Archive of Our Own

He’s very quiet, Bones is, but Jim hears him. All those telltale little sounds, harsh, excited breathing, too-frequent rustling of the covers, an occasional half-heard moan or whimper or slap of flesh on flesh. Jim knows that, just feet away on the far side of their shared dorm room, Doctor Leonard McCoy has his prick in his hand and is jerkin’.

Jim thinks that he ought to be a little disgusted by this, or annoyed, or at least dismayed. Hell, even embarrassed. But, nope, all he’s feeling is turned on. And wide awake.

Why the hell not? It isn’t as if Bones can yell at him for jerking off with his roommate present, is it? Bones is a doctor, not a hypocrite.

All the same, Jim does his best to be very quiet as he reaches down under the covers to pull his cock free from his boxers. The first touch is surprisingly potent, and he winces at how loud that gasp must’ve been. But then Bones makes a soft, deep-throated sound like a groan, and Jim knows his buddy’s in the home stretch now, and that’s so fricken hot it has him rubbing himself furiously, racing against a guy who has a serious head-start.

Oh, God. Did Bones just say—it had sounded like “Fuck, yeah.” The swearing and the obvious pleasure in the whisper does Jim in. He does his best to gulp back words of his own as he comes, warm and quick, all over his hand.

He knows from some quality of the silence, and from the sense he has that his friend’s face is turned towards him in the pitch dark of the dormitory room, that they’re both aware of what’s just happened. But nothing’s said. Jim dangles an arm over the side of the bed, grabs for whatever bit of discarded clothing he can find on the floor, cleans himself up hastily and then settles in to sleep.

The next night, as Jim’s hand steals guiltily down under the covers, he finds himself sort of hoping that Bones will hear and be aroused, will imagine what he looks like doing this, will picture his cock and mentally bow down before its magnificence. Still, even though he’s been hoping for it, when he hears his room-mate moving, then the tiny sound that might be a bottle opening, then more rustling, it sends a thrill of mingled shame, fear, and excitement up along Jim’s spine.

It’s the first time Jim’s jerked off for an audience, with the hope of arousing that audience, and he decides he likes it. What a rush, this naughty, unspoken game in the dark, this knowledge that he can make someone hard without being seen, without saying a word.

By the next week it’s become a routine. They both know they won’t be alone jerking off late at night in the fake privacy of darkness, but they never speak of it. Jim has relaxed enough to get louder—Bones, too. Now Jim pulls back the covers, spits in his hand, starts in on his dick, wonders if he can get Bones to swear this time when he comes.

This is almost a sex life, Jim decides, grinning. He’s been in bed maybe thirty seconds when he hears the signs of Bones starting up, and that gets Not So Little Jimmy to full attention in an instant. He kicks the covers to the floor, shoves his boxers down.

Something smacks him in the chest and he oopmfs. He spares a hand from his balls to investigate. It’s a tube of lube. Or possibly toothpaste, but most likely not. For a second, he stops to wonder whether this is Bonesy being kind or Bonesy silently objecting to hearing Jim spit into his hand every night. But only for a second. Then he’s warming the stuff in his hand, smelling the faint scent of the lube his friend prefers, and, God, that’s fucking hot, both of them using the same lube. Almost as if—-

Jim groans as he begins to fondle his prick.

Jim will probably never know what changes Bonesy’s mind about the silence. It’s been months, and this banging-one-out-after-dark-together thing has become, well, their thing. And they’ve never talked about it, so why should tonight be any different? But, apparently, it is. Because Jim’s lying in his bed atop the covers (hey, SF summer nights, unpredictable bastards), lazily charming the snake, when Bones speaks up from the other bed where he’s been unusually quiet but definitely not unoccupied.

“You still got that lube, kid?”

Jim’s strokes falter. “Yeah. You need some?”

A lamp goes on, making Jim blink even as he turns his head. Bones is lying on his side, propped up on one elbow, idly fisting his cock while he looks at Jim.

Fuck. He shouldn’t be allowed to look that good, he just shouldn’t.

