apparently has a step-cousin who knows a guy who got them a room for free the weekend. The place looks like it hasn’t had a fresh coat of paint since the 90s and there’s only one bed, which he plans to fall onto, face first, and sleep through whatever disaster Jim’s got planned. But it's only a couple blocks off the Strip. So instead of finding the blissful oblivion only a cheap flop could provide, Jim bullies him into his civies and tugs him onto the main drag.
Jim’s never been and he’s like a kid in a toy store with a generous grandparent. He wants to do everything. He wants to see everything. He wants to play all the games and fuck all the pretty hookers who are selling their wares in special corners of all the big casinos-for free, naturally.
He’s used to babysitting Jim. Keeping him from exchanging blows with the surly Andorian dealer running the poker table and losing their food money trying to beat the classic roulette table is fairly standard. But the fight with the Cardassian pimp that gets Jim a black eye and what McCoy is fairly sure is two, possibly three broken ribs, is the last straw and Jim’s position as event planner is revoked for the remainder of the trip.
“Bones, come on-“
“Do you want me to get professional on you? Because so help me Jim, if you don’t cooperate I’ll drag your kicked ass back to the hotel, knock you out the boring way and go get some sleep.” Finally, he doesn’t add but it reads in his voice. “Won’t weigh my conscience down one bit.”
Jim glares at him for a few minutes before he caves. It’s a small victory that he celebrates by hailing a taxi and taking Jim to a bar he remembers from his bachelor days as having Romulan ale, if you’ve got the credits and you know how to ask.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Jim murmurs, tilting his glass from side to side, studying the blue liquid like it’s a unicorn that’s going to vanish back into his imagination if he blinks. “I stole some of Frank’s cheap bad-replicator shit once. It tasted like crap and it was so wrong it was almost green but damn. I can’t believe you found this.”
He watches as Jim takes a small sip and sighs in happily. He processes the unique buzz before carefully setting the drink back on the bar and looking back over at him in surprise.
“Your faith in me, Jim, it’s really heartwarming.”
“This is illegal, Bones.” Jim laughs, sliding close and catching him around the neck. It brings their heads together and he can feel Jim’s hot breath on his cheek. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“You’d be surprised at what I’ve got in me.”
“Okay then,” Jim agrees, reaching for his drink. “To surprises.”
McCoy chuckles and clinks his glass against Jim’s. “To surprises.”
They down their drinks hard and fast, slamming their empty glasses down on the bar. Jim is coughing and laughing and leaning against him for support and hell, it’s been a long time since he had Romulan ale. It catches him a little off guard too and he braces a hand on Jim’s chest, still careful to avoid the fight damage.
They’re still holding each other up like that as Jim hails the bartender, a pretty female with bright pink skin. “Two more?” he says holding up two fingers on the hand not currently wrapped around McCoy’s shoulders. “And make them doubles.”
She returns a few minutes later with four glasses of illicit blue and smiles at them as Jim over tips. They clink their glasses together again, this time to surviving their first year at the Academy, and that’s the last clearheaded decision McCoy makes on that trip.
~*~*~
Somehow, they end up at a craps table in Caesar’s Palace, the historical landmark status just upping its popularity. Jim has got this thing he can do with his wrists, where every throw is perfect. Security comes over in the form of several large alien bruisers who check the dice and ban Jim from playing. At least they don’t kick them out.
Jim just laughs and takes the time to sneak a sip from the bottle of blue booze McCoy has stowed in his otherwise empty medical bag. Then he pushes the credits drunkenly into McCoy's hands and says “Throw for me.”
“The odds are-“ he stops because he can’t remember what the odds are anymore. He’s too damn drunk. “They’re bad, Jim. It’s just throwin’ money away. We could get more ale,” he says in a whisper that is just way to loud to actually be a whisper.
“Nah.” Jim laughs, pulling the bag off his shoulder and grabbing him around the waist to drag him back to the craps table. “I’ll be your good luck charm. By the time we’re time we’re done, we can buy a million bottles of ale.”
“We cannot win that much. No one ever wins that much. Especially not us.”
“Okay, a thousand. But more. Lots more. Whatever. Hey dealer,” Jim calls, moving his arm so that he can pull their heads together, “We wanna play. Don’t we, Bones?”
It’s Vegas, McCoy thinks through the fog. Jim won enough before he got caught to make a decent start, so what the hell? He lays the credits down on the table and takes the dice from the dealer as he smiles at them in amusement.
“Go, Bones, go for seven.”
“Seven, sir?” the dealer asks.
“What the hell? Seven.”
McCoy raises his fist to hurl the dice, but Jim catches his hand. He pries his fingers open and kisses the dice. His chin brushes against his skin as he does it and he pulls back, grinning sideways at him.
“For luck,” Jim declares before closing his hand back around the dice.
“Right. Luck. Seven it is.”
The dice hit the table, bounce twice and he’ll be damned if that’s not a seven staring up at him. There’s a five and a two sitting on the green fabric.
“And we have a winner.” The credit chips pile up in front of him and he’s left staring at the fact that he’s actually won for the first time in his life as Jim crows at the victory. The dealer presses the dice back into his hands. “Your roll again, sir.”
“Gimme that,” Bones growls, grabbing the bottle out of the bag around Jim’s neck and taking a few good, long, burning gulps that make the world swim and everything seem less real than it already is. Then he holds out his hand, dice up, in front of Jim’s face. “What’ll it be this time?”
“Five,” Jim declares. The kiss is half off the dice this time, landing on synthesized plastic and the crease of his hand. “Make me proud.”
It’s like fucking magic, is what it is, McCoy decides as the five appears on the table. Then it’s an eleven, two hard eights, an impossible twelve, a six and yet another of those ridiculous elevens. Suddenly, most of the bottle of ale is gone and McCoy is on a streak that’s drawn a crowd all the way around the table, three people deep.
“Okay, okay.” Jim laughs. He’s been laughing pretty steadily since the hard eights and he’s so close that McCoy’s whole respiratory system has had to adjust for the proximity. “You roll eleven and we buy everybody a drink.”
Jim doesn’t waste time aiming for the dice anymore, planting his lips briefly on McCoy's knuckles before he rolls the dice. A cheer explodes around the table as it turns up another eleven.
“Who’s this we? Ain’t your money, cowboy,” McCoy mumbles to himself. Still, he’s smiling as he finishes off the last of the ale and drops the bottle on the floor. He shoves extra chips inside the now empty bag as Jim holds it open before pushing the next bid in. “What’s next, Nostradamus? I make this one and I’ll turn into a Klingon?”
Jim holds his hand in his, studying it like the answer is in the back of his knuckles. “You roll a hard six and we get the nicest room in this place and get the hell out of cousin Jake’s.”
“Please, God, let it be a six.” McCoy chuckles as Jim pecks his fingers and he lets it fly. He cheers louder than anyone else when they land threes up.
Jim hugs him and McCoy hugs back tightly because they don’t have to go back to that room where the roaches seem to be more comfortable than they could be. They’re going to sleep on luxurious beds with clean sheets and beautiful art on the walls with enough left over credits to eat gourmet room service until they head back to the Presidio.
