FIC: 'Every Mountain and Hill Shall be Made Low' by Thalia (2/3) (NC-17)
( Part One w/ header info)
Day Three
He’s not tired. He really isn’t. The only reason he survived med school, new fatherhood, and the Academy is an ability to control his sleeping needs down to the minute.
But he sure as hell is jumpy. And grumpy. Maybe even grumpier than normal. If that’s possible.
“Quit looking at me like that,” he grouses lowly when he feels Kirk’s eyes on him for possibly the millionth time. It’s a slow day on the ship again, for sure. Starship travel, McCoy says in an imaginary speech to his daughter, is a lot like any other kind of travel: a whole lot of hurry up and wait. And sometimes being the boss means having nothing to do.
“Then quit giving me cause to do so.”
McCoy snorts. “Cause? I see no cause.”
“Come on, Bones. Everybody here can tell-” He makes an expansive gesture and McCoy grimaces as the rest of the bridge crew’s faces embarrassedly support what Jim is saying. “-that you’re up to your eyeballs in jitters. To borrow a phrase from you.”
Jitters are not what he’s up to his eyeballs in. No, what he’s up to his eyeballs in are nausea-inspiring fantasies of James T Kirk, not to mention the random crap getting thrown his way by the rest of the crew. He can tune them out by now easily enough, admittedly, but Kirk’s thoughts are loud, obnoxious, colorful, and stick to him like goddamn glue.
Luckily for him, when Jim’s on the bridge, Jim’s mind is on the bridge with him. Oh, there’s the occasional foray into Uhura-land, but it’s mostly school-boy antics, like goosing her or peeking down her neckline.
And now McCoy has brought Jim’s attention back to him. Which was a pretty dumb move, he realizes with a grimace, but at least he doesn’t have to deal with two different realities. The movie in their heads is the same as the one they’re actually in. So to speak.
“See? There’s that face again.”
He rolls his eyes. “Give it a rest, Jim, or I’ll find some more vaccinations to give you.”
“As if you could. I think I’ve got every sort of virus known to the Federation kicking back in my veins, and probably a few that aren’t.”
Bones almost cracks a smile at that, and the picture he’s getting from Jim’s head brightens. Bemused, and accepting boredom as an excuse, he looks at it again, and he notices something new.
He notices that Jim’s wearing a wedding band.
Jim. Is wearing a wedding ring. In his own head.
James Kirk, courtier of a thousand women and not a small number of men, very big fan of the flavor of the week, month, and/or day.
Imagines himself married.
McCoy cannot hold back a startled bark of laughter at the ludicrous idea, and Jim’s gaze turns sharp again. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Bones…” Jim’s got that ‘I’m your goddamn Captain’ tone creeping in, clearly for the purpose of needling McCoy.
So, fine, let him see what he gets by needling. “You want me to ask personal questions while we’re on the bridge, Captain?”
Jim looks around once, considers for a moment, then shrugs. “Just keep it clean, Doctor.”
“Easy enough. You ever think about getting married?”
McCoy swears Jim’s skin takes on a green tinge. He almost points out this fact to Spock, then decides that’s a little bit beyond the pale of even his own skewed sense of decency. Instead, he raises a mocking eyebrow at his captain. “I take that to be a no?”
Jim opens his mouth, then closes it. Then opens it again. When he finally manages to speak, his voice is normal but pitched surprisingly low, and McCoy pictures the rest of the bridge crew leaning in to try and hear what he has to say.
“Of course I have, Bones.”
Well, slap him three times and hand him to his mama, but that is not the answer he is expecting. He’s suddenly more than a little uncomfortable about the fact that they’re having this conversation on the bridge, and takes an awkward step towards the captain’s chair. His voice comes out so low it’s nearly a growl. “To whom?”
Jim shakes his head and looks down, a corner of his mouth turned up in that sardonic way he has. “No one that’s asked yet, clearly.”
McCoy’s eyebrow climbs higher on his forehead at the sentence construction. “So it’s just a vague idea of maybe someday.”
Kirk flashes him an easy smile. “Maybe someday, yeah.” Then he spins the chair smoothly away from McCoy. “Mr. Chekov, how much further do we have to go until we reach our destination?”
“Approximately fifteen minutes, sir.”
“Splendid. What shall we do until then, hmm? More of this Twenty Questions that Dr McCoy so helpfully started us off on? Maybe some Tiddlywinks?”
And the crew exhales, straightens, and goes back to their duties. The moment is forgotten. By all but Leonard McCoy.
---
That night when he can’t sleep, he finally ignores his training and listens to his instincts, going the one place he knows he can whip some of this excess energy out of himself.
The gym is bright and antiseptic, like always; it feels like the sickbay but there’s no sickness here, and so to McCoy it has become a second home. He pounds along the track for nearly an hour, letting the rhythm of his feet and his breathing become louder than the pounding in his head. It isn’t until far, far too late he realizes the sounds have become a mantra in his head, a litany of only two words: Jim Kirk, Jim Kirk, Jim Kirk JimKirk JimKirkJimKirk-
He stops short, doubling over with a case of the wheezes, and tries to stop his eyes from watering.
God damn Jim Kirk.
“Kirk to McCoy.”
A groan rips from his throat at the truly ill-timed summons. “What the hell do you want, Jim?”
“Are you decent?”
“In a manner of speaking,” McCoy says wryly.
“Kirk out,” is all he gets before the communicator goes silent. He stares at it for a second, then shakes himself. He knows better than to just stop cold after a run like that, so he cajoles his legs into jogging leisurely around the track once or twice more while he waits for Kirk’s arrival. He tries not to think. It very nearly works.
“Bones!” Jim calls from the doorway before moving into the room. “Bones, stop running grooves into the floor. I’ve got more briefing notes for you on tomorrow’s intake of POWs.” He’s coming closer to the stairs that run up to the track, and despite the cool-down job, McCoy’s heart rate annoyingly refuses to back off. “See, turns out there are two pretty extreme religious sects among the group of prisoners, and they’re threatening to rumble if we don’t-“
He stops short when he finally crests the stairs not ten feet from McCoy, who’s standing on the edge of the track clad only in shorts and sneakers, chugging from a container of water.
McCoy eyes him. “What?”
“Um.” Jim swallows, and McCoy’s gut turns over as he realizes what’s about to happen. No, he almost yells out loud. Not right now, you lecherous asshole!
Too late, though. The Jim in his mind has launched himself at the McCoy in his mind, and he can only hold on for the ride.
And what a ride it is.
