leftwithmybones | (no subject)

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There's something that feels so damn dirty about this that McCoy checks the lock on his bedroom door four times, his skin feeling itchy and too hot, his breathing a little too shallow, and his brain a little too cooked to think of this as anything but an idiotic idea. Still; he's spent so long being so damn chaste and good that he doesn't think one moment of weakness is going to bring his world crashing down around his ears.

Jim's voice buzzes in his ear, the memory of those tapes still loud as anything. That voice, that voice that got him through so much in the years they've been friends, wrapped up in a low voice that reeks of sex, discussing all the plentiful ways he's bent, twisted, and fucked a good number of their colleagues, and fuck if it doesn't get his blood boiling in a dangerous mix of jealousy, irritation, and some low-down dirty shade of desire he doesn't really understand.

Three years ago, he would've known better than to touch this mess with a twenty-foot pole, but it's three years since then and Jim's managed a hell of a lot of growing up. It's practically one of the reasons why McCoy feels like he can do this, fumbling with the button of his jeans in a haphazard attempt to get them off faster, to get them gone. He only manages to shove them to his knees, sprawled on the bed as he takes his cock in hand and lets out a sharp hiss when the first wave of relief comes.

He's an idiot, he thinks breathlessly, back arching on the bed as he shifts to his side, bare feet pushing the sheets out, toes curling and grabbing hold of them as he wrinkles them finely, not giving a damn. It's been a long time since he's done this -- since he's let himself do this -- and his thoughts are wrapped up in that damn tape.

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Jim with one of 'em. With Gaila or with a pretty little communications officer. He imagines the foreplay, the discarded clothes, the sweat, the skin on skin, the sounds (he's barely aware that he's making sounds of his own, swept up in his own little fantasy reel). The only consolation is that the one time a moan treads perilously close to a name, he cuts it off before he even gets past the J, taking better care not to let anything slip.

He's in the house. It's big, but it's not that big.

McCoy doesn't have the patience for this to go on with no end in sight. His hand moving quick, he brings himself to a satisfying and quick end, laying spent on the sheets and panting as he stares up at the ceiling, a looming sensation of dread about to smack him right in the chest because he's at home and worse:

He doesn't know where Jim is.

"Fuck," he mumbles, swiping a hand on the sheets since they're already a mess. He sits up, takes the care to make himself somewhat presentable (runs a hand through his hair, touches the back of a cool hand against a hot cheek) and buttons up his jeans before he heads to the door, shoulder leaning against it for a long moment. He's just going to head out and see. He's just going to see what kind of damage control he's got to do: that's all.

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For a second, he hears Jim's voice and it's like electricity volting through his blood, making his whole system tremble and twitch like he's been shocked. Three words, but he's thinking back to that damn tape. His spine stiffens and he entertains a flash of a fantasy (gripping Jim's hair tight enough to hurt so that he can yank Jim's head back and suck kisses into his neck and take that smug control out of his goddamn hands).

He grunts in reply. "S'fine," is all he says, refusing to turn around and look at Jim for fear of the embarrassment on his face. "You seen the honey?"

"Sure." With a widening grin, Jim settles back in his chair. It's rare that he gets to rib on Bones on this particular subject, and he means to indulge. "Sweet tooth today, Bones? That's not like you. But I guess you need the carbs, huh? For stamina."

As it happens, the honey is right next to Jim's hand, and he grabs it, rapping it once against the table. "Long clinic hours and all. Honey's right here."

Jesus, he forgot how much of an asshole that Jim can be. McCoy shoots a deathly glower in his direction, taking in deep breaths and settling himself. "I just want it for my tea," he says evenly, putting the water on to boil before he shuts all the cupboards and does the inevitable: he turns and faces Jim, trying not to think about his face through every sordid and perfect description, tries not to think about how much he wants to kill some of the people he considers friends.

Bones finally turns, and Jim schools his face as best he can, noting the sweat along his collarbone, eyes following to where it gathers at the base of his throat. Beneath the flush, Bones is more tan than he remembered.