“I’m fine, Jim.” But there’s something odd in his tone, something Jim can’t quite place. “I think you should use it.”

Jim frowns. “I am. I’m not actually crazy enough to enjoy getting my dick chafed—”

“Not your dick,” Bones says.

Jim stares. His dick twitches. “You want me to…”

He can’t say it. But Bones, apparently, can say it just fine.

“I want you to slide two fingers up your ass and fuck yourself real good on them for me. Do you think you can do that, Jim?”

At the moment, little things like clear thought and remembering to breathe are beyond Jim. But obeying Bones? That, he can totally get behind. He fumbles for the lube.

It’s not as easy as he’d have expected, but he manages to get a finger in. The second one isn’t pleasant at first, but he gets the hang of it quickly enough.

“First time?” says Bones, without a trace of sympathy.

Jim pokes out his tongue at him. Bones has an adorable chuckle, kind of deep and unwilling and perfect. When he’s done laughing, he just sort of lies there and stares. Jim supposes he can just about see his fingers disappearing back there in this light.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Okay, so that voice has gone seriously rough. Aroused. Kind of… commanding, somehow.

Jim ventures a non-committal grunt.

“It gets better,” Bones says, almost a purr. “Trust me on that.” And he stretches out more comfortably on his back to wank, though he keeps his head turned towards Jim.

It occurs to Jim suddenly that he’s probably technically having gay sex right now. There’s rubbing, and hard-ons, and the prospect of orgasm in the near future. He has his fingers up his bum and he’s playing with his cock and he’s watching another dude drain the dragon.

Huh. Well, that was a new development.

“Come for me, kid.”

So was that. Jim’s coming, harder than he’s used to, before he can dream up a smart-aleck response.

Jim’s just dozing off when Bones finally returns from his shower, barefoot and clad only in cotton sleep pants and still drying his hair with a towel. Jim yawns at him in retaliation for making him stay up so late with all the studying and the quizzing on Andorian anatomy and the taking-of-very-long-showers-during-which-it-would-be-bad-manners-to-put-the-room-lights-out. Bones gives him a strange look. Then, very slowly, he puts down the towel.

“Lights, low,” he says, and the room computer begins slowly dimming the lights. Then he’s stalking across the room towards Jim’s bed, graceful and dangerous as a tiger, and Jim’s brain chooses this exact moment to realise that, unlike virtually everyone else Jim knows, Bones has never once tried to beat the arrogance, insolence, crap, potty mouth, failure, bejeezus, or other undesirable element out of him. He seats himself on the bed by Jim’s feet, and it’s all Jim can do not to shrink back. He’s not really sure why, though. This is Bones, he trusts Bones more than he trusts anyone who isn’t Jim Kirk.

Bones lays a hand over the bulge in Jim’s shorts. That’s all, just a hand. A warm, solid, heavy hand. Jim’s dick sits up and begs. Their gazes lock, and Jim has the distinct impression he’s being given a ten-second warning or something. He can’t move, can’t decide, can’t speak. Can’t help the tiny thrusts his hips make, pushing his hard-on up into that hand. Then, all at once, Bones is on the floor and Jim’s cock is down his throat and it’s hot and wet and fucking fantastic and there’s sucking and noises and hands working to pull his shorts all the way down and Jim’s helping and mewling and oh, God, he loves it when his balls are cupped just like that, it’s so…

Jim ought to be embarrassed, he thinks a minute later, that he’s come so soon, but all he can manage is a sort of dazed gratitude. Bones is pulling his boxers back up, tucking him in, padding away to his own bed. And Jim hasn’t a clue what you say to all that, so he doesn’t say anything, just allows sleep to claim him.

It quickly gets so every time Bones starts getting his things together to go have a shower, Jim’s dick perks up. It gets so every time Bones returns from the shower smelling all clean and sexy and faintly honey-sweet, Jim’s a nervous, excited, hopeful wreck lying artfully naked on his bed just in case there’s any chance of sudden blowjobs in the weather forecast tonight. But it’s been weeks since that particular adventure in cock sucking, and… nada. Just back to the synchronised masturbation in the dark scenario. They’re getting so good at it Jim begins to think it should be an Olympic sport so the pair of them can win matching gold medals and cock-ring wreaths or something.