Jim’s mouth is strong and wet and insistent and his fantasy McCoy is, of course, only too willing to volunteer a high level of participation. Their tongues slide against each other roughly, teeth flashing and getting in the way and causing coarse gasps of notquitepain, and Jim’s hands glide over as much of McCoy’s sweat-slicked skin as he can reach. Which, much to Jim’s delight, is quite a bit.
Hoarse whispers echo in his head as they both take in whatever air they can in between kisses, whispers like, “Jesus, Bones, you are so fucking hot,” and “Shut up, kid.” And, so quiet he can’t tell who says it, “Only for you.”
After that, they can’t even manage talking and it’s like time and reality have stopped, because they’re necking like desperate teenagers, hands fisting up in fabric and nails scratching at skin in an age-old but always futile attempt to fuse two bodies into one. The best they can manage is the simple magic of friction, of pants pushed hastily down and hips thrusting as close together as they can possibly get, rutting against each other messily, depravedly, too heated and too needy to look for other options.
McCoy hears a grunt that he knows as his and watches, ignoring the onset of dizziness, as the two bodies rock against each other frantically. The air is thick with their groans and their smell and it must just be the exhaustion but he is feeling this one, down to his very marrow.
As they climb higher and higher, Jim sucks his tongue into his mouth again and again, breaking away only to breathe in McCoy’s nickname and breathe out a single, clearly precious word. McCoy has to strain to hear what it is, though, and the moment he finally does happens to be the moment he sees himself slide his left hand through Jim’s hair to grasp the back of his neck roughly-and sees the thick silver band around his third finger.
“Mine,” Jim is panting fiercely into his lips. “Mine.”
The air freezes in his lungs. With a crash, a bang, a peal of thunder he swears the whole ship should be able to hear, McCoy feels the implication like a punch to the gut.
Jim Kirk doesn’t just think about being married to someone in the indeterminate future. Jim Kirk thinks about being married to him. Right now.
A groan rips through his mind like a lightning bolt, and suddenly he’s thoroughly occupied by watching himself come. Sparks fly, he swears sparks fly, and he can’t inhale, can’t breathe at all because there’s a vicegrip of pleasure on his brain, on his cock- only none of it’s real, and he knows this, but it feels so goddamn real, smells and tastes real, and he can hear Jim’s rough voice staking a goddamn claim and then giving a long, shuddery exhalation of- “Bones…”
And he simply can’t tear his brain away from the image, even as the two men quiet into rasping breaths and sloppy kisses, holding onto each other with shaking hands as they come down from the precipice. McCoy’s hands shear through Kirk’s hair again and again, while Jim’s hands dip and glide through the sweat they’re now sharing, painting mindless pictures of love and lust on shiny biceps and pectorals and whatever else he can find.
Then he breaks the kiss and slides his hand lazily yet purposefully through the spilled mess of semen between them. Locking eyes with McCoy, he brings his fingers up to drag across his mouth once. Twice. Three times. Then he reaches over to McCoy’s slack, reddened lips, and does the same.
Marking them.
“Mine, Bones. Always.”
An exchange of fluids and pheromones, primitive motions making signs of base possession, left for the world to see. If they only could. His doppelganger lets out a harsh breath, and looks at Jim with more love than he swears he could ever really feel, more than he ever even had for-
McCoy’s throat closes up and there’s a burning somewhere behind his eyes. “Jim,” he hears his other self say before kissing the captain exquisitely thoroughly. “Jim…”
“What?”
Oh, fuck.
McCoy’s brain clears with a snap and he tries desperately to think of something useful, to think of anything but the smell of Jim’s slick fingers... “I’m sorry, Jim, I was just-” He cuts off, because he can’t say the name again without being reminded of his other voice saying it in a tone dripping with lust, anticipation, and-
No.
He clenches his jaw so hard a muscle jumps in his cheek. “Jim, can we possibly finish this in the morning?” He holds up a thankfully not shaking hand as Kirk tries to protest. “I heard what you said, and I’m sure it will be fine as long as we keep both their options and our eyes open when we’re going in. But you’ll brief us all in the morning, alright?”
He is not going to take no for an answer, and Jim must be able to tell. Eventually, he nods. “Well, alright. Probably should all be in bed, anyway.” He peers at McCoy for a second, and McCoy is proud to say he meets his gaze head-on.
“Right. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Bones.” On his way out the door, Jim tosses an easy grin back at him, and he feels his stomach clench. “And go take a shower, old man. You reek.”
---
Once back in his quarters and cleaned up, McCoy doesn’t even look at his liquor supply. He just reaches straight for the hypo full of sedative.
Sleep takes him over almost immediately, his exhausted body welcoming it with open arms. His mind glides through blissful blankness for a full eight hours, and when he wakes up, gummy but solidly better, he swears to himself that everything’s going to be fine. Today.
---
Day Four
“Doctor?”
He hears a strange tone in the attending nurse’s call, and feels a crease develop between his eyebrows as he walks to where she’s standing. She’s pushed aside the privacy curtain to one of the med beds and is staring down at something, a blank expression on her face. She’s too far away for him to use the damn curse, and even as he gets within range and then closer, all he reads from her is abject consternation, so bright it whites out anything else.
“What is it?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
Then he finally looks at the object of her preoccupation. And he’s… he’s… He’s a doctor, not a security specialist, but even he can tell a bomb when he sees one.
“Oh,” he says quietly. The thing on the bed is cold, silver, black, and unfathomable. “One of the prisoners must have slipped it past security, somehow,” he says absently.
Somehow. He can’t think of how. He can’t think at all. Don’t the ones in the movies always have a big red countdown clock, telling you that you have so many seconds to save the girl and get the hell out of the building? Why doesn’t this one have numbers? Why doesn’t this one tell him how long he has? Why can’t he move?
“Run.”
He hears his voice but he doesn’t feel himself saying it, doesn’t remember thinking he should say it. The nurse takes his advice, though, even though he’s just standing there, staring at the- the box of death that’s so tiny it seems like it should be perfectly harmless. Just tip it right into the trash can and all will be well, right? He tamps down a humorless, slightly insane chuckle as it occurs to him how impotent he is in this situation. He’s not good at this kind of thing. Anybody else would know what to do. Jim, Jim would really know what to do, he’d probably come up with some fool plan to-
Jim.