“Get me a twelve,” Jim says into his ear, not letting go all the way and pulling his dice hand up to his mouth again, “And I’ll suck your brilliant brains out through your dick.”
McCoy comes to a dead halt and stares blearily into laughing blue eyes. “Jim, are you fucking kidding me?”
Jim’s answer is to pull his thumb out of his fist and suck it into his mouth. A hum goes up from the crowd around at the display but Jim’s eyes don’t leave his as his tongue swirls around the digit.
He’s so hard he could hammer nails and he figures this, this thing right here where Jim is fellating his fucking hand, must be why Romulan ale is illegal in most parts of the galaxy. But he nods in agreement and their dealer places the bet on twelve. Jim lets go of his thumb with a soft wet pop and he lets the dice drop as passively as he can, as if that will make winning this any less because of him.
When the second six lands, McCoy doesn’t hear the crowd cheer. The white noise rushing in his ears is too damn loud and Jim’s smile is too wet and wide.
“Do it again and you can fuck me.”
“Jim-” McCoy says as the dealer places the dice back in his numb hand.
Jim closes his fist for him. “Don’t chicken out on me, Bones,” he slurs before prying McCoy’s fingers open over table.
Twin sixes bounce into being and suddenly, it’s not real. It’s just a fucking game because they’re drunker than he’s ever been in his whole miserable life and he’s tired of Jim running it.
“What now, Princess?” he taunts, fighting against the hysteria at the thought of what Jim’s kisses are going to taste like, what his ass is going to feel like spasming around his cock. He holds the dice up between his thumb and forefinger. “Whatcha got left to give me if I win this?”
But Jim just returns that slow hot smile and tilts his chin up. He staggers backwards just a little from the ale, catching his balance by grabbing McCoy by the waist. He reaches out on instinct to stop Jim from falling and that pulls them together so close that their faces are practically touching. They can feel each other breathing and neither of them can stop themselves from laughing.
But when Jim collects himself enough to speak, it’s in a tone that’s dead serious. “Trip twelves and we get hitched. Tonight.”
The grin drops off his face and the noise of the crowd around them starts to rise.
“Hey! All y’all shut the fuck up!” McCoy shouts before turning back to face Jim. “How fucking drunk are we?”
“Very? I dunno but c’mon Bones. A streak like this? It never happens to guys like you.”
“Thanks for that.”
“It’s fate and she’s the type of jealous bitch that never lets this happen. It’s like…it’s like a sign,” he says with more drunken enthusiasm than McCoy can handle. “So, you roll this twelve, and fuck it, fate’s spoken and we take all these shiny credits and do what she says.”
The fact that he’s considering this is a testament to how drunk he is. The way he’s still got Jim pressed tight against him, making his blood hot despite how stupid this all is, just acts as further evidence that he’s not in any shape to be making a life-altering decision that he regretted making sober the first time around.
But he brings his hand between them so that Jim can work his magic on the dice. It’s a gentle kiss this time, dry and soft.
McCoy can’t bring himself to look as he lets them fall onto the table.
~*~*~*~
McCoy wakes up on someone’s chest, but only for a second because he’s being pushed off hard and there’s the sound of running. He hears a loud slam followed by the sound of pained retching through the door and fuck, his head hurts.
He keeps his face buried the soft darkness of his pillow - tuning out noise and light to fight the hangover he knows a good glass of water would help. He’s been a hard drinker since before he was legal and he knows the right and the wrong way to deal with a hangover.
Now though? He doesn’t care. Nothing-not where he is or who he’s with or what’s going on around him-is as important as keeping his eyes shut and his body still.
He groans against the bouncing of the bed as whoever it was emerges from the bathroom and curls up next to him. Short hair brushes his arm and a nose pushes into his side.
“G’off,” he groans but doesn’t move to push them away. His bedmate answers with a suitably pitiful moan before slinging an arm over his chest.
It’s too hot like that. The leftover alcohol is making the arm feel like a lead weight suffocating him. But he’s too tired to push it away and he falls asleep instead.
He has no idea how much time has passed when the sunlight streaming in on him, pushing through his eyelids, forces him awake. Jim’s face is buried in the crook of his neck and his right leg is slung over his.
Under the blankets, McCoy can feel miles of bare skin pressed against his and he lifts his head up as far as he can without the spikes slamming through his skull and checks under the covers just to be sure.
The sheet, which is way nicer than it should be, sticks to his stomach and yeah, that’s really great. Just delightful and fucking brilliant on his part. No. Their part. Because he is very much not alone in this now-disgusting, come-sticky bed.
“Jim, get up.”
“Fuck off, Frank. Five more minutes,” Jim mumbles. Then he turns his face further into McCoy’s neck and wraps his arm tight around his chest like a replacement for a stuffed animal.
“Jim, get off me.” He wants a shower more than anything but with Jim holding him down like this, he can’t get out of the bed.
“Five more minutes, Frank, fuck. You’re not my father.” He snuggles closer. “Can’t tell me what to do.”
“Jim,” he says, his voice is sharp and so is the shake he gives Jim. “Get up and get off of me.”
“Bones?”
“Yeah.”
Jim peers around the room blinking bleary eyes. McCoy follows his gaze and is surprised to find that they’re in a luxury suite and the buzz and traffic of the Las Vegas strip is clear stories down out the floor to ceiling window.
“What the- Where are we?” He blinks again and lifts the covers. “We’re naked.”
“You don’t miss a trick do you?”
“Bones, I-We-“ He checks under the blankets again. “Fuck.”
“Looks like.”
Jim sits up and stares down at him for a long time, like the answer is there in his face if only Jim can find it, which apparently he does.
“Oh.” And then a longer “Ohh.” Then he’s looking at his hands like they’re foreign alien life forms that have latched on and taken over.
“Yeah, Jim, I gotta shower so-“
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. You do that.”
“Thanks ever so,” he mutters before he rolls out of bed.
He stumbles blindly across the room to the bathroom. There’s a little bit of vomit on the toilet seat that he ignores as he climbs in the shower and orders the computer to turn the heat up high.
Fifteen minutes later, he feels like a human being again. One with a serious headache, but no other lasting damage. He’s thinking with a clear head again and the exhaustion is starting to ebb.
He’s washing his hair for the second time-because he feels that disgusting, still-when he feels it. It brushes his face as he drags his hands down over his forehead and brings him to a complete stop.
He opens his eyes under the spray and stares at his hand. There’s a thick, silver ring on his hand that he knows shouldn’t be there-hasn’t been there in the 20 months since the papers finally got signed.
“Jesus H. Christ on a motorcycle.”
He stands there under the unending stream of hot water trying to piece together the fragments of the weekend. He remembers Romulan ale. There was craps and a crowd and-
There’s a tap on the shower door, and it’s his only warning. Jim opens it and steps inside like they’re in the public showers at the gym at the Academy.
“Jim, listen, I think-“
Jim doesn’t give him time to think. He slides a hand around the back of McCoy’s neck and pulls him down into a kiss that’s wet from the inside out. It sucks the breath out of his lungs and sends him stumbling into a wet wall that he’s pretty sure is real marble.