Tonight, he’s so desperate he does the fingers thing again, and knows the sounds he can’t help making when he feels that slight burn again are loud enough and different enough to get his friend’s attention. Sure enough, the far lamp goes on and Bones is watching intently. But that’s all, just watching. Well, just watching and stroking the mighty McCoy meat. Jim stares at him and can’t come for a long time because he feels as if he’s waiting for something. Bones’s approval, maybe.

His orgasm hits the second he sees Bones tense and spurt.

It’s been ages and Jim just can’t take it any more. He does his best to wipe the no-doubt petulant expression from his face as Bones walks in, barefoot, yellow towel around his shoulders, crumpled purple plaid pajamas riding low on his hips. He can’t help going up onto his elbows for a better look, knocking a forgotten PADD off the bed with his foot as he does and not quite managing to care.

“Bones,” he begins, and then the words leave him.

Bones is less than accomplished at looking innocent. “Yes, Jim?” he drawls. “Something I can do for you?”

“Would you—is there any chance you could—”

“Yes, Jim?” replies Bones, with an unconvincing air of long-suffering patience.

Jim flops back onto the pillows and stares at the ceiling for a few seconds. Then he waves distractedly at his dick, which is hard and dripping and really fucking needy. Okay, so perhaps that last part’s as much Jim as it is Not So Little Jim. Shouldn’t blame the penis for everything, it’s only a body part.

“You got me off a while back.”

Oh, that smirk wants smacking, it really does.

“Oh? And how did I do that?”

“With your mouth.”

“Really.”

“Uh huh. And I was wondering if you might, you know, do that again for me.”

Bones folds his arms, perches his hip on his study desk, crosses his feet at the ankles, and turns an assessing gaze on Jim. “You want me to suck your cock, do you, Jim?”

“God, yes.”

“Well, shouldn’t you ask nicely?”

An embarrassing, whiny sort of sound escapes Jim’s mouth. “Wouldyoupleasesuckmycock, Bones?”

Bones cups a hand to his ear, the mocking bastard.

Jim takes a deep breath and thinks of how good it will feel if only he can persuade Bones to do this. “Would you please suck my cock, Bones?”

“Would you do me the courtesy of calling me by my name, Jim?”

Could he get away with screaming in frustration, or would the idiot computer hear it and think it necessary to summon campus security?

“McCoy, then—”

Bones tuts loudly, and shakes his finger for good measure.

Jim shuts his eyes and reminds himself that, to judge by past experience, a Bones BJ is actually worth this shit.

“Please would you suck my cock, Leonard?”

“Why, certainly, Jim. You just relax and get comfy.”

Jim does. Bones crosses the room in a flash, and six minutes later Jim is writhing and gripping Bones’s hair and sobbing in relief as he comes on that crafty pink tongue.

Bones looks extremely smug as he pads over to his own bed.

“Jim?”

The lamp flicks on. Jim turns to look across the gulf of empty carpet tiles to Bones in his bed. It must be, what, three in the morning? “Yeah, Bones?”

An arm moves, lifting the covers. “Come here.”

Jim’s sure that once upon a time—in high school, say—he could have come up with a dozen reasons not to get into bed with his best bud. But now? He goes. The other bed is as narrow as his own, but Bones has shifted close to the wall so there is room enough for Jim. His friend is warm, the arm that drops across his waist strong and hairier than his own and, yes, entirely welcome. He settles his head comfortably on the pillow and relaxes, because no sixth sense is telling him that someone wants him for sex and it’s too fucking late to wheedle out what Bones does want if Bones doesn’t want to tell him about it.

“Good night, kid.”

It isn’t until Jim wakes once more that his mental calendar alerts him to the fact that today, Friday, is his fucking birthday. But then Bones sucks him off and it doesn’t seem to matter so much.