And it’s as if the thought of the captain is enough to break whatever spell he’s been under. He pivots and sprints across the room, shouting instructions and pushing buttons and god dammit, he wishes he knew how much time they had before-
When he hears the bomb explode with a surprisingly tinkly thud, he thinks of Jim. Can almost smell Jim’s warm breath on his face. Then he feels a good hard knock to his skull the likes of which he’s never experienced, and slides into blackness.
---
Day Six
They’re in a hotel somewhere, he can tell, for this particular trip through Jim Kirk’s sexual deviances. They’re in a hotel on a planet with a sun or two. Maybe even Earth, McCoy muses, then realizes that he’s been to this hotel before. Like, in reality. It’s in San Francisco, right above a bar his friend owns, and he’s spent more than one night passed out in various empty rooms, unable or unwilling to go back to campus until absolutely necessary.
This time, though, there’s no hangover, he can tell. Late morning sunlight streams through the mostly open curtains, and dust mites are a-dancing in its beams. The bed is empty, but in such disarray that he has a feeling the sheets are still warm, and probably soiled beyond their usefulness.
He sees himself sprawled out on the couch in an undershirt and boxers, clearly just-washed hair going every which way while he flips through the screens of a medical journal. Or, hell, could be a trashy novel, for all McCoy knows. This is Jim’s head, not reality.
Speaking of… The bathroom door slides open and Jim walks through, one towel slung loosely around his waist while he dogs his hair with another. He sees Jim say something to his alter ego, but is startled when he can’t hear it.
He can’t hear it. The silence makes the vision strange, incomplete, and he itches for a knob to twist or a button to push so he can have the full picture. When none appear, as of course they won’t, he ignores the wistful feeling in his gut and concentrates fully on watching whatever’s unfolding in front of him.
He sees himself not look up from his reading while Jim talks. Sees Jim capture his chin between his thumb and forefinger and force him to look up, look into Jim’s eyes before he leans in for the kiss. It’s a lazy kiss, a tasty, lingering, I-just-fucked-the-shit-out-of-you-and-don’t-you-forget-it kiss, and a pain pings in a tiny spot in McCoy’s chest, somewhere alarmingly near his heart.
Then Jim shucks off the towels and tucks in beside him on the couch. McCoy watches himself adjust accordingly, slinging an arm around probably still damp shoulders and kissing the top of a towhead, before going back to the trade mag. McCoy curses mentally at the kick he feels in his gut when he sees the ring on his left hand. Then his eyes immediately search for- Ah, yes, there’s Jim’s, too, draped on McCoy’s thigh as he cuddles-cuddles!-with his CMO.
Kirk won’t stand for such time-wasting, he’s sure. He’s sure the kid’s going to quit with the girly stuff and just drop down, tug on the elastic, and lick up and down his alter-ego’s cock.
But it doesn’t happen. Jim simply burrows into McCoy’s side, his apparently satiated penis happily limp against his thigh.
Jim Kirk, worn out? Damn, he thinks. I am truly magnificent.
…at least, in Jim Kirk’s head I am.
He’s pondering this when suddenly the scene is being sucked away from him. No, dammit, I wasn’t ready to leave that one yet. I wanted-
But his mind skitters away from that thought as quickly as it came upon it, and soon he’s left with only the smells of freshly-showered skin and stale sheets and a splitting headache.
He can’t help but want to grumble about it, but when he tries, the groan he hears tear out of his throat is offensively pathetic-sounding, and he thinks better of it.
He struggles to open his eyes instead. The hand he didn’t realize was holding his tightens its grip for a nanosecond before quickly letting go. McCoy frowns.
Jim’s voice comes to him as if from a great distance. “No, don’t. The ship is fine. You can sleep as long as you want.”
Yeah, fat chance of McCoy letting that happen. He squishes his eyelids together, then forces a few blinks, then, hallelujah, manages to peer up at Jim’s only somewhat blurry face. “The nurses… the patients…” he croaks sullenly.
“Everything’s fine, you stubborn jackass. Everyone is fine. Why don’t you ever believe me?”
His lips quirk up, which kind of hurts because they’re quite dry. “Because you’re rarely right?” His voice is so gruff it’s ugly.
“Pfft. I’m always right. There’s just never any proof, and you’re a scientist, so you need bullshit like that.”
The mock hoity-toity in his voice coaxes a laugh out of McCoy. Which turns straight into a cough.
“Here.” There’s water in front of him instantly, and it’s a soothing balm if he’s ever felt one.
“I’m a doctor, not a scientist.” The fallacy of that makes him shake his head, but he only said it to make Jim laugh, anyway. He hears a low chuckle, and is satisfied.
Finally his eyes aren’t sticky and he can get a look at the captain. A good look around. He’s surprised at the small number of occupied beds around him. “It was more bark than bite,” Jim says, as if he can tell what McCoy is thinking. He’d be concerned about that if he wasn’t so focused on his job, but that’s how it goes sometimes. “You’re one of only five injuries reported.”
“And my bay?” He’s relieved to hear only a little more than the normal amount of gruff this time.
“Minor damages, all things considered. Supplies we have plenty of, that sort of thing. You’ll be able to operate pretty much exactly as before, and full repairs will be made in a week when we dock at Earth.” His face darkens slightly. “After we drop off these damn prisoners. They’ve been nothing but a pain in my ass.”
McCoy chuckles. “Now, Jim, you’re starting to sound like a grumpy country doctor. I don’t think that’s befitting of a captain.”
“I learned from the best.”
He suppresses a grouse, and his head throbs helpfully. “Can’t I have something for this damn headache?”
Jim stands up and reaches for a hypospray. “Now you can, yes. You were too…” He pauses to clear his throat, and McCoy looks at him, curious. He can smell the trails the fear and anxiety have left on Jim’s mind, and that ping hits McCoy square in the chest again. “You couldn’t before.”
“What…?”
“Intracranial something or other. Chapel can tell you about it later. Your hard-headedness is, apparently, only metaphorical.” There’s a half smile, then, which fades before he continues. “And we don’t exactly have a neurosurgeon on standby, so… We did our best.”
McCoy can see, vaguely, in flashes, what Jim has seen of the sickbay the last couple days. It’s a lot, and it isn’t pretty. “Clearly, as I’m cognizant.”
“You have a great team, here, Doctor.”
“I do indeed. Thank you.”
Jim’s still standing there, the hypo in his hand.
“May I…?” McCoy raises an eyebrow and feebly waves his hand.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Hang on.” He clearly intends to call for the nurse, but McCoy won’t have it. He summons all his energy-which is so little it’s almost not adequate, much to his disgust-and swipes the injector out of Jim’s hand.