“I think I owe you a blow job,” Jim mumbles against the side of his throat. “I paid up on everything else but I can’t remember if I blew you or not.” He licks a stripe across McCoy’s collar bone. “Better safe than sorry.”
Jim drops to his knees so fast that it’s a wonder he doesn’t hurt himself. His hands are firm on McCoy's thighs and then his mouth his hot and tight and Jesus, that thing he had done with his tongue to his thumb-McCoy flashes back to that because he’s doing it again now, only this is so much better in so many ways.
“Jim, don’t-“
Jim pulls off just long enough to mumble something that sounds suspiciously like, “Conjugal rights,” before covering him with his mouth again. Jim looks up at him with bright blue eyes framed by wet lashes and follows through on the promise to suck his brains out.
McCoy is surprised at how fast he comes. It makes his headache worse and his knees too weak to hold him up, so he sinks to the floor of the shower with Jim. He manages to collect himself enough to ask the computer to turn off the water but not much else.
“Hello, Mr. Kirk,” Jim says with a laugh, reaching out to touch a bite mark on McCoy’s chest that he hadn’t really noticed before.
He can feel the horror creeping up on him like a bad cold. He flinches away from Jim’s touch and shakes his head. “Jim, no.”
“Yeah. You probably shouldn’t take my name. It’s pretty 20th century to have to change that just because of a contract and new jewelry.” Jim gives him a teasing look. “You’re a more progressive guy than that.”
“Jesus, Jim. We got married. How fucking stupid are we?”
“I don’t know. It’s Vegas. You get impulsive. I don’t know that it’s stupid. I think we’re both too smart to be stupid.”
“We’re gonna have to get a divorce.” McCoy groans, rubbing his aching head. “I’m going to be twice divorced in two years. I’m going to be that guy-ex for each sex-like on some goddamn soap.”
“We are?” Jim looks at him, a little stunned. “Why? Did I or did I not just give you the best damn head you ever had?”
“I don’t know if I’d say the best. Not bad, though.”
“Oh, fuck you. Your eyes rolled back in your head.”
“Okay, it was pretty good. But best?”
Jim shrugs. “I know it was in the top five. But I’m still hung over. I’m better sober. Or drunker. In between’s a mess. But the point is, this,” he waves a hand between them, “this is good. So why do we need to get a divorce?”
“Because, Jim, this-this isn’t us. This isn’t who we are.”
“Why not? I still feel like me. I’m just me with you which is, ya know, who I always am.”
McCoy stares at Jim for the longest time. He keeps staring until Jim gets bored with it and climbs to his feet.
“I’m freezing. If we’re gonna have this talk naked we should have it in bed.”
“The bed’s disgusting.” Because we fucked in it all night, he doesn’t say. Because they had nasty, sweaty, disgusting, drunken sex that McCoy can barely remember.
What he does remember involves Jim on top of him, riding him and under him, squirming and panting, rolling his hips like a mix between a dancer and a whore. There are blurry memories of Jim leaning over him, biting what he could reach and following them up with sloppy kisses.
Jim just rolls his eyes at him. “I contacted housekeeping. A maidbot changed the sheets while you were in the shower. So get up. Your balls are like raisins.”
He can’t argue with that logic. He does stop and put on a pair of scrub pants before getting back in bed but that’s mostly because Jim doesn’t. And there has to be something between them since Jim refuses to.
“Computer, adjust temperature to 25 degrees,” Jim says, sitting cross-legged with only a sheet over him. There’s a soft affirmative and the room warms around them so that he doesn’t need to wear anything more. Then he pats the mattress mockingly. “You need a printed invitation, Bones? Cause it's over on the table.”
He gives a short almost reflexive glance at the table near the door of the ridiculously large room. There’s a paper sitting on top of it that has to be the hard copy of their marriage license. It makes his stomach turn over and his head spin, so he surrenders and sinks to the bed.
It is amazing to slide between clean sheets with a clean body, though. It’s what he’s been waiting for since he got out of his final-he checks the digital date display on the clock imbedded on the top surface of the night stand-three days ago. Three days? Jesus.
He goes to lie down but thinks better of it. Instead he leans against the headboard with a pillow propped behind his back. He doesn’t want to be any more vulnerable than he has to be for this.
Jim, for his part, is grinning at him. Mostly it’s in his eyes but his lips are curled just a little bit at the edges in an irritating way that makes him want to slap it off. Or kiss it away. He’s not sure.
“Okay, so why do we have to get divorced?”
“I already told you why.”
“Yeah, your reason was shit. I need a real reason.”
McCoy takes a deep breath. The reasons with his wife were obvious. There was the fighting-unending and cruel, ripping each other right down to the bone sometimes-the coldness between them, the anger boiling between them that never seemed go away, no matter what they did, the drinking that he couldn’t seem to stop whenever he thought of going home to her, the suffocating feeling of wrongness that crept up on both of them when they weren’t paying attention that broke them probably more than anything. And of course, there was the fact that he had realized that he just didn’t love her anymore and she didn’t love him, either.
“You’re twenty,” is the best he can do while he tries to organize his thoughts.
“Twenty-three,” Jim corrects. “And? We’re not Vulcans, Bones. Our lives’re short. Try again.”
“You have the attention span of a goldfish, Jim. You’re young and you’re twitchy and you’re going to get bored. And with my luck, we’ll be stuck on a five-year explorative mission when that happens. It’s like high school, Jim, only you have to live in the same space.”
“Goldfish have a three minute memory. It’s been a year and I’m not bored yet. I’d say I’m doing a hell of a lot better than a goldfish, and I’m not planning on becoming one.”
“Maybe not but I’m pretty sure you’re not planning on changing your fuck everything that walks and some things that fly and swim agenda either.”
Jim says nothing to that but he keeps staring, expectantly. As if his status as Academy transport-shuttle isn’t enough of a reason to not do this.
“Damnit Jim, you’re a slut and you know it.”
“So? We can work around it. It’s never bothered you before.”
“You’re-“ McCoy shakes his head. The headache is still there and this conversation is making it worse. “You’re something else. I’ve got no idea what, but it’s something, all right.”
“I’ve heard that. My stepdad used to say that all the time right before he,“ Jim pauses, catching himself, “Grounded me.”
The slip makes McCoy sigh. Because this is Jim, who rushes into things blindly, but always seems to spin them to his advantage. He’d give anything to get inside that head and see how it works but for now, all he can do is stare and try the old fashion way.
“You honestly think I could work around your whole- ” he waves hand at Jim’s bare chest.
“Slut thing?” Jim finishes with a small laugh. "Yeah, I do. I think you know me better than anyone else and you know that I am who I am. And I think you like me anyway.”
“You’re my best friend,” McCoy sighs again. “Best I’ve ever had, point of fact. That’s the whole damn point. Damnit, I’ve done this, Jim. I’ve done the marriage thing. It’s not a good fit for me and I don’t want to stop liking you.”