Blinking, Jim offers up the little jar. "Thought you were at the Compound," he says with a friendly smile. "I guess you just really had to come - " He clears his throat of a sudden cough. " - home early?"

The asshole heard him. McCoy sets his jaw tightly, to the point that it might snap. Instead of saying anything, he reaches forward and grabs the honey, shoving his chair back to tend to the tea. Normally, he'd be pissed, but he'd let it slide because Jim's allowed to rib him. This time, though, is different. This time is different because McCoy got pent up because of Jim, which is something that's only happened a few times before and he'd always veered away from those thoughts because Jim, well, Jim always seemed too high-maintenance and then McCoy always felt too damn pathetic.

"You're being an asshole right now," he quietly informs Jim. "And if you don't want me to start being one back, I'd stop right now."

"Easy. You're supposed to be relaxed after," says Jim, scooting his chair away just in case Bones starts swinging, but his friend looks so miserable that Jim finds it in him to relent.

"Just different, s'all. Three years at the Academy and that never happened, but you surely owe me, many times as you had to, uh - " Jim clears his throat again. "Deal with my extracurriculars."

In his head, he's progressed to shoving Jim onto the table and making him shut up, crawling on top of him with one knee pressed between his thighs and -- stop. Stop. He needs to stop. He's too old to have a goddamn unrequited moment of lust with his best friend. "I heard all about your extracurriculars," he mutters snidely.

And oh, look, he's being an asshole anyway. Somehow, McCoy's not surprised. "This is where I could launch into a secondhand account of Andorian reproductive organs and their colors if you really want to keep pushing me."

"And I would applaud your expanded boundaries," says Jim, but his eyebrows have drawn together. He's pretty sure he's the only person on the island who could have slept with an Andorian. And he's equally certain he never subjected Bones to the details. "Be more impressed if it was firsthand, though."

Thank god for the boiling water. McCoy takes the time to steep the pekoe and dumps two spoons of honey in the water. It's not Jim's fault that he stole the tape. It's not Jim's fault that he watched it, and it's definitely not Jim's fault that he confessed all that stuff to begin with.

What is Jim's fault is the fact that he's twisted McCoy up into shapes he doesn't know how to get out of and it leaves him feeling hopeless and scared and lost. Sighing, he digs out the tape from his pocket and tosses it to the table, hearing it scrape across the wood as loud as a gunshot.

Jim picks it up with a deeper frown, one that doesn't lessen as he reads the label aloud. "Confessions of a Starfleet Captain." He looks up at Bones, all traces of mirth gone from his blue eyes and replaced by a bolt of dread that lodges low in Jim's gut.

"What is this?"

McCoy lets out an empty sounding huff, settling back in a kitchen chair and breathing in the odor of the tea. "It's not anything good. It's shitty, Jim, and I shouldn't have watched and I'm sorry I did, but apologies aren't gonna make it go away."

Confessions of a Starfleet Captain.

It's no title the Academy would ever use, Jim thinks, but who knows? Komack always seemed to have it out for him - he could have taken Jim's psych evals and labeled them anything he felt like, this could - Jim's fingers tighten around the tape. This could have anything on it.

"Bones," he says. "Tell me what is is."

He leans forward on the table, shirt rucked up to the elbows so that when he rests his arms on the wood, they'll scrape and leave red marks. "It's you," he says. "It's you, Jim, it's you, here on the island, on Valentine's Day, pouring your heart out to some goddamn stranger about all your dirty, elusive, pornographic secrets," he says, his cheeks burning as he does.

"The day I don't remember," says Jim. He sits back, tapping the little tape against the table in short, even beats, one thumb against his eyebrow to stay an ever growing ache. "Is on this tape."