It takes a few seconds to kick in. Then he realizes it wasn’t just a painkiller. “Dammit, Jim,” is all he manages before his unwillingly unconscious head hits the pillow.
---
Day Seven
As in all wars, the doctor is left to deal with the ultimate irony-healing those who have killed. There are three prisoners in his sickbay today, and he’s got no choice but to fix them.
“Do not look so angry, doctor.”
McCoy almost spits in the guy’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll just try to forget that you tried to blow me up, is that it?”
“It was not I who did that.”
“Well, maybe not, but your blessed religion supported it.”
“If that is what you believe, your Academy did you no favors.”
McCoy grimaces. “The Academy is just fine, damn it. I meant your particular brand of your religion. You’re here, aren’t you? Being moved like cattle because you’ve committed some crime that goes against your planet’s actual religion?”
The man is silent for a while, and McCoy chances a glance up from the knee he’s currently repairing. All he’s getting from this guy-all he’s gotten from anyone, all day-is vague smells, only at close proximity, and only of things that are obvious. It’s damn annoying. He wishes the damn curse would either be helpful or go the hell away.
“That is not quite my story, no.”
“Oh, really.” It’s not a question. “And I suppose you’re actually the good guy, here? You’re merely here because you tried to save the women and children first?”
“You may use as much sarcasm as you wish, Doctor, but it does not change the truth.”
“What truth?”
“I am here because I loved.”
McCoy snorts. “Yeah, right.”
“You think I am not capable?”
McCoy takes a deep breath, counting to ten. “I didn’t say that.” You jackass, he adds mentally.
“No, you didn’t.” The But you implied it, you asshole is clear as a bell, damn curse or no.
There’s a pause, then the lack of mental stream from this guy, the lack of answers, starts to drive him nuts. “So what happened to her? Did you two commit some romantic crime and get arrested together?”
Another pause. “No.”
“Oh? Where is she, then?”
“He is dead.”
A bolt of the man’s wrenching anguish hits him square between the eyes. McCoy’s hands still, poised above the man’s leg. “Oh.”
“He was always… more impulsive than I. More heart, more ego, more nerve. He tried to save someone that did not wish to be saved, and he perished because of it. I tried to save him, and so I am here.”
McCoy swallows. The details are flashing weakly in his frontal lobe-he can see the death, vaguely, blurrily, and he suddenly feels sick. He’s actually done with the man’s knee, anyway. He should just block the stream, get up, close the curtain and never look back.
He does the first one. But he hears the low words tumbling out of his mouth before he can do the rest. “Isn’t that-aren’t those sorts of relations-“ He’s damn proud of his tact, really. “-considered a sin on your planet?”
The man laughs. He downright laughs, a pleasant-enough sound, but this time painfully rich with knowledge and pity, and McCoy knows, damn curse or no, that he’s laughing at him.
“I think you know how much that matters in the end, Doctor.”
---
“Welcome back, Doctor McCoy,” Spock’s always-modulated tones greet him as the lift slides open and he steps out onto the bridge.
“Thank you, Commander,” he says through a clenched jaw, avoiding the eyes of any crew who chance looking in his direction. It’s always embarrassing to be sick when you’re a doctor, so he’s kind of been lying low, but Jim called him to the bridge, so to the bridge he has come. Grumpy as hell, but here.
“Bones! How’s the headache?”
“It was fine until a few seconds ago,” he drawls, glaring at Jim. “What did you want?”
“We’re about a half hour from the drop-off point. Are the formerly ill prisoners healed enough to be chucked into space?”
“Of course they are. You didn’t hire me for my good looks.”
Jim outright laughs at that. “No, clearly not. Alright, then, thanks.”
McCoy scowls at him. “For this, you called me up here?”
Jim shrugs. “Just wanted to make sure you remembered where the bridge was, Doctor. Never know what a good conk on the head might do you.” His tone is light, but McCoy is struck by a stream of the worry still lingering in the kid’s head. It fades quickly and McCoy finds himself reaching out with his brain, trying to hold on to the connection.
He needn’t worry, though, because the kid’s just changing topics. He sweeps his glance up and down Bones once, then shifts his gaze back to the view screen. “You seem to be in fine working order, though.”
A familiar musky smell fills McCoy’s nostrils, and he freezes. Jim is so totally imagining them fucking in the Captain’s chair, isn’t he? He is, McCoy just knows it, despite not being able to see it.
Hell, he practically can see it, if Jim’s fantasy version of himself is anywhere near accurate. He can easily imagine him sprawled in the chair, fully clothed except for the undone front of his regulation trousers, watching McCoy suck his cock like it’s the sexiest goddamn thing he’s ever seen. And McCoy sees that the fantasy him thinks so, too, because he’s got his fist around his own heavily erect cock, looking up at Kirk like he’s enjoying the hell out of reducing the most infamous captain of Starfleet to a pile of panting, sweating-
McCoy just at that moment realizes that he’s watching his own fantasy. Nobody else has instigated it, or plotted it, or decreed that fantasy-McCoy should be so aroused. He just is.
And he’s startled to find that actual-McCoy, as he stands on the bridge and stares at Jim, is pretty damn aroused, too.
He can’t hold back a surprised grunt. He feels a flush creep up his neck as he glances around to see if any of the bridge crew has noticed.
But apparently only the captain has heard him. He looks at McCoy appraisingly for a moment, then apparently decides it’s just residual head-injury shenanigans. “You’re free to go, Bones. Transport security will be down to pick up your prisoners in about twenty minutes. “
“Yes, sir.” McCoy nods once and walks away.
Once the door has hissed shut behind him, a rough jolt of laughter escapes him. Then another, and another and another until he thinks maybe he’s going mad up against the cool walls of the lift.
He wants to fuck Jim Kirk.
His brain is scrambling to catch up, to talk some sense into him, but it’s too late. And all his brain can really supply in the end, anyway, is that if he wants to fuck Jim Kirk, which he clearly does, then he must want to marry Jim Kirk, because, well, that’s just the way he’s wired, no two ways around it.
It should be a huge revelation, he thinks, bemused. With flashing lights and whistling bombs and several hula dancers or something, goodness knows. Instead, though, it’s been a Sunday morning of a revelation, slow and lazy and smelling of breakfast. Illuminating itself slowly so as not to startle him any more than necessary.
That reminds him of Jim’s particular Sunday morning fantasy, and his laughter fades until it’s just a smile pulling on his lips as he stares at nothing, lost in the remembered imagining. He doesn’t realize he’s softly rubbing the ghost of a ring into the third finger of his left hand.