“I’m not going to stop liking you, Bones. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m not. This is how it works. Ya like each other, ya get married, and then it just-“
He stops and realizes he’s twisting his ring around and around on his finger. He used to do that all the time. It was a habit it took months to break and he’s slid back into it so easy it scares the bejesus out of him and brings him right back to the bottom line.
“I can’t fucking stand her, Jim. She’s back in Gulfport and we’re in Vegas and I still don’t feel like I’m far enough away. What the fuck am I supposed to do with myself if I start feeling like that about you-especially if it happens when we’re out in the black?”
“Hey.” Jim moves so that he’s sitting facing McCoy and so close that his knees are almost on the pillows. “That? Isn’t going to happen. Because I’d lay money that she wasn’t your best friend and that you weren’t hers. But you’re mine. And I don’t see that changing any time soon."
“You never see it changing,” he mutters, forcing him to stop twisting the band. “You just wake up and you want to chew your foot off like a bear in a trap to get out.”
“Yeah. That could happen. But you’re my favorite person in the universe, Bones. And I figure, that’s what marriage is. You pick your favorite person and you call dibs. Just because you made a shitty pick last time doesn’t mean you’re wrong this time.”
“Why are you pushing this?” McCoy asks because really, that’s what’s bothering him. He’s never seen Jim as the marrying kind in the first place, let alone be the one to press the issue.
“I don’t know,” Jim says with a shrug. “I guess it’s kinda comforting. You’re my person, I’m yours. Whatever shit comes our way, at least we’d have that, on file, no matter what. I like that. Don’t you?”
“Jim, marriage isn’t comforting in my experience.”
Jim just shrugs. “You fucked the dog the first time around. You learn from your mistakes and you move on. You won’t fuck up the same this time. I’m not her and you’re a better man that you were a year or two ago.”
“It’s not that simple,” McCoy says shaking his head. “You think everything is simple and doable but it’s just not. Dammit, you gotta think about things every once in awhile.”
“I am thinking.”
“Really? Cause it doesn’t look like it from where I’m sitting.”
“Look, I’m thinking. I’m thinking that contract makes us family. Real family, the kind Starfleet will recognize. It means that we’ve about quintupled the likelihood of getting posted together when we graduate. And I want that. If I go out there, I want you to come with me because you’re more my family than anyone’s been in my whole life.”
He gets a look in his eyes like McCoy's never seen, especially not directed at him. It’s intense and it makes him feel uncomfortable in his own skin, like there’s too much aimed at him.
“Bones, my parents loved each other like fucking crazy and if you listen to the log of the last ten minutes he was alive, you can hear how the only thing that matters is that you’ve got family and that they know. You know?”
That brings McCoy up short. “You’ve listened to the logs from the Kelvin?”
“Yeah.” Jim shrugs. Like it doesn’t matter that he’s heard his father die, that he’s probably played it obsessively over and over trying to find something of the man who was so noticeably absent. “I dug them up last semester.”
He rubs his forehead back against the headboard and sighs. “Jesus, Jim.”
“That was when I had so many Cardassian sunrises that I threw up on your floor. Remember?”
That had been bad. The worst he’s ever seen him before or since, actually. He’d been a disgusting mess who was on the verge of drunken tears and it was the first time in their friendship that McCoy hadn’t had the will to yell at him. Instead, he’d cleaned him up and let him share the bed.
“Yeah. I do.”
“Okay well now that we’re married, I can tell you that I found it in the archives and it fucked me up. It fucked me up for fucking weeks. And it’s okay. You can know that.”
“And it wasn’t before?”
Jim makes a face at him. “Yes. No. Not like it is now. It’s, I don’t know, Bones. It’s just different.” He shrugs again like he doesn’t care but his eyes give him away. He does care. He cares a lot. “I think it’s better.”
“You would.”
“Look, Bones, let’s try it okay? I can’t tell you why it changes things. It just does. Plus, from what I can remember, fucking you was great. I’d have to fuck you again to be positive, but I’m pretty sure it’s some of the best I’ve ever had.”
“Which is saying something,” McCoy mutters.
Jim jabs in him the thigh with his elbow. “And,” he snaps before softening. “If you still want to you can always divorce me later if you decide you don’t like me anymore. But I’m gonna be honest with you, Bones, I think it’s gonna have to be you because I don’t think I’ll ever hate you enough to voluntarily deal with more paperwork.”
“Jim.”
“Bones,” Jim shoots back and it occurs to him that no one else calls him that. It’s stuck but it’s not something any of the other cadets would ever call him.
He’s been called a few things in his time. He was Lenny as a kid, Len in high school, his mother called him Leo, and his ex-wife had referred to him as “you redneck country bastard” for the entire last year of their marriage. But he’s never Bones to anyone but Jim and damnit if it doesn’t feel more like him than anything he’s ever been called before.
“What am I gonna do with you?”
“I don’t know,” Jim says with a smug smile and the quirk of an eyebrow. “Keep me and find out.”
“Damnit.”
“So, is that yes?” Jim asks, again with the big blue eyes and hopeful smile. It’s deadly and he knows it. McCoy has seen him use it before, but it's never looked this sincere.
“Or something like that.”
“Good, because I checked and we’ve got another two days paid on the room,” Jim says, twisting himself so that that he's more than half on top of him. “It’d be a shame to waste it.”
“You’re trouble, you know that?” He asks, sliding his hands up Jim’s strong back and then back down towards his waist.
“Yeah,” Jim breathes, shifting again so that they’re face to face with Jim straddling his lap on his knees. “But I guess I’m your trouble.”
“Lord help me,” McCoy mutters, shaking his head. But when Jim kisses him he fists a hand in Jim’s hair and pulls him in. And so maybe this time he doesn’t let go.
Series: 1st in the Fools Rush In series
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: NC-17
Word count: roughly 6,200 words
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 and ariadne83
Summary: What better way to celebrate the end of your first year at the Starfleet Academy than with a trip to Las Vegas? Lose some money, get a little drunk, get a little impulsive. Too bad what happens there doesnt always stay there. Written for comically_so's awesome prompt over at affectingly's McCoy-A-Thon.
Things are easy and hard at the same time. That’s the way it works for them. Being around Jim is the most natural thing on every planet, but it’s also so fucking difficult that sometimes Leonard McCoy wonders if it’s even worth it.
But then Jim laughs and throws his arm around his neck and calls him Bones and damnit, there’s nothing really he can do, is there, but go with him.
And that’s the choice-to go with him or not. Take the ride or leave the park, but bottom line is, you have to choose. And when McCoy decides, really and truly decides that he can try to hang on and enjoy it, that's when things shift.
So for the last year, he’s been taking the ride with Jim and he’s been better for it. He’s had more fun than he has since before he started college, though he’d never admit it to Jim because that would make him right and therefore insufferable.
Point is, he’s got a best friend for the first time since he was about six years old. Hell, Jim is someone he can trust and talk to like nobody he’s ever known in his life, not even his wife back when things were good. It makes the frustration and the headache and the extra work Jim creates more than worth it.
Right now though, he doesn’t want to deal with Jim. He just wants to sleep. He’s been up to his elbows in blood and old death and real sickness for countless hours trying to pass his first year final practicum and exams and he’s tired.