"What do you mean, pornographic?" he asks, but his cheeks are beginning to burn, shame like he's not used to rising in his throat. A secondhand account of Andorian reproductive organs and their colors. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I mean that you're on that tape talking about every single sexual conquest you've had, Jim," McCoy says, something in his gut dropping out at being the one to have to tell him this. He feels guilty, now, for doing what he did, for thinking what he is, for imagining Jim in those kinds of ways because it's wrong. It's wrong because the impetus is in that tape (or so he'll tell himself) and it's wrong because Jim doesn't even remember recording it.

"Every one?" Jim's chair scrapes across the floor as he stands up, stomach hollow and food long forgotten. "'Cause that'd take a while, Bones. Every one? How many - " He shakes the tape. "How many hours have you been watching this?"

"I watched it for a long time." He couldn't stop it. It'd been like a shuttle-wreck. He'd started and then every time he thought he'd turn it off, Jim would start talking about some new species or position or something that kept him watching until he got twisted into the kind of arousal that came when watching your best friend narrating soft-core pornography. "...didn't know half of what I heard," he murmurs lightly, like he can make a joke of it now.

Like he can lead Jim's genius brain away from connecting the dots.

"No?" Jim watches Bones as carefully as he can, finds and reads every tic and nuance of his expression. There's embarrassment there, some regret. No small amount of discomfort, but no horror, either, which means...which means the things Jim did on Tarsus for a few bags of grain didn't make the tape. His shoulders lose some of their tension.

"Could've asked," he says, but his brain is spinning in a different direction now. All told, he doesn't mind if Bones knows all his filthier secrets, but, "If you want to know, just ask, Bones," he says and cocks his head. "So you watched me. And then you. Came home."

"I don't...I didn't..." He inhales sharply and drains half his tea in one gulp, standing up abruptly when he realizes that this is the last place in the world that he wants to be. Jim's figured it out, which means that he needs to get the hell out of there before they start discussing how much more mortifying this whole situation is. "Yeah, Jim, I watched your tape and then I came home."

"Is that the time?" he asks, glancing to the sundial in the yard. "Well, shit, Jess is probably waiting on me," he mutters in a rush, heart beating frantically in his chest.

"Probably for a while now," says Jim, taking up all the space in front of the door. He wouldn't put it past Bones to climb through a damn window, but Jim's not about to make it easy for him. He might have just heard Bones jerking off, but Bones has heard his...everything.

"You've been busy for hours, after all. So." Jim draws a breath. "Did this tape include solo encounters, or was it limited to group activity?"

He wants to claw his goddamn face off before he answers these questions, but he's rarely been dishonest with Jim and he's not about to start now. "I heard everything," he admits, which includes that little story in the middle of all of it about the time Jim had jerked off to thoughts about him, which practically makes him half-hard right here, thinking about it.

It's not that he's egotistical. It's just the thought of the infallible and hotshot Jim Kirk actually thinking that he's worth something? Yeah, it gets him going.

"Ah." The exhalation feels too loud in the silence that surrounds them, but Jim's always been good at this. Digging in his heels, pushing, goading. Whatever it takes to draw attention from the real issue. Whatever it takes to protect himself.

"I heard something too," he says. "Wouldn't call it everything. Not like what you heard." Jim swallows, steeling his jaw. "So tell me."

He takes a deep breath and realizes that with Jim blocking the door, he's got no escape. He has to make a stand and he has to be cautious and careful, otherwise everything has the potential to go up in flames. "Tell you what?" he replies, doing an admirable job of keeping his voice steady.

"Everything," Jim replies, even as every part of him is screaming don't do this, not to him. But he's raw, he's as good as naked, every sexual thing he's ever done laid bare and absorbed by the man in front of him, and Jim doesn't know what else to do with it.

"What'd you do in there, Bones?"

It's a strange feeling that's got him in its grips. He feels like he could be sick at the same time as he feels like his whole stomach is weightless, like one wrong (or right) answer is going to change everything, forever. Still, it's pretty clear to him that he can't avoid this. "You want the play by play, Jim? Is that what you want?" he asks, voice low and raw, like he's being asked a hell of a lot. "That I touched myself because listening to you made me feel like my skin was on fire and if I didn't, I'd burn? That it was either give in to that or think about how much I wanted to throttle half the campus for treating you like that?"