( Part Three)
Day Three
He’s not tired. He really isn’t. The only reason he survived med school, new fatherhood, and the Academy is an ability to control his sleeping needs down to the minute.
But he sure as hell is jumpy. And grumpy. Maybe even grumpier than normal. If that’s possible.
“Quit looking at me like that,” he grouses lowly when he feels Kirk’s eyes on him for possibly the millionth time. It’s a slow day on the ship again, for sure. Starship travel, McCoy says in an imaginary speech to his daughter, is a lot like any other kind of travel: a whole lot of hurry up and wait. And sometimes being the boss means having nothing to do.
“Then quit giving me cause to do so.”
McCoy snorts. “Cause? I see no cause.”
“Come on, Bones. Everybody here can tell-” He makes an expansive gesture and McCoy grimaces as the rest of the bridge crew’s faces embarrassedly support what Jim is saying. “-that you’re up to your eyeballs in jitters. To borrow a phrase from you.”
Jitters are not what he’s up to his eyeballs in. No, what he’s up to his eyeballs in are nausea-inspiring fantasies of James T Kirk, not to mention the random crap getting thrown his way by the rest of the crew. He can tune them out by now easily enough, admittedly, but Kirk’s thoughts are loud, obnoxious, colorful, and stick to him like goddamn glue.
Luckily for him, when Jim’s on the bridge, Jim’s mind is on the bridge with him. Oh, there’s the occasional foray into Uhura-land, but it’s mostly school-boy antics, like goosing her or peeking down her neckline.
And now McCoy has brought Jim’s attention back to him. Which was a pretty dumb move, he realizes with a grimace, but at least he doesn’t have to deal with two different realities. The movie in their heads is the same as the one they’re actually in. So to speak.
“See? There’s that face again.”
He rolls his eyes. “Give it a rest, Jim, or I’ll find some more vaccinations to give you.”
“As if you could. I think I’ve got every sort of virus known to the Federation kicking back in my veins, and probably a few that aren’t.”
Bones almost cracks a smile at that, and the picture he’s getting from Jim’s head brightens. Bemused, and accepting boredom as an excuse, he looks at it again, and he notices something new.
He notices that Jim’s wearing a wedding band.
Jim. Is wearing a wedding ring. In his own head.
James Kirk, courtier of a thousand women and not a small number of men, very big fan of the flavor of the week, month, and/or day.
Imagines himself married.
McCoy cannot hold back a startled bark of laughter at the ludicrous idea, and Jim’s gaze turns sharp again. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Bones…” Jim’s got that ‘I’m your goddamn Captain’ tone creeping in, clearly for the purpose of needling McCoy.
So, fine, let him see what he gets by needling. “You want me to ask personal questions while we’re on the bridge, Captain?”
Jim looks around once, considers for a moment, then shrugs. “Just keep it clean, Doctor.”
“Easy enough. You ever think about getting married?”
McCoy swears Jim’s skin takes on a green tinge. He almost points out this fact to Spock, then decides that’s a little bit beyond the pale of even his own skewed sense of decency. Instead, he raises a mocking eyebrow at his captain. “I take that to be a no?”
Jim opens his mouth, then closes it. Then opens it again. When he finally manages to speak, his voice is normal but pitched surprisingly low, and McCoy pictures the rest of the bridge crew leaning in to try and hear what he has to say.
“Of course I have, Bones.”
Well, slap him three times and hand him to his mama, but that is not the answer he is expecting. He’s suddenly more than a little uncomfortable about the fact that they’re having this conversation on the bridge, and takes an awkward step towards the captain’s chair. His voice comes out so low it’s nearly a growl. “To whom?”
Jim shakes his head and looks down, a corner of his mouth turned up in that sardonic way he has. “No one that’s asked yet, clearly.”
McCoy’s eyebrow climbs higher on his forehead at the sentence construction. “So it’s just a vague idea of maybe someday.”
Kirk flashes him an easy smile. “Maybe someday, yeah.” Then he spins the chair smoothly away from McCoy. “Mr. Chekov, how much further do we have to go until we reach our destination?”
“Approximately fifteen minutes, sir.”
“Splendid. What shall we do until then, hmm? More of this Twenty Questions that Dr McCoy so helpfully started us off on? Maybe some Tiddlywinks?”
And the crew exhales, straightens, and goes back to their duties. The moment is forgotten. By all but Leonard McCoy.
---
That night when he can’t sleep, he finally ignores his training and listens to his instincts, going the one place he knows he can whip some of this excess energy out of himself.
The gym is bright and antiseptic, like always; it feels like the sickbay but there’s no sickness here, and so to McCoy it has become a second home. He pounds along the track for nearly an hour, letting the rhythm of his feet and his breathing become louder than the pounding in his head. It isn’t until far, far too late he realizes the sounds have become a mantra in his head, a litany of only two words: Jim Kirk, Jim Kirk, Jim Kirk JimKirk JimKirkJimKirk-
He stops short, doubling over with a case of the wheezes, and tries to stop his eyes from watering.
God damn Jim Kirk.
“Kirk to McCoy.”
A groan rips from his throat at the truly ill-timed summons. “What the hell do you want, Jim?”
“Are you decent?”
“In a manner of speaking,” McCoy says wryly.
“Kirk out,” is all he gets before the communicator goes silent. He stares at it for a second, then shakes himself. He knows better than to just stop cold after a run like that, so he cajoles his legs into jogging leisurely around the track once or twice more while he waits for Kirk’s arrival. He tries not to think. It very nearly works.
“Bones!” Jim calls from the doorway before moving into the room. “Bones, stop running grooves into the floor. I’ve got more briefing notes for you on tomorrow’s intake of POWs.” He’s coming closer to the stairs that run up to the track, and despite the cool-down job, McCoy’s heart rate annoyingly refuses to back off. “See, turns out there are two pretty extreme religious sects among the group of prisoners, and they’re threatening to rumble if we don’t-“
He stops short when he finally crests the stairs not ten feet from McCoy, who’s standing on the edge of the track clad only in shorts and sneakers, chugging from a container of water.
McCoy eyes him. “What?”
“Um.” Jim swallows, and McCoy’s gut turns over as he realizes what’s about to happen. No, he almost yells out loud. Not right now, you lecherous asshole!
Too late, though. The Jim in his mind has launched himself at the McCoy in his mind, and he can only hold on for the ride.
And what a ride it is.