“No,” is the first word out of mouth when he sees Jim waiting for him in a hallway of the Academy hospital. “Jim, whatever it is, no. Unless it’s a shower and eighteen hours of sleeping, no.”
“You can sleep on the shuttle.”
“Shuttle? What shuttle? I’m not getting on a shuttle, Jim. I’m going to sleep. Right here, standing up, if you don’t get out of my way.”
“Look,” Jim says, slinging an arm around McCoy’s shoulders in a patented move that never seems to fail. “I packed you a bag, I got you a ticket, but we gotta be at the shuttle in twenty minutes. You’ll thank me.”
“When, Jim? When have I ever thanked you?”
“This time you will. We’re going to Vegas, Bones. Las fucking Vegas. Just trust me and keep your eyes shut. I’ll make sure the fight attendants don’t pull you out of the bathroom.”
He turns his head to stare at Jim. “You swear?”
“On my mother’s life. So just quit bitching and pick up your bag already,” Jim says, giving the bag at his feet a kick. “We’ve only got like…fifteen minutes now.”
Which is how he ends up locked in the bathroom of a small cramped shuttle flying east to Sin City with his head between his knees. Jim bangs on the door from the outside in three sharp hits.
“I hate you,” he groans.
“Just checking to make sure you’re alive in there.”
“You keep bangin’ on the door and you won’t be.”
“I’ll save you my peanuts.”
“Son of a bitch,” McCoy mutters but when they land, he takes the peanuts anyway.
Jim apparently has a step-cousin who knows a guy who got them a room for free the weekend. The place looks like it hasn’t had a fresh coat of paint since the 90s and there’s only one bed, which he plans to fall onto, face first, and sleep through whatever disaster Jim’s got planned. But it's only a couple blocks off the Strip. So instead of finding the blissful oblivion only a cheap flop could provide, Jim bullies him into his civies and tugs him onto the main drag.
Jim’s never been and he’s like a kid in a toy store with a generous grandparent. He wants to do everything. He wants to see everything. He wants to play all the games and fuck all the pretty hookers who are selling their wares in special corners of all the big casinos-for free, naturally.
He’s used to babysitting Jim. Keeping him from exchanging blows with the surly Andorian dealer running the poker table and losing their food money trying to beat the classic roulette table is fairly standard. But the fight with the Cardassian pimp that gets Jim a black eye and what McCoy is fairly sure is two, possibly three broken ribs, is the last straw and Jim’s position as event planner is revoked for the remainder of the trip.
“Bones, come on-“
“Do you want me to get professional on you? Because so help me Jim, if you don’t cooperate I’ll drag your kicked ass back to the hotel, knock you out the boring way and go get some sleep.” Finally, he doesn’t add but it reads in his voice. “Won’t weigh my conscience down one bit.”
Jim glares at him for a few minutes before he caves. It’s a small victory that he celebrates by hailing a taxi and taking Jim to a bar he remembers from his bachelor days as having Romulan ale, if you’ve got the credits and you know how to ask.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Jim murmurs, tilting his glass from side to side, studying the blue liquid like it’s a unicorn that’s going to vanish back into his imagination if he blinks. “I stole some of Frank’s cheap bad-replicator shit once. It tasted like crap and it was so wrong it was almost green but damn. I can’t believe you found this.”
He watches as Jim takes a small sip and sighs in happily. He processes the unique buzz before carefully setting the drink back on the bar and looking back over at him in surprise.
“Your faith in me, Jim, it’s really heartwarming.”
“This is illegal, Bones.” Jim laughs, sliding close and catching him around the neck. It brings their heads together and he can feel Jim’s hot breath on his cheek. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“You’d be surprised at what I’ve got in me.”
“Okay then,” Jim agrees, reaching for his drink. “To surprises.”
McCoy chuckles and clinks his glass against Jim’s. “To surprises.”
They down their drinks hard and fast, slamming their empty glasses down on the bar. Jim is coughing and laughing and leaning against him for support and hell, it’s been a long time since he had Romulan ale. It catches him a little off guard too and he braces a hand on Jim’s chest, still careful to avoid the fight damage.
They’re still holding each other up like that as Jim hails the bartender, a pretty female with bright pink skin. “Two more?” he says holding up two fingers on the hand not currently wrapped around McCoy’s shoulders. “And make them doubles.”
She returns a few minutes later with four glasses of illicit blue and smiles at them as Jim over tips. They clink their glasses together again, this time to surviving their first year at the Academy, and that’s the last clearheaded decision McCoy makes on that trip.
~*~*~
Somehow, they end up at a craps table in Caesar’s Palace, the historical landmark status just upping its popularity. Jim has got this thing he can do with his wrists, where every throw is perfect. Security comes over in the form of several large alien bruisers who check the dice and ban Jim from playing. At least they don’t kick them out.
Jim just laughs and takes the time to sneak a sip from the bottle of blue booze McCoy has stowed in his otherwise empty medical bag. Then he pushes the credits drunkenly into McCoy's hands and says “Throw for me.”
“The odds are-“ he stops because he can’t remember what the odds are anymore. He’s too damn drunk. “They’re bad, Jim. It’s just throwin’ money away. We could get more ale,” he says in a whisper that is just way to loud to actually be a whisper.
“Nah.” Jim laughs, pulling the bag off his shoulder and grabbing him around the waist to drag him back to the craps table. “I’ll be your good luck charm. By the time we’re time we’re done, we can buy a million bottles of ale.”
“We cannot win that much. No one ever wins that much. Especially not us.”
“Okay, a thousand. But more. Lots more. Whatever. Hey dealer,” Jim calls, moving his arm so that he can pull their heads together, “We wanna play. Don’t we, Bones?”
It’s Vegas, McCoy thinks through the fog. Jim won enough before he got caught to make a decent start, so what the hell? He lays the credits down on the table and takes the dice from the dealer as he smiles at them in amusement.
“Go, Bones, go for seven.”
“Seven, sir?” the dealer asks.
“What the hell? Seven.”
McCoy raises his fist to hurl the dice, but Jim catches his hand. He pries his fingers open and kisses the dice. His chin brushes against his skin as he does it and he pulls back, grinning sideways at him.
“For luck,” Jim declares before closing his hand back around the dice.
“Right. Luck. Seven it is.”
The dice hit the table, bounce twice and he’ll be damned if that’s not a seven staring up at him. There’s a five and a two sitting on the green fabric.
“And we have a winner.” The credit chips pile up in front of him and he’s left staring at the fact that he’s actually won for the first time in his life as Jim crows at the victory. The dealer presses the dice back into his hands. “Your roll again, sir.”
“Gimme that,” Bones growls, grabbing the bottle out of the bag around Jim’s neck and taking a few good, long, burning gulps that make the world swim and everything seem less real than it already is. Then he holds out his hand, dice up, in front of Jim’s face. “What’ll it be this time?”
“Five,” Jim declares. The kiss is half off the dice this time, landing on synthesized plastic and the crease of his hand. “Make me proud.”