Jim gets in late, he’s been out partying with some hot girls for Chinese New Year and he isn’t really sure why he’s crawled back here instead of into bed with one of them—or more than one, they were willing enough—but here he is, getting undressed and hoping he hasn’t woken his friend up. Bones isn’t snoring, but then he doesn’t always snore anyway. He drops his boot and it hits the floor more loudly than expected.

“Jim?”

Damn. “Hi, Bones. Sorry to disturb you.”

Bones mutters something colourful about what time it is.

“I’m sorry, really. How about you just go back to sleep, and you can punish me in the morning?”

He doesn’t get the sort of grumpy laughter he’s expecting. There’s an oddly strained silence, and then Bones says, in an unreadable tone, “Okay, Jim.” Then he rolls onto his stomach and puts the pillow over his head.

“I believe you’re due a punishment,” Bones says next evening, in a conversational tone that doesn’t actually do much to disguise his general air of menace. Jim’s just returned from his post-workout shower; his friend has reassembled the ever-present collection of PADDs and old-fashioned textbooks into a tottering pile beside the bed where he’s sprawled, hands behind his head, bare toes poking out of the over-long jeans he only ever wears at home. It’s clearly not study time, then.

“Ooh, you gonna spank me?” It comes out as defiance rather than the humour he’d intended.

Bones shakes his head slowly. “You’re gonna want to take those shorts off and get on the bed.”

Jim frowns but complies, throwing himself down on his own bed and mirroring Bonesy’s posture. “Now what?”

When Leonard McCoy laughs like that, it must mean someone’s going to suffer. It makes Jim shiver as he wonders what “punishment” might mean to his friend if spanking’s not it. And no, he finds he can’t actually picture Bones spanking anyone, for any reason. Odd.

His breath catches as Bones gets up to rummage about in a cupboard. “On your side,” Bones says, still rooting about. “No, not like that—face into the room. Grip the headboard.”

After that, Jim’s not surprised to see the handcuffs.

“Now,” Bones says, as he’s cuffing Jim’s wrists to the bed, “this gets too much for you, I want you to speak up—”

“Safeword, Bones?” His tone’s just hit downright insolent, and he knows it.

Bones merely shrugs, perching on the edge of the bed by Jim’s feet. “If you want one, pick one. But really all you have to do is tell me you want out.” He reaches into his pocket, then he’s hauling Jim’s leg up, bending it. He makes a grand show of lubing up his fingers, and then he’s tickling at Jim’s hole in a way that’s not at all unpleasant, and he’s staring into Jim’s eyes all the while. “Relax,” Bones says, and pokes a finger in.

It feels pretty nice, he has to admit. Then it’s two fingers. Then they’re kinda curling up in there, and it’s very nice. “This is—this is punishment?”

“This is preparation,” Bones says, and then chuckles at Jim’s expression. “Relax. I would hardly have put you in this position if I was gonna fuck you, Jim. Be reasonable.”

Jim wonders how he can be equal parts disappointed and relieved that Bones isn’t going to fuck him. He feels his cheeks heat and closes his eyes because he doesn’t want to see his friend’s reaction to his blush.

The fingers withdraw, and Jim just—just—manages to hold back a whimper of complaint. But then something bigger and smoother and cooler than fingers is pushing into him. He opens his eyes, takes in his friend’s attempts not to smile.

“A butt plug is your idea of punishment, you kinky bastard?”

But Bones just shakes his head. Then he’s getting to his feet. “Do I need to tie your legs so you can’t rut against the mattress, or are you prepared to be good?”

Jim pokes out his tongue. Bones just shrugs and heads back to his cupboard.

“Oh, all right, I’ll be good.”

“Excellent.” The door chimes. “Ah, and I believe that will be your entertainment for the evening. I trust you’ve not suddenly become shy about people seein’ your awesome little body?”

“Hell, no.” That thing in his ass feels really… weird. Jim flops about a bit, experimentally. “What entertainment?”

“I have a date,” is all Bones says, before he allows the computer to let his guest in.

By the time Bones begins fucking the tall, dark, well-built and seriously fucking handsome stranger doggy-style on the other bed, Jim’s thinking that he really should have gone with the leg-tying option because this is seriously damn hot and he’s desperate to come right now.

“Good boy,” Bones is saying, cooing, almost, to his ‘date’, “love how you take it.” He grunts and thrusts hard, and the other man rocks back hard into him.

“Jeez, Doc, been a while, has it?” He drops down onto his elbows, resting his cheek on the pillow and staring at Jim, who smiles weakly and feels his cock throb and weep.

“God, yes. Stuck here… with this idiot… prancing around in his tightie whities…”

“Hey, I don’t prance!”

Bones pauses mid-thrust, to his partner’s dismay, and turns to glare at Jim. “I’m sure I could learn to spank you, kid, if you really think now’s the time to be voicing your opinions.”

Jim would have flipped him the bird, but, hello, handcuffs. He makes do with sneering as loudly as possible. The guy getting fucked grins at him, and all of a sudden Jim is really enjoying the view.

That’s when Bones does something and Jim discovers that the butt plug can vibrate, and does so more or less in time with the fucking going on over there. Jim shudders and whines and wishes he wasn’t one of those guys who can’t come from anything less than actual cock-stimulation.

“Well, Jim,” Bones drawls, dropping the condom down the trash chute as he crosses the room, leaving a blissed-out, sprawling, apparently boneless man on his own bed, “did we learn our lesson?”

Jim blinks. It’s hard to think when his cock’s been this hard for this long. “Um, what was the lesson again?”

One corner of his friend’s mouth twitches. “If you inconvenience me, sunshine, I’m a-gonna inconvenience you right back.”

“Oh.” Jim licks his lips nervously. “I, uh, I believe I’m suitably inconvenienced, then, Bones. Care to help a guy out?” He pulls hopefully on the handcuffs, jerking between the point they’re slack enough to rattle and the point where they start cutting into his wrists.

“Why, certainly, Jim,” the smug bastard says, and starts the toy vibrating again, hard.

Jim makes a plaintive noise but manages to bite down on the words. He’s hurting here, he needs to come, he needs…

A mouth on his cock. A hot, wet, sucking, licking, humming fucking mouth.

Jim comes before he can really appreciate the effort Bones is going to. But he appreciates that orgasm, all right. Fuck. Everything goes white and his ears are full of buzz and his body tenses up so hard it hurts and Jim’s vaguely surprised, when it passes, to find himself still conscious. And no longer vibrating in strange places.

Bones is still on his knees, smiling that smug smile that seems to mean Ah, look, I got you just where I want you, mister…

From the other bed, the visitor is laughing at them.

“I want out of these cuffs,” Jim says, a mite stiffly.

Bones produces the key from the floor by the bed and unlocks the cuffs without further ado. Jim rubs his wrists and glares at him, but his heart isn’t in it. Actually, he’s not sure where his heart is right now.

“Come on, Steven,” Bones says, rising, “throw some clothes on, I’ll show you where the showers are.”

Bones is quiet tonight, which makes Jim oddly shy about rubbing one out. So he makes the mistake of opening his mouth.

“Bones?”

“What?”

“Are you and that Steven guy, I dunno, boyfriends or something?”

“Remind me again how old you are?”

“Funny.”

A rustle as Bones rolls over. “Steven’s a friend. We fuck sometimes, when he’s in town. End of story. Go to sleep.”

Actually, that made some sense. If Bones did casual-ish sex, then perhaps the things he’d done with Jim weren’t so far out of left field.

“I kinda thought you were straight, you know.”

Bones makes a sound similar to a cat choking. Might be laughter, Jim supposes. “What part of me sucking your cock makes you think I only like women?”

Jim pokes his tongue out. “You know what I mean.”

“Actually, no. Enlighten me.” There’s an air of danger in his tone now that Jim doesn’t like at all.

“I just mean… I had no idea, that’s all.”

Bones mutters something that sounds awfully like, “Story of your life, kid.” Then he reaches for something in his bedside drawer. “Come on, let’s have some stress relief and then get some damn sleep, all right? Doctor’s orders.”

Best doctor’s orders ever, man.

Jim smiles in the dark and gets out his dick.

It’s the first summer in years Jim hasn’t spent kicking around on his own, causing trouble. Because Bones takes him to Georgia. The house is tiny, and ancient, and even though it has that smell of long disuse it also feels like a home in a way that makes Jim rather nostalgic for something he’s never truly had. They open all the windows, sweep the floors, get the power on, check that the appliances are all in safe working order. It’s nice. They speak in sporadic sentences of five syllables or less (help me with that, not like that, where’d you want this?), and occasionally Bones laughs this short, pure, joyful sort of laugh as he rediscovers some quirk of this house he grew up in.

Around sunset, when they’ve finally got the rickety old air conditioner online and are leaning side by side against the kitchen bench enjoying the welcome blast of cool air, there’s a knocking on the door and Bones tenses. Jim sorts out their tangled shirts and Bones nods absently as he puts his back on over his sweaty chest. Then he heads for the door. Jim climbs back into his tank top and, feeling instantly five degrees hotter, hangs back, nervous.

There’s a woman on the doorstep—tall, plump and curvy, with the look of an intelligent carnivore about her eyes (though possibly Jim is projecting)—and beside her a small girl with brown pigtails and the McCoy nose.

“Hi, Jocelyn,” Bones says. “Hiya, Pumpkin.”

Before he can say another word, there’s a squeezing, wriggling, face-kissing kid in his arms babbling “Daddy, Daddy,” and it’s just so adorable Jim can’t look away.

“So,” says the ex-wife, “who’s helping me with her suitcases?”

Jim introduces himself to Jocelyn Bannister while they’re hauling in the surprising amount of stuff a ten-year-old apparently needs to get through three weeks with her dad. Bones is sitting on the dusty sofa when they come back in, with his kid on his lap and a look of absolute devotion on his face as she rattles off lists of names and places and other factoids which have piled up, apparently, since she last spoke to her father.

Jocelyn catches him staring and rolls her eyes. “No one ever said he wasn’t a fantastic father, Jim.”

Questions crash in on Jim then, but he decides that he probably doesn’t want to hear the answers, or if he does he doesn’t want to get them from Jocelyn.

“Right, I’m off,” she says briskly, then steps over, bends down, and kisses the top of her daughter’s head. There’s awkward good-byes all around, and then she’s gone and it’s just the three of them.

“Joanna,” Bones says gently, interrupting the flow of her latest school-trip-related anecdote, “this is my friend Jim. We’re at Starfleet Academy together, and one day Jim’s going to be in charge of a starship.”

“Hi,” Jim says, when she turns her head and appears to notice him for the first time. He adds a cheery little wave, and she keeps on smiling.

Jim is offered the sofa, of course. It pulls out, apparently. But he gets the impression that Bones might actually be a bit disappointed if he slept there, and, besides…

“This all right?” Bones says, spooning in behind him in the oak-framed double bed in the dark. “You need to come?”

Jim makes the most pathetic whimpering noise, but can’t quite hate himself for it when that warm hand strokes him through his shorts in response.

“Tell me you unpacked the lube and put it somewhere sensible, will you?”

Not for nothing is Jim a genius. His super-powers include foreseeing just this kind of need. He reaches blindly for the spindly hand-carved table by the bed, finds the tube, passes it back to Bones. There’s fiddling, and then there’s a hot slick hand freeing his dick. One stroke, and Jim’s tense and loose in all the right places because, hell, something about the way Bones touches him is just completely fucking perfect, okay?

Then Bones stops, and the hand goes away, and Jim stiffens in all the wrong ways.

“Easy. No one’s fucking anyone. I’m just gonna put it between your thighs, okay?”

And then he’s adjusting Jim’s leg, and Jim isn’t stopping him, and oh boy, isn’t this weird? But then he realises that he has Bones’s cock squished between his legs and that’s really quite trusting of Bones and it’s all right, and Bones is rocking, and his hand’s on Jim’s cock and he’s doing that thing with his thumb that is so…

Bones is thrusting now, and he’s getting a bit grunty which is actually kinda sexy, and sometimes his prick rubs against Jim’s balls and that’s more than kinda sexy…

Mint-toothpaste-scented breath is hot on his neck and Jim wants to—to sort of reach back and pull his friend’s head forward so he can… so he can…

Oddly enough, the thought of kissing Bones is just too much and he spurts in several slow, dreamy pulses of pleasure. Bones bites his shoulder and comes too, and then all is panting breaths and sleepy euphoria in the hot Georgia night.

“Are you dating my Daddy?” Jo says, climbing up to perch beside him on the enormous fallen tree on the hilltop. She sounds cheerful, but as far as he knows she always sounds cheerful.


Jim shrugs. “You should probably ask him that.”

“I did. He said to ask you.”

For a second Jim’s off-balance, as if he’s walking on uneven ground in near-darkness.

“Oh?” is all he says.

Joanna McCoy fiddles with the buckle on her pink denim overalls. “If you are, that’s cool. Daddy needs someone, you know? A friend who’s there all the time, to make him not work so hard. Mommy’s happy alone, but I don’t think Daddy is, even though he pretends. Anyway, I think you’d make a cool stepmom.”

Jim chokes on his next breath. So much for his theory about two guys just jerking off together, about convenience. If that’s what it was to Bones, there was no way he’d allow Jo to get her hopes up even for a minute. He ruffles her hair and cannot find a single thing to say.

The booze scorches the back of Jim’s throat. He coughs and pours another shot right about the time Bones walks back into their dorm room.

“Ah, you got a test tomorrow, huh? I recognise the patented Jim Kirk brain-cell-murdering preparation technique.” There’s a whoompf as a medical kit is flung down on a bed.

Jim tosses back his last shot, recaps the bottle, gets up without any noticeable swaying. “Nah. Just wanted a bit of the old Dutch courage, you know?”

Bones gives him a funny look, right before Jim seizes him by the arms and plants one on him. And his nerves don’t melt right away, even though kissing is easy and familiar and safe, because this is Bones, man. After a few precious moments, Bones pushes him out to arm’s length and gives him That Look that makes Jim go instantly and painfully defensive.

“I just thought—don’t you want me, even a little? Because I look at you and, man, have I got it bad. But if you don’t, that’s cool, I’ll just—” He shuts up, because Bones is smiling and that’s not something Bones does just casually, you know? “What?”

“What is it you want, exactly?”

Jim frowns and keeps his gaze defiantly locked on his friend’s face. “Sex, for starters. You and me. No one else. Less of the power games. More… mutual. Also, ass-fucking. Seems like I ought to know what that’s about, yeah? If you can stick a plug up my ass, surely you can deign to use your dick instead?”

“I thought you’d never ask. When you say ‘no one else’—?”

Okay, so that sounds awfully like a growl coming up from Jim’s chest. “You know exactly what the fuck I mean. You and me, McCoy, giving the whole boyfriends-lovers-partners thing a whirl. Because, hell, you’ve put up with me this long. Seems like it might actually work. And you give fantastic head. And Joanna said that you said it was up to me.”

Bones gives an amused snort, but then he goes serious again. “All right, Jim.” He holds out his hand. “Boyfriends-lovers-partners it is.”

Jim isn’t entirely sure for a long uncomfortable moment that he isn’t being mocked. But then he clasps that hand, and he’s sure. He hugs Bones, hard.

Later, lying wrapped up in each other instead of the blankets, Jim’s ridiculously happy even though they still haven’t got to the ass-fucking.

“Whaddya know,” Bones is muttering, apparently to himself, “any fool can catch his attention, but I kept it. Goes to show playing the long game’s worth the effort…”

Jim decides he’ll worry about what the hell that means another time. Or possibly never.