Jim’s mouth is strong and wet and insistent and his fantasy McCoy is, of course, only too willing to volunteer a high level of participation. Their tongues slide against each other roughly, teeth flashing and getting in the way and causing coarse gasps of notquitepain, and Jim’s hands glide over as much of McCoy’s sweat-slicked skin as he can reach. Which, much to Jim’s delight, is quite a bit.
Hoarse whispers echo in his head as they both take in whatever air they can in between kisses, whispers like, “Jesus, Bones, you are so fucking hot,” and “Shut up, kid.” And, so quiet he can’t tell who says it, “Only for you.”
After that, they can’t even manage talking and it’s like time and reality have stopped, because they’re necking like desperate teenagers, hands fisting up in fabric and nails scratching at skin in an age-old but always futile attempt to fuse two bodies into one. The best they can manage is the simple magic of friction, of pants pushed hastily down and hips thrusting as close together as they can possibly get, rutting against each other messily, depravedly, too heated and too needy to look for other options.
McCoy hears a grunt that he knows as his and watches, ignoring the onset of dizziness, as the two bodies rock against each other frantically. The air is thick with their groans and their smell and it must just be the exhaustion but he is feeling this one, down to his very marrow.
As they climb higher and higher, Jim sucks his tongue into his mouth again and again, breaking away only to breathe in McCoy’s nickname and breathe out a single, clearly precious word. McCoy has to strain to hear what it is, though, and the moment he finally does happens to be the moment he sees himself slide his left hand through Jim’s hair to grasp the back of his neck roughly-and sees the thick silver band around his third finger.
“Mine,” Jim is panting fiercely into his lips. “Mine.”
The air freezes in his lungs. With a crash, a bang, a peal of thunder he swears the whole ship should be able to hear, McCoy feels the implication like a punch to the gut.
Jim Kirk doesn’t just think about being married to someone in the indeterminate future. Jim Kirk thinks about being married to him. Right now.
A groan rips through his mind like a lightning bolt, and suddenly he’s thoroughly occupied by watching himself come. Sparks fly, he swears sparks fly, and he can’t inhale, can’t breathe at all because there’s a vicegrip of pleasure on his brain, on his cock- only none of it’s real, and he knows this, but it feels so goddamn real, smells and tastes real, and he can hear Jim’s rough voice staking a goddamn claim and then giving a long, shuddery exhalation of- “Bones…”
And he simply can’t tear his brain away from the image, even as the two men quiet into rasping breaths and sloppy kisses, holding onto each other with shaking hands as they come down from the precipice. McCoy’s hands shear through Kirk’s hair again and again, while Jim’s hands dip and glide through the sweat they’re now sharing, painting mindless pictures of love and lust on shiny biceps and pectorals and whatever else he can find.
Then he breaks the kiss and slides his hand lazily yet purposefully through the spilled mess of semen between them. Locking eyes with McCoy, he brings his fingers up to drag across his mouth once. Twice. Three times. Then he reaches over to McCoy’s slack, reddened lips, and does the same.
Marking them.
“Mine, Bones. Always.”
An exchange of fluids and pheromones, primitive motions making signs of base possession, left for the world to see. If they only could. His doppelganger lets out a harsh breath, and looks at Jim with more love than he swears he could ever really feel, more than he ever even had for-
McCoy’s throat closes up and there’s a burning somewhere behind his eyes. “Jim,” he hears his other self say before kissing the captain exquisitely thoroughly. “Jim…”
“What?”
Oh, fuck.
McCoy’s brain clears with a snap and he tries desperately to think of something useful, to think of anything but the smell of Jim’s slick fingers... “I’m sorry, Jim, I was just-” He cuts off, because he can’t say the name again without being reminded of his other voice saying it in a tone dripping with lust, anticipation, and-
No.
He clenches his jaw so hard a muscle jumps in his cheek. “Jim, can we possibly finish this in the morning?” He holds up a thankfully not shaking hand as Kirk tries to protest. “I heard what you said, and I’m sure it will be fine as long as we keep both their options and our eyes open when we’re going in. But you’ll brief us all in the morning, alright?”
He is not going to take no for an answer, and Jim must be able to tell. Eventually, he nods. “Well, alright. Probably should all be in bed, anyway.” He peers at McCoy for a second, and McCoy is proud to say he meets his gaze head-on.
“Right. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Bones.” On his way out the door, Jim tosses an easy grin back at him, and he feels his stomach clench. “And go take a shower, old man. You reek.”
---
Once back in his quarters and cleaned up, McCoy doesn’t even look at his liquor supply. He just reaches straight for the hypo full of sedative.
Sleep takes him over almost immediately, his exhausted body welcoming it with open arms. His mind glides through blissful blankness for a full eight hours, and when he wakes up, gummy but solidly better, he swears to himself that everything’s going to be fine. Today.
---
Day Four
“Doctor?”
He hears a strange tone in the attending nurse’s call, and feels a crease develop between his eyebrows as he walks to where she’s standing. She’s pushed aside the privacy curtain to one of the med beds and is staring down at something, a blank expression on her face. She’s too far away for him to use the damn curse, and even as he gets within range and then closer, all he reads from her is abject consternation, so bright it whites out anything else.
“What is it?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
Then he finally looks at the object of her preoccupation. And he’s… he’s… He’s a doctor, not a security specialist, but even he can tell a bomb when he sees one.
“Oh,” he says quietly. The thing on the bed is cold, silver, black, and unfathomable. “One of the prisoners must have slipped it past security, somehow,” he says absently.
Somehow. He can’t think of how. He can’t think at all. Don’t the ones in the movies always have a big red countdown clock, telling you that you have so many seconds to save the girl and get the hell out of the building? Why doesn’t this one have numbers? Why doesn’t this one tell him how long he has? Why can’t he move?
“Run.”
He hears his voice but he doesn’t feel himself saying it, doesn’t remember thinking he should say it. The nurse takes his advice, though, even though he’s just standing there, staring at the- the box of death that’s so tiny it seems like it should be perfectly harmless. Just tip it right into the trash can and all will be well, right? He tamps down a humorless, slightly insane chuckle as it occurs to him how impotent he is in this situation. He’s not good at this kind of thing. Anybody else would know what to do. Jim, Jim would really know what to do, he’d probably come up with some fool plan to-
Jim.
And it’s as if the thought of the captain is enough to break whatever spell he’s been under. He pivots and sprints across the room, shouting instructions and pushing buttons and god dammit, he wishes he knew how much time they had before-
When he hears the bomb explode with a surprisingly tinkly thud, he thinks of Jim. Can almost smell Jim’s warm breath on his face. Then he feels a good hard knock to his skull the likes of which he’s never experienced, and slides into blackness.
---
Day Six
They’re in a hotel somewhere, he can tell, for this particular trip through Jim Kirk’s sexual deviances. They’re in a hotel on a planet with a sun or two. Maybe even Earth, McCoy muses, then realizes that he’s been to this hotel before. Like, in reality. It’s in San Francisco, right above a bar his friend owns, and he’s spent more than one night passed out in various empty rooms, unable or unwilling to go back to campus until absolutely necessary.
This time, though, there’s no hangover, he can tell. Late morning sunlight streams through the mostly open curtains, and dust mites are a-dancing in its beams. The bed is empty, but in such disarray that he has a feeling the sheets are still warm, and probably soiled beyond their usefulness.
He sees himself sprawled out on the couch in an undershirt and boxers, clearly just-washed hair going every which way while he flips through the screens of a medical journal. Or, hell, could be a trashy novel, for all McCoy knows. This is Jim’s head, not reality.
Speaking of… The bathroom door slides open and Jim walks through, one towel slung loosely around his waist while he dogs his hair with another. He sees Jim say something to his alter ego, but is startled when he can’t hear it.
He can’t hear it. The silence makes the vision strange, incomplete, and he itches for a knob to twist or a button to push so he can have the full picture. When none appear, as of course they won’t, he ignores the wistful feeling in his gut and concentrates fully on watching whatever’s unfolding in front of him.
He sees himself not look up from his reading while Jim talks. Sees Jim capture his chin between his thumb and forefinger and force him to look up, look into Jim’s eyes before he leans in for the kiss. It’s a lazy kiss, a tasty, lingering, I-just-fucked-the-shit-out-of-you-and-don’t-you-forget-it kiss, and a pain pings in a tiny spot in McCoy’s chest, somewhere alarmingly near his heart.
Then Jim shucks off the towels and tucks in beside him on the couch. McCoy watches himself adjust accordingly, slinging an arm around probably still damp shoulders and kissing the top of a towhead, before going back to the trade mag. McCoy curses mentally at the kick he feels in his gut when he sees the ring on his left hand. Then his eyes immediately search for- Ah, yes, there’s Jim’s, too, draped on McCoy’s thigh as he cuddles-cuddles!-with his CMO.
Kirk won’t stand for such time-wasting, he’s sure. He’s sure the kid’s going to quit with the girly stuff and just drop down, tug on the elastic, and lick up and down his alter-ego’s cock.
But it doesn’t happen. Jim simply burrows into McCoy’s side, his apparently satiated penis happily limp against his thigh.
Jim Kirk, worn out? Damn, he thinks. I am truly magnificent.
…at least, in Jim Kirk’s head I am.
He’s pondering this when suddenly the scene is being sucked away from him. No, dammit, I wasn’t ready to leave that one yet. I wanted-
But his mind skitters away from that thought as quickly as it came upon it, and soon he’s left with only the smells of freshly-showered skin and stale sheets and a splitting headache.
He can’t help but want to grumble about it, but when he tries, the groan he hears tear out of his throat is offensively pathetic-sounding, and he thinks better of it.
He struggles to open his eyes instead. The hand he didn’t realize was holding his tightens its grip for a nanosecond before quickly letting go. McCoy frowns.
Jim’s voice comes to him as if from a great distance. “No, don’t. The ship is fine. You can sleep as long as you want.”
Yeah, fat chance of McCoy letting that happen. He squishes his eyelids together, then forces a few blinks, then, hallelujah, manages to peer up at Jim’s only somewhat blurry face. “The nurses… the patients…” he croaks sullenly.
“Everything’s fine, you stubborn jackass. Everyone is fine. Why don’t you ever believe me?”
His lips quirk up, which kind of hurts because they’re quite dry. “Because you’re rarely right?” His voice is so gruff it’s ugly.
“Pfft. I’m always right. There’s just never any proof, and you’re a scientist, so you need bullshit like that.”
The mock hoity-toity in his voice coaxes a laugh out of McCoy. Which turns straight into a cough.
“Here.” There’s water in front of him instantly, and it’s a soothing balm if he’s ever felt one.
“I’m a doctor, not a scientist.” The fallacy of that makes him shake his head, but he only said it to make Jim laugh, anyway. He hears a low chuckle, and is satisfied.
Finally his eyes aren’t sticky and he can get a look at the captain. A good look around. He’s surprised at the small number of occupied beds around him. “It was more bark than bite,” Jim says, as if he can tell what McCoy is thinking. He’d be concerned about that if he wasn’t so focused on his job, but that’s how it goes sometimes. “You’re one of only five injuries reported.”
“And my bay?” He’s relieved to hear only a little more than the normal amount of gruff this time.
“Minor damages, all things considered. Supplies we have plenty of, that sort of thing. You’ll be able to operate pretty much exactly as before, and full repairs will be made in a week when we dock at Earth.” His face darkens slightly. “After we drop off these damn prisoners. They’ve been nothing but a pain in my ass.”
McCoy chuckles. “Now, Jim, you’re starting to sound like a grumpy country doctor. I don’t think that’s befitting of a captain.”
“I learned from the best.”
He suppresses a grouse, and his head throbs helpfully. “Can’t I have something for this damn headache?”
Jim stands up and reaches for a hypospray. “Now you can, yes. You were too…” He pauses to clear his throat, and McCoy looks at him, curious. He can smell the trails the fear and anxiety have left on Jim’s mind, and that ping hits McCoy square in the chest again. “You couldn’t before.”
“What…?”
“Intracranial something or other. Chapel can tell you about it later. Your hard-headedness is, apparently, only metaphorical.” There’s a half smile, then, which fades before he continues. “And we don’t exactly have a neurosurgeon on standby, so… We did our best.”
McCoy can see, vaguely, in flashes, what Jim has seen of the sickbay the last couple days. It’s a lot, and it isn’t pretty. “Clearly, as I’m cognizant.”
“You have a great team, here, Doctor.”
“I do indeed. Thank you.”
Jim’s still standing there, the hypo in his hand.
“May I…?” McCoy raises an eyebrow and feebly waves his hand.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Hang on.” He clearly intends to call for the nurse, but McCoy won’t have it. He summons all his energy-which is so little it’s almost not adequate, much to his disgust-and swipes the injector out of Jim’s hand.
It takes a few seconds to kick in. Then he realizes it wasn’t just a painkiller. “Dammit, Jim,” is all he manages before his unwillingly unconscious head hits the pillow.
---
Day Seven
As in all wars, the doctor is left to deal with the ultimate irony-healing those who have killed. There are three prisoners in his sickbay today, and he’s got no choice but to fix them.
“Do not look so angry, doctor.”
McCoy almost spits in the guy’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll just try to forget that you tried to blow me up, is that it?”
“It was not I who did that.”
“Well, maybe not, but your blessed religion supported it.”
“If that is what you believe, your Academy did you no favors.”
McCoy grimaces. “The Academy is just fine, damn it. I meant your particular brand of your religion. You’re here, aren’t you? Being moved like cattle because you’ve committed some crime that goes against your planet’s actual religion?”
The man is silent for a while, and McCoy chances a glance up from the knee he’s currently repairing. All he’s getting from this guy-all he’s gotten from anyone, all day-is vague smells, only at close proximity, and only of things that are obvious. It’s damn annoying. He wishes the damn curse would either be helpful or go the hell away.
“That is not quite my story, no.”
“Oh, really.” It’s not a question. “And I suppose you’re actually the good guy, here? You’re merely here because you tried to save the women and children first?”
“You may use as much sarcasm as you wish, Doctor, but it does not change the truth.”
“What truth?”
“I am here because I loved.”
McCoy snorts. “Yeah, right.”
“You think I am not capable?”
McCoy takes a deep breath, counting to ten. “I didn’t say that.” You jackass, he adds mentally.
“No, you didn’t.” The But you implied it, you asshole is clear as a bell, damn curse or no.
There’s a pause, then the lack of mental stream from this guy, the lack of answers, starts to drive him nuts. “So what happened to her? Did you two commit some romantic crime and get arrested together?”
Another pause. “No.”
“Oh? Where is she, then?”
“He is dead.”
A bolt of the man’s wrenching anguish hits him square between the eyes. McCoy’s hands still, poised above the man’s leg. “Oh.”
“He was always… more impulsive than I. More heart, more ego, more nerve. He tried to save someone that did not wish to be saved, and he perished because of it. I tried to save him, and so I am here.”
McCoy swallows. The details are flashing weakly in his frontal lobe-he can see the death, vaguely, blurrily, and he suddenly feels sick. He’s actually done with the man’s knee, anyway. He should just block the stream, get up, close the curtain and never look back.
He does the first one. But he hears the low words tumbling out of his mouth before he can do the rest. “Isn’t that-aren’t those sorts of relations-“ He’s damn proud of his tact, really. “-considered a sin on your planet?”
The man laughs. He downright laughs, a pleasant-enough sound, but this time painfully rich with knowledge and pity, and McCoy knows, damn curse or no, that he’s laughing at him.
“I think you know how much that matters in the end, Doctor.”
---
“Welcome back, Doctor McCoy,” Spock’s always-modulated tones greet him as the lift slides open and he steps out onto the bridge.
“Thank you, Commander,” he says through a clenched jaw, avoiding the eyes of any crew who chance looking in his direction. It’s always embarrassing to be sick when you’re a doctor, so he’s kind of been lying low, but Jim called him to the bridge, so to the bridge he has come. Grumpy as hell, but here.
“Bones! How’s the headache?”
“It was fine until a few seconds ago,” he drawls, glaring at Jim. “What did you want?”
“We’re about a half hour from the drop-off point. Are the formerly ill prisoners healed enough to be chucked into space?”
“Of course they are. You didn’t hire me for my good looks.”
Jim outright laughs at that. “No, clearly not. Alright, then, thanks.”
McCoy scowls at him. “For this, you called me up here?”
Jim shrugs. “Just wanted to make sure you remembered where the bridge was, Doctor. Never know what a good conk on the head might do you.” His tone is light, but McCoy is struck by a stream of the worry still lingering in the kid’s head. It fades quickly and McCoy finds himself reaching out with his brain, trying to hold on to the connection.
He needn’t worry, though, because the kid’s just changing topics. He sweeps his glance up and down Bones once, then shifts his gaze back to the view screen. “You seem to be in fine working order, though.”
A familiar musky smell fills McCoy’s nostrils, and he freezes. Jim is so totally imagining them fucking in the Captain’s chair, isn’t he? He is, McCoy just knows it, despite not being able to see it.
Hell, he practically can see it, if Jim’s fantasy version of himself is anywhere near accurate. He can easily imagine him sprawled in the chair, fully clothed except for the undone front of his regulation trousers, watching McCoy suck his cock like it’s the sexiest goddamn thing he’s ever seen. And McCoy sees that the fantasy him thinks so, too, because he’s got his fist around his own heavily erect cock, looking up at Kirk like he’s enjoying the hell out of reducing the most infamous captain of Starfleet to a pile of panting, sweating-
McCoy just at that moment realizes that he’s watching his own fantasy. Nobody else has instigated it, or plotted it, or decreed that fantasy-McCoy should be so aroused. He just is.
And he’s startled to find that actual-McCoy, as he stands on the bridge and stares at Jim, is pretty damn aroused, too.
He can’t hold back a surprised grunt. He feels a flush creep up his neck as he glances around to see if any of the bridge crew has noticed.
But apparently only the captain has heard him. He looks at McCoy appraisingly for a moment, then apparently decides it’s just residual head-injury shenanigans. “You’re free to go, Bones. Transport security will be down to pick up your prisoners in about twenty minutes. “
“Yes, sir.” McCoy nods once and walks away.
Once the door has hissed shut behind him, a rough jolt of laughter escapes him. Then another, and another and another until he thinks maybe he’s going mad up against the cool walls of the lift.
He wants to fuck Jim Kirk.
His brain is scrambling to catch up, to talk some sense into him, but it’s too late. And all his brain can really supply in the end, anyway, is that if he wants to fuck Jim Kirk, which he clearly does, then he must want to marry Jim Kirk, because, well, that’s just the way he’s wired, no two ways around it.
It should be a huge revelation, he thinks, bemused. With flashing lights and whistling bombs and several hula dancers or something, goodness knows. Instead, though, it’s been a Sunday morning of a revelation, slow and lazy and smelling of breakfast. Illuminating itself slowly so as not to startle him any more than necessary.
That reminds him of Jim’s particular Sunday morning fantasy, and his laughter fades until it’s just a smile pulling on his lips as he stares at nothing, lost in the remembered imagining. He doesn’t realize he’s softly rubbing the ghost of a ring into the third finger of his left hand.
( Part Three)