It’s like fucking magic, is what it is, McCoy decides as the five appears on the table. Then it’s an eleven, two hard eights, an impossible twelve, a six and yet another of those ridiculous elevens. Suddenly, most of the bottle of ale is gone and McCoy is on a streak that’s drawn a crowd all the way around the table, three people deep.
“Okay, okay.” Jim laughs. He’s been laughing pretty steadily since the hard eights and he’s so close that McCoy’s whole respiratory system has had to adjust for the proximity. “You roll eleven and we buy everybody a drink.”
Jim doesn’t waste time aiming for the dice anymore, planting his lips briefly on McCoy's knuckles before he rolls the dice. A cheer explodes around the table as it turns up another eleven.
“Who’s this we? Ain’t your money, cowboy,” McCoy mumbles to himself. Still, he’s smiling as he finishes off the last of the ale and drops the bottle on the floor. He shoves extra chips inside the now empty bag as Jim holds it open before pushing the next bid in. “What’s next, Nostradamus? I make this one and I’ll turn into a Klingon?”
Jim holds his hand in his, studying it like the answer is in the back of his knuckles. “You roll a hard six and we get the nicest room in this place and get the hell out of cousin Jake’s.”
“Please, God, let it be a six.” McCoy chuckles as Jim pecks his fingers and he lets it fly. He cheers louder than anyone else when they land threes up.
Jim hugs him and McCoy hugs back tightly because they don’t have to go back to that room where the roaches seem to be more comfortable than they could be. They’re going to sleep on luxurious beds with clean sheets and beautiful art on the walls with enough left over credits to eat gourmet room service until they head back to the Presidio.
“Get me a twelve,” Jim says into his ear, not letting go all the way and pulling his dice hand up to his mouth again, “And I’ll suck your brilliant brains out through your dick.”
McCoy comes to a dead halt and stares blearily into laughing blue eyes. “Jim, are you fucking kidding me?”
Jim’s answer is to pull his thumb out of his fist and suck it into his mouth. A hum goes up from the crowd around at the display but Jim’s eyes don’t leave his as his tongue swirls around the digit.
He’s so hard he could hammer nails and he figures this, this thing right here where Jim is fellating his fucking hand, must be why Romulan ale is illegal in most parts of the galaxy. But he nods in agreement and their dealer places the bet on twelve. Jim lets go of his thumb with a soft wet pop and he lets the dice drop as passively as he can, as if that will make winning this any less because of him.
When the second six lands, McCoy doesn’t hear the crowd cheer. The white noise rushing in his ears is too damn loud and Jim’s smile is too wet and wide.
“Do it again and you can fuck me.”
“Jim-” McCoy says as the dealer places the dice back in his numb hand.
Jim closes his fist for him. “Don’t chicken out on me, Bones,” he slurs before prying McCoy’s fingers open over table.
Twin sixes bounce into being and suddenly, it’s not real. It’s just a fucking game because they’re drunker than he’s ever been in his whole miserable life and he’s tired of Jim running it.
“What now, Princess?” he taunts, fighting against the hysteria at the thought of what Jim’s kisses are going to taste like, what his ass is going to feel like spasming around his cock. He holds the dice up between his thumb and forefinger. “Whatcha got left to give me if I win this?”
But Jim just returns that slow hot smile and tilts his chin up. He staggers backwards just a little from the ale, catching his balance by grabbing McCoy by the waist. He reaches out on instinct to stop Jim from falling and that pulls them together so close that their faces are practically touching. They can feel each other breathing and neither of them can stop themselves from laughing.
But when Jim collects himself enough to speak, it’s in a tone that’s dead serious. “Trip twelves and we get hitched. Tonight.”
The grin drops off his face and the noise of the crowd around them starts to rise.
“Hey! All y’all shut the fuck up!” McCoy shouts before turning back to face Jim. “How fucking drunk are we?”
“Very? I dunno but c’mon Bones. A streak like this? It never happens to guys like you.”
“Thanks for that.”
“It’s fate and she’s the type of jealous bitch that never lets this happen. It’s like…it’s like a sign,” he says with more drunken enthusiasm than McCoy can handle. “So, you roll this twelve, and fuck it, fate’s spoken and we take all these shiny credits and do what she says.”
The fact that he’s considering this is a testament to how drunk he is. The way he’s still got Jim pressed tight against him, making his blood hot despite how stupid this all is, just acts as further evidence that he’s not in any shape to be making a life-altering decision that he regretted making sober the first time around.
But he brings his hand between them so that Jim can work his magic on the dice. It’s a gentle kiss this time, dry and soft.
McCoy can’t bring himself to look as he lets them fall onto the table.
~*~*~*~
McCoy wakes up on someone’s chest, but only for a second because he’s being pushed off hard and there’s the sound of running. He hears a loud slam followed by the sound of pained retching through the door and fuck, his head hurts.
He keeps his face buried the soft darkness of his pillow - tuning out noise and light to fight the hangover he knows a good glass of water would help. He’s been a hard drinker since before he was legal and he knows the right and the wrong way to deal with a hangover.
Now though? He doesn’t care. Nothing-not where he is or who he’s with or what’s going on around him-is as important as keeping his eyes shut and his body still.
He groans against the bouncing of the bed as whoever it was emerges from the bathroom and curls up next to him. Short hair brushes his arm and a nose pushes into his side.
“G’off,” he groans but doesn’t move to push them away. His bedmate answers with a suitably pitiful moan before slinging an arm over his chest.
It’s too hot like that. The leftover alcohol is making the arm feel like a lead weight suffocating him. But he’s too tired to push it away and he falls asleep instead.
He has no idea how much time has passed when the sunlight streaming in on him, pushing through his eyelids, forces him awake. Jim’s face is buried in the crook of his neck and his right leg is slung over his.
Under the blankets, McCoy can feel miles of bare skin pressed against his and he lifts his head up as far as he can without the spikes slamming through his skull and checks under the covers just to be sure.
The sheet, which is way nicer than it should be, sticks to his stomach and yeah, that’s really great. Just delightful and fucking brilliant on his part. No. Their part. Because he is very much not alone in this now-disgusting, come-sticky bed.
“Jim, get up.”
“Fuck off, Frank. Five more minutes,” Jim mumbles. Then he turns his face further into McCoy’s neck and wraps his arm tight around his chest like a replacement for a stuffed animal.
“Jim, get off me.” He wants a shower more than anything but with Jim holding him down like this, he can’t get out of the bed.
“Five more minutes, Frank, fuck. You’re not my father.” He snuggles closer. “Can’t tell me what to do.”
“Jim,” he says, his voice is sharp and so is the shake he gives Jim. “Get up and get off of me.”
“Bones?”
“Yeah.”
Jim peers around the room blinking bleary eyes. McCoy follows his gaze and is surprised to find that they’re in a luxury suite and the buzz and traffic of the Las Vegas strip is clear stories down out the floor to ceiling window.
“What the- Where are we?” He blinks again and lifts the covers. “We’re naked.”
“You don’t miss a trick do you?”
“Bones, I-We-“ He checks under the blankets again. “Fuck.”
“Looks like.”