He takes in a sharp breath, feeling that overwhelming and terrifying fear practically paralyze him. "Look, Jim, I get it. Okay? I get it. You were living the life you were a little late to. I get that I factored into it somewhere in the middle, I know it doesn't have to mean anything. So, just...don't make this awkward between us."

"Please."

Jim closes his eyes to the sight of him, but he can't help but feel that voice move over him, every hard grip he's felt around his shoulders over the years, every bracing frame of Bones' hands on him, around him, holding him up. It feels foreign in this context, and at the same time, familiar. And try as he might, he can't help but hear the pleading in Bones' voice. He can't stand to hurt him anymore than he can stand to lose him.

"Bones," Jim exhales, panic seizing all at once and ratcheting ever higher. "M'just running my mouth. I don't want anything, okay?" There's a tape - a whole tape of everything Jim's ever done, and he can't think. He doesn't even realize he has hands on Bones' shoulders until he feels them tighten. "I was just talking, I did - I don't know what I said on there, but none of it - I don't care about a lot of things, but I care about you." His hands are on Bones' face. "You know that, right?"

At first, his shoulders fall -- with something like relief or disappointment when Jim admits to not needing anything, because that's what he's good at -- but then there are hands on his shoulders, hands on his face and it's been a long time since anyone's really touched him. The fact that this is happening given their day is complicated and drags more issues than he knows how to process into the picture.

He closes his eyes and lets himself lean into the touch, sagging forward like he's letting the tension out of his body. "What the hell're you doing to me, huh?" he asks wearily, not sure where that leaves the both of them, with all of this out in the open.

"Bones." Jim's face is miserable, ecstatic, confused. Closed. "You're the best person I know. If anyone has to know every insane thing I've ever done." He draws a breath. "I'm glad it's you. I'm sorry," he admits, even as he doesn't know why. "I'm sorry you heard all that. I don't even know why I said it." His thumbs catch along Bones' cheekbones. "I don't know what I was doin' that day."

That's the worst of it. After the party, after Jim freaked the hell out about what happened with himself and Scotty, this tape had only served as a brutal and pointed reminder that he hadn't been there to stop this. He'd been busy running around, trying to put out fires, but he hadn't put Jim first and that makes him feel like a piece of absolute scum.

And he can't even focus on that, because the way Jim is touching his cheeks is bringing a high flush to them, blood rushing up like it's being summoned there. "S'fine, Jim," he murmurs thickly, an echo of the same promise from earlier. "We're just lucky they're not here, that's all."

"Who?" Jim asks, bright eyes fixed on the color rising in Bones' cheeks, the scrape of stubble beneath the pad of his thumb. It makes it hard to think, harder still to release him, and when Jim's hands fall they only go as far as Bones' shoulders. He tries to smile.

"My costars in sexcapades?"

He sways forward, just enough that he can feel the heat drifting off Jim's body, making him tempting as hell because he's so close and McCoy's been in the midst of ridiculously vivid fantasies about the man all day, now. "Yeah, your pornographic cohorts," he says, barely keeping back the sneer. "Think I'd have found new test subjects for my drugs if they were."

Shit, he's always known how blue Jim's eyes are, but this close, it's practically unnatural.

"We were all just blowin' off steam," Jim replies, and his fingers twitch like they want to smooth away that sneer, erase it before he can allow himself to wonder if maybe it isn't directed at him, too. God knows he got around at the Academy and at home, but he's different now. He has purpose, or he had one, a big enough one to distract from baser pleasures. Now Jim doesn't know what he has if not for Bones.

"God," he exhales, "I can't believe you know all that."

"Yeah, I can't, either," he agrees, feeling a little weary at the fact that he does. Worse, he doesn't know what they're supposed to do from here. He wishes that he had half of a clue, but all he really knows is that he's confused as shit about what he's feeling for Jim right now, all tracking back to that damn tape.

