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cjs_owndisclaimer. Not mine. Never have been and I'll only ever be playing in the sandbox.
title. Ceremony of Innocence
rating. Adult/Mature (R/NC-17)
pairing. Kirk/McCoy
summary. Later he would be nauseated by how weak he'd been in that moment, but right then, stripped of his uniform and gear, Pavel was just another human being in need of rescue.
warnings. Implied sexual assault.
notes. Written for this prompt atst_xi_kink.
Ceremony of Innocence
Chapter Two: The worst are full of passionate intensity
V.
After his release from Medical Bay following the incident on Dekkarat, Bones had understandably flinched away from contact, sexual or otherwise, and Jim had simply let him be. He knew it would pass for Bones as it did for him. Though normally he returned to Enterprise looking to fuck as a reminder that he'd survived, he'd come home, he still had Bones, he also knew how it felt to return from a failed mission, stewing in guilt and bitterness, where the last thing on his mind was sex. It was a biological reaction to stress according to his lover and after the first four or five times it happened, he'd accepted that it wasn't going to change.
Yet, it'd been six weeks and McCoy continued to shy away, involuntarily, from contact. He was still waking in the middle of ship's night, trembling and scared in a harsh contrast from his adamant declarations that he was “fine”, and unable to return to sleep. Jim had resorted to keeping a hypospray in their bedroom for the nights when Bones attempted to rise from the mattress with the intent of going to Medical Bay four to six hours before his shift.
It was draining Kirk's reserves and though he could not be called an oblivious man, he was well-versed in denial. His mother had taught him the concept at a young age, over coffee with the neighbors and talk of births and deaths. Her life had been about denial – denial of the depression that ate her life away a day at a time, denial of how haunted she was by George's last words that rang out in her mind every morning even twenty years later – and Jim had learned that lesson well.
He could no longer ignore the problem, however, when Beckett called him down to sickbay one morning. He'd been sitting on the bridge, he was merely watching the forward screen and thinking about how he wanted, badly, to take Bones to bed. How he wanted to strip the man out of his uniform, gently, and kiss every inch of skin he could: It wasn't all rough and hurried sex between them, and with time before their next destination, Jim couldn't get the idea of a romantic night out of his head. (Rare as it was, he knew Bones liked when Jim set up a nice dinner in their quarters and fucked him slow.)
“Doctor Beckett to Captain Kirk,” her voice rang out in the calm silence of the bridge.
From the corner of his eye, Jim could see Chekov immediately tense and he turned his gaze to the back of the young man's head as he responded, “Kirk here. What's the problem, Doctor?”
A sigh, then, “Sir, I need to speak with you about a private matter related to one of the crew. If you have a moment this afternoon, I'd like to sit down and discuss it before the situation become further complicated or worsens.”
Chekov hunched forward, attention focused on the display panel as though he could preform some sort of Russian-Genius-Mind-Meld on it to attain the information he wanted. One hand came up to run through his hair as Jim told her he would do so as soon as he was off shift, then stood up and walked to the young man. “Commander, you have the conn. Ensign,” he said, one hand on Chekov's shoulder, “Walk with me.”
Loyal and properly subordinate, Pavel nodded, stood, and trained his eyes on the back of his Captain's gold uniform tunic as they left the Bridge behind for the privacy of Kirk's ready room. There, two fingers of deliciously aged whiskey were poured into glasses and one was shoved unceremoniously into Chekov's waiting hand.
“Captain,” he started after he'd polished off the drink, but Jim held up a hand to stop him and he closed his mouth with a nod of his head.
“Pavel, I didn't ask you here in an official capacity – I asked as a friend.” Jim settled into the chair beside the young man instead of the comfortable one on the other side of his desk, stretched one hand onto Chekov's shoulder, and went on without hesitation, “You were on Dekkarat with Bones and whatever happened has changed him. He's himself, personality wise, but it's like someone's sucked the fucking life out of him and he's doing everything by rote.”
Chekov didn't say anything. He didn't need to, if only because everything Kirk was saying, he agreed with and had already thought himself. The doctor was floundering in nightmares borne of memories, which Kirk didn't know, but Pavel was sure the man soon would – he couldn't take it any longer, watching the slow disintegration of a man who'd fought to protect him.
“Something happened on the planet that maybe they told you not to tell or you're not sure if the event really occurred for some reason, maybe you both decided it would be better or easier not to speak of it,” Jim said, “I've lived all those choices myself over the last few years and even before, but I'm asking you now – as someone who's actually worried for you both – to tell me.”
“I'm not the one they went after, sir.”
“No, but you were still there, Chekov, you still had to be there when they hurt him. And it doesn't take someone with your IQ,” Jim smiled sadly at that and patted the other man's arm, continuing, “to see how much it took from you as well. I mean I haven't seen you in rec since the week before you were captured, Sulu reported that you've kept yourself reclused to quarters most days and that you've had some nightmares yourself.”
“It's nothing,” Chekov told him, hoping to shrug it off and drank down the next shot Jim poured without a hint of reluctance. He twirled the glass in a circle, unable and unwilling to look the other in the eye; he didn't need to see the look on Jim's face to know there would be disbelief written in his features.
Jim sighed and rose, moving toward the window behind his desk to watch the flicker of the stars as Enterprise zipped by. He was trying to decide his next move, his next words, when Chekov cleared his throat and Jim turned to glance over his shoulder at the Ensign.
A moment of silence passed and Jim was almost sure it hadn't been an attempt to garner his attention, then Chekov spoke and he felt the bile rise from his stomach.
VI.
McCoy was dead on his feet.
Afters six weeks of barely sleeping, nightmares terrorizing what bit of rest he could get, he was running out of steam; eating, staying hydrated, working, those where no problem – he wasn't some fainting maiden who was going to break down, crying out about the vapors, while clinging to Jim like some sort of limpet. He was a grown man, damnit, and he was able to deal with his problems.
Of course, that was as much bullshit as the crap he'd fed Chekov on the planet about him being better equipped to deal with the sexual assaults and the physical abuse; he wasn't, in any manner of speaking, better trained to get through such vitriolic events unless one meant the after effects – doctors were meant to treat the men returning from such situations, not be the victim. In that instance, Chekov truly was the better option, but he was a young man with a glowing smile and Bones simply hadn't been able to handle the mere thought of not listening to the boy's laughter, seeing him dash down corridors in off hours grinning at some strange joke...
So he'd demanded to take Chekov's place, a gamble he won, and now he was paying for it in restless nights and a lack of concentration.
He knew he was skirting the line of what Chapel and Beckett would allow, that they'd watched his movements with M'Benga while they worried over him and he wanted to scream – it was his damned Medical Bay. He'd handpicked his staff, had trained them and bonded with them over poker and whiskey in his and Jim's quarters. He'd counseled them through tough times and celebrated the good ones, sent messages personally to the families of the few he'd lost.
“Doctor,” Chapel's voice was strong at his back and he spun his chair around to look at her. She was wearing the same look of concern she'd had since he'd woken two days after the rescue, screaming out involuntarily at the disgusting power of his nightmare.
“Something you need, nurse?” He responded, using her title as a reminder that he was the one in charge of sickbay and thus could not be dismissed to quarters – as he knew multiple members of his staff wanted.
Of course, Jim could come down from the bridge to drag his ass back to bed, but that wasn't going to happen. Kirk wouldn't leave the bridge unless absolutely necessary, nor would he drag Bones to bed; flashbacks at the most inopportune times had murdered their sex life, though he'd continued to let Jim believe that he was simply too tired to get it up. Which given the nightmares that'