Jim sits up and stares down at him for a long time, like the answer is there in his face if only Jim can find it, which apparently he does.
“Oh.” And then a longer “Ohh.” Then he’s looking at his hands like they’re foreign alien life forms that have latched on and taken over.
“Yeah, Jim, I gotta shower so-“
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. You do that.”
“Thanks ever so,” he mutters before he rolls out of bed.
He stumbles blindly across the room to the bathroom. There’s a little bit of vomit on the toilet seat that he ignores as he climbs in the shower and orders the computer to turn the heat up high.
Fifteen minutes later, he feels like a human being again. One with a serious headache, but no other lasting damage. He’s thinking with a clear head again and the exhaustion is starting to ebb.
He’s washing his hair for the second time-because he feels that disgusting, still-when he feels it. It brushes his face as he drags his hands down over his forehead and brings him to a complete stop.
He opens his eyes under the spray and stares at his hand. There’s a thick, silver ring on his hand that he knows shouldn’t be there-hasn’t been there in the 20 months since the papers finally got signed.
“Jesus H. Christ on a motorcycle.”
He stands there under the unending stream of hot water trying to piece together the fragments of the weekend. He remembers Romulan ale. There was craps and a crowd and-
There’s a tap on the shower door, and it’s his only warning. Jim opens it and steps inside like they’re in the public showers at the gym at the Academy.
“Jim, listen, I think-“
Jim doesn’t give him time to think. He slides a hand around the back of McCoy’s neck and pulls him down into a kiss that’s wet from the inside out. It sucks the breath out of his lungs and sends him stumbling into a wet wall that he’s pretty sure is real marble.
“I think I owe you a blow job,” Jim mumbles against the side of his throat. “I paid up on everything else but I can’t remember if I blew you or not.” He licks a stripe across McCoy’s collar bone. “Better safe than sorry.”
Jim drops to his knees so fast that it’s a wonder he doesn’t hurt himself. His hands are firm on McCoy's thighs and then his mouth his hot and tight and Jesus, that thing he had done with his tongue to his thumb-McCoy flashes back to that because he’s doing it again now, only this is so much better in so many ways.
“Jim, don’t-“
Jim pulls off just long enough to mumble something that sounds suspiciously like, “Conjugal rights,” before covering him with his mouth again. Jim looks up at him with bright blue eyes framed by wet lashes and follows through on the promise to suck his brains out.
McCoy is surprised at how fast he comes. It makes his headache worse and his knees too weak to hold him up, so he sinks to the floor of the shower with Jim. He manages to collect himself enough to ask the computer to turn off the water but not much else.
“Hello, Mr. Kirk,” Jim says with a laugh, reaching out to touch a bite mark on McCoy’s chest that he hadn’t really noticed before.
He can feel the horror creeping up on him like a bad cold. He flinches away from Jim’s touch and shakes his head. “Jim, no.”
“Yeah. You probably shouldn’t take my name. It’s pretty 20th century to have to change that just because of a contract and new jewelry.” Jim gives him a teasing look. “You’re a more progressive guy than that.”
“Jesus, Jim. We got married. How fucking stupid are we?”
“I don’t know. It’s Vegas. You get impulsive. I don’t know that it’s stupid. I think we’re both too smart to be stupid.”
“We’re gonna have to get a divorce.” McCoy groans, rubbing his aching head. “I’m going to be twice divorced in two years. I’m going to be that guy-ex for each sex-like on some goddamn soap.”
“We are?” Jim looks at him, a little stunned. “Why? Did I or did I not just give you the best damn head you ever had?”
“I don’t know if I’d say the best. Not bad, though.”
“Oh, fuck you. Your eyes rolled back in your head.”
“Okay, it was pretty good. But best?”
Jim shrugs. “I know it was in the top five. But I’m still hung over. I’m better sober. Or drunker. In between’s a mess. But the point is, this,” he waves a hand between them, “this is good. So why do we need to get a divorce?”
“Because, Jim, this-this isn’t us. This isn’t who we are.”
“Why not? I still feel like me. I’m just me with you which is, ya know, who I always am.”
McCoy stares at Jim for the longest time. He keeps staring until Jim gets bored with it and climbs to his feet.
“I’m freezing. If we’re gonna have this talk naked we should have it in bed.”
“The bed’s disgusting.” Because we fucked in it all night, he doesn’t say. Because they had nasty, sweaty, disgusting, drunken sex that McCoy can barely remember.
What he does remember involves Jim on top of him, riding him and under him, squirming and panting, rolling his hips like a mix between a dancer and a whore. There are blurry memories of Jim leaning over him, biting what he could reach and following them up with sloppy kisses.
Jim just rolls his eyes at him. “I contacted housekeeping. A maidbot changed the sheets while you were in the shower. So get up. Your balls are like raisins.”
He can’t argue with that logic. He does stop and put on a pair of scrub pants before getting back in bed but that’s mostly because Jim doesn’t. And there has to be something between them since Jim refuses to.
“Computer, adjust temperature to 25 degrees,” Jim says, sitting cross-legged with only a sheet over him. There’s a soft affirmative and the room warms around them so that he doesn’t need to wear anything more. Then he pats the mattress mockingly. “You need a printed invitation, Bones? Cause it's over on the table.”
He gives a short almost reflexive glance at the table near the door of the ridiculously large room. There’s a paper sitting on top of it that has to be the hard copy of their marriage license. It makes his stomach turn over and his head spin, so he surrenders and sinks to the bed.
It is amazing to slide between clean sheets with a clean body, though. It’s what he’s been waiting for since he got out of his final-he checks the digital date display on the clock imbedded on the top surface of the night stand-three days ago. Three days? Jesus.
He goes to lie down but thinks better of it. Instead he leans against the headboard with a pillow propped behind his back. He doesn’t want to be any more vulnerable than he has to be for this.
Jim, for his part, is grinning at him. Mostly it’s in his eyes but his lips are curled just a little bit at the edges in an irritating way that makes him want to slap it off. Or kiss it away. He’s not sure.
“Okay, so why do we have to get divorced?”
“I already told you why.”
“Yeah, your reason was shit. I need a real reason.”
McCoy takes a deep breath. The reasons with his wife were obvious. There was the fighting-unending and cruel, ripping each other right down to the bone sometimes-the coldness between them, the anger boiling between them that never seemed go away, no matter what they did, the drinking that he couldn’t seem to stop whenever he thought of going home to her, the suffocating feeling of wrongness that crept up on both of them when they weren’t paying attention that broke them probably more than anything. And of course, there was the fact that he had realized that he just didn’t love her anymore and she didn’t love him, either.
“You’re twenty,” is the best he can do while he tries to organize his thoughts.
“Twenty-three,” Jim corrects. “And? We’re not Vulcans, Bones. Our lives’re short. Try again.”
“You have the attention span of a goldfish, Jim. You’re young and you’re twitchy and you’re going to get bored. And with my luck, we’ll be stuck on a five-year explorative mission when that happens. It’s like high school, Jim, only you have to live in the same space.”
“Goldfish have a three minute memory. It’s been a year and I’m not bored yet. I’d say I’m doing a hell of a lot better than a goldfish, and I’m not planning on becoming one.”