...or maybe it's more than that, given how he couldn't even leave him alone on the ground. He's not ready to cope with this. "I really ought to get going to the lab," he points out, a bit dully now that it's not so much of an excuse.

Jim's hands slip from his shoulders, and he nods, misery pulling at the edges of the smile he tries to muster. Bones doesn't sound like himself at all. He sounds like someone Jim doesn't know how to read, and it scares him.

"Are you mad?" he asks, fidgeting with his sleeves. "I mean. Am I different to you now?"

It's a loaded question because the truth is that he's not mad, but Jim is different to him. Before, it'd been like a 'hands off' sign had been constructed over Jim's head, but that's been demolished by that tape and the things that Jim said on it -- things that he keeps thinking about, thank god that Jim doesn't have a byline into his head. "Yeah, you're a little different, but I'm not mad."

And there. There, he's honest. He's been honest.

Jim nods, looking down at his feet as he finally steps away. He's never regretted any of his many hookups at the Academy. Hell, it's been a while since he even thought of them, but it's different now. Back then he hadn't cared what anyone thought, all his focus on besting them academically, but he does care what Bones thinks, and Bones knows everything. He knows it and he wants to go back to the lab, and Jim really ought to let him.

"Okay."

McCoy can't just leave, not like that. He heaves out a soft sigh and steps forward, yanking Jim's shirt until he's pulled him as tightly against him as possible, hugging him like he's intending to squeeze the life out of him. "Stop it," he says. "I'm not mad at you. Okay? I'm not mad," he insists, like that's the issue at hand. "Would you just listen to me? Believe me on that?"

"Yeah," says Jim, and he means to be flip, but as soon as Bones' arms are around him he has his forehead braced against Bones' shoulder, eyes closed and almost dizzy with relief. Whatever he can't read on Bones' face, this hug is the same, and Bones isn't going anywhere. And he sure wouldn't touch Jim if he thought he was about to catch thirty interplanetary STDs.

"Thanks," he mumbles into Bones' shirt. "Been a long time since I was like that, anyway. Soon as I was on ship - you remember. Mission comes first."

Out of habit, out of instant action and no though, McCoy slides his fingers through Jim's hair to keep him close, turning his head to brush a slow kiss to Jim's temple, like he's trying to protect him from god knows what. Still, it's enough to remind him of what he's not supposed to do, easing away and clearing his throat heavily. "You're the best captain I've ever known," he says. "And I mean that. I mean that with all my heart. It showed, Jim. Your determination and your hard work showed."

Jim looks at his feet again, but there's a grin on his face this time, pride and relief and embarrassment thrumming through him in equal measure. He straightens his hair after Bones' mussing, and doesn't seem to realize that his fingers linger on the spot where the other man's lips connected.

"Thanks," he says, blushing to his hairline, and pushes at Bones' shoulder before he laughs, "God, this is a weird fuckin' day. You sure you gotta go back in?"

He bites down on a 'you look so pretty when you blush' comment, but then Jim's asking him something and the truth is...well, the truth is that he doesn't really know if he has to go back in. "No," he admits, like he's been dosed to tell the damn truth. "Just figured you wouldn't want my awkward ass around here."

"I think we're on pretty even ground in that department," says Jim, and even if they weren't, he doesn't want Bones to go. He wants him to stay, to laugh and grouse and nag him and just - be his Bones.

"You been busting my chops about doing some garden work for forever. Let's do that."

He laughs, but it's awkward and pained. It's like it's been ripped out of him, but he manages to get it out and he feels okay for it. "Just remember, don't eat the damn vegetables, otherwise you're getting a hypo in the neck to combat the effects."

"Do I look ready to trip and fall into a vegetable?" Jim laughs, grabbing Bones by the shoulder to haul him forward into the garden. "There's a few here we don't know if I'm allergic to, anyway," he adds. "Damn tropics. We're going to have to find out sometime."

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