“Maybe not but I’m pretty sure you’re not planning on changing your fuck everything that walks and some things that fly and swim agenda either.”
Jim says nothing to that but he keeps staring, expectantly. As if his status as Academy transport-shuttle isn’t enough of a reason to not do this.
“Damnit Jim, you’re a slut and you know it.”
“So? We can work around it. It’s never bothered you before.”
“You’re-“ McCoy shakes his head. The headache is still there and this conversation is making it worse. “You’re something else. I’ve got no idea what, but it’s something, all right.”
“I’ve heard that. My stepdad used to say that all the time right before he,“ Jim pauses, catching himself, “Grounded me.”
The slip makes McCoy sigh. Because this is Jim, who rushes into things blindly, but always seems to spin them to his advantage. He’d give anything to get inside that head and see how it works but for now, all he can do is stare and try the old fashion way.
“You honestly think I could work around your whole- ” he waves hand at Jim’s bare chest.
“Slut thing?” Jim finishes with a small laugh. "Yeah, I do. I think you know me better than anyone else and you know that I am who I am. And I think you like me anyway.”
“You’re my best friend,” McCoy sighs again. “Best I’ve ever had, point of fact. That’s the whole damn point. Damnit, I’ve done this, Jim. I’ve done the marriage thing. It’s not a good fit for me and I don’t want to stop liking you.”
“I’m not going to stop liking you, Bones. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m not. This is how it works. Ya like each other, ya get married, and then it just-“
He stops and realizes he’s twisting his ring around and around on his finger. He used to do that all the time. It was a habit it took months to break and he’s slid back into it so easy it scares the bejesus out of him and brings him right back to the bottom line.
“I can’t fucking stand her, Jim. She’s back in Gulfport and we’re in Vegas and I still don’t feel like I’m far enough away. What the fuck am I supposed to do with myself if I start feeling like that about you-especially if it happens when we’re out in the black?”
“Hey.” Jim moves so that he’s sitting facing McCoy and so close that his knees are almost on the pillows. “That? Isn’t going to happen. Because I’d lay money that she wasn’t your best friend and that you weren’t hers. But you’re mine. And I don’t see that changing any time soon."
“You never see it changing,” he mutters, forcing him to stop twisting the band. “You just wake up and you want to chew your foot off like a bear in a trap to get out.”
“Yeah. That could happen. But you’re my favorite person in the universe, Bones. And I figure, that’s what marriage is. You pick your favorite person and you call dibs. Just because you made a shitty pick last time doesn’t mean you’re wrong this time.”
“Why are you pushing this?” McCoy asks because really, that’s what’s bothering him. He’s never seen Jim as the marrying kind in the first place, let alone be the one to press the issue.
“I don’t know,” Jim says with a shrug. “I guess it’s kinda comforting. You’re my person, I’m yours. Whatever shit comes our way, at least we’d have that, on file, no matter what. I like that. Don’t you?”
“Jim, marriage isn’t comforting in my experience.”
Jim just shrugs. “You fucked the dog the first time around. You learn from your mistakes and you move on. You won’t fuck up the same this time. I’m not her and you’re a better man that you were a year or two ago.”
“It’s not that simple,” McCoy says shaking his head. “You think everything is simple and doable but it’s just not. Dammit, you gotta think about things every once in awhile.”
“I am thinking.”
“Really? Cause it doesn’t look like it from where I’m sitting.”
“Look, I’m thinking. I’m thinking that contract makes us family. Real family, the kind Starfleet will recognize. It means that we’ve about quintupled the likelihood of getting posted together when we graduate. And I want that. If I go out there, I want you to come with me because you’re more my family than anyone’s been in my whole life.”
He gets a look in his eyes like McCoy's never seen, especially not directed at him. It’s intense and it makes him feel uncomfortable in his own skin, like there’s too much aimed at him.
“Bones, my parents loved each other like fucking crazy and if you listen to the log of the last ten minutes he was alive, you can hear how the only thing that matters is that you’ve got family and that they know. You know?”
That brings McCoy up short. “You’ve listened to the logs from the Kelvin?”
“Yeah.” Jim shrugs. Like it doesn’t matter that he’s heard his father die, that he’s probably played it obsessively over and over trying to find something of the man who was so noticeably absent. “I dug them up last semester.”
He rubs his forehead back against the headboard and sighs. “Jesus, Jim.”
“That was when I had so many Cardassian sunrises that I threw up on your floor. Remember?”
That had been bad. The worst he’s ever seen him before or since, actually. He’d been a disgusting mess who was on the verge of drunken tears and it was the first time in their friendship that McCoy hadn’t had the will to yell at him. Instead, he’d cleaned him up and let him share the bed.
“Yeah. I do.”
“Okay well now that we’re married, I can tell you that I found it in the archives and it fucked me up. It fucked me up for fucking weeks. And it’s okay. You can know that.”
“And it wasn’t before?”
Jim makes a face at him. “Yes. No. Not like it is now. It’s, I don’t know, Bones. It’s just different.” He shrugs again like he doesn’t care but his eyes give him away. He does care. He cares a lot. “I think it’s better.”
“You would.”
“Look, Bones, let’s try it okay? I can’t tell you why it changes things. It just does. Plus, from what I can remember, fucking you was great. I’d have to fuck you again to be positive, but I’m pretty sure it’s some of the best I’ve ever had.”
“Which is saying something,” McCoy mutters.
Jim jabs in him the thigh with his elbow. “And,” he snaps before softening. “If you still want to you can always divorce me later if you decide you don’t like me anymore. But I’m gonna be honest with you, Bones, I think it’s gonna have to be you because I don’t think I’ll ever hate you enough to voluntarily deal with more paperwork.”
“Jim.”
“Bones,” Jim shoots back and it occurs to him that no one else calls him that. It’s stuck but it’s not something any of the other cadets would ever call him.
He’s been called a few things in his time. He was Lenny as a kid, Len in high school, his mother called him Leo, and his ex-wife had referred to him as “you redneck country bastard” for the entire last year of their marriage. But he’s never Bones to anyone but Jim and damnit if it doesn’t feel more like him than anything he’s ever been called before.
“What am I gonna do with you?”
“I don’t know,” Jim says with a smug smile and the quirk of an eyebrow. “Keep me and find out.”
“Damnit.”
“So, is that yes?” Jim asks, again with the big blue eyes and hopeful smile. It’s deadly and he knows it. McCoy has seen him use it before, but it's never looked this sincere.
“Or something like that.”
“Good, because I checked and we’ve got another two days paid on the room,” Jim says, twisting himself so that that he's more than half on top of him. “It’d be a shame to waste it.”
“You’re trouble, you know that?” He asks, sliding his hands up Jim’s strong back and then back down towards his waist.
“Yeah,” Jim breathes, shifting again so that they’re face to face with Jim straddling his lap on his knees. “But I guess I’m your trouble.”
“Lord help me,” McCoy mutters, shaking his head. But when Jim kisses him he fists a hand in Jim’s hair and pulls him in. And so maybe this time he doesn’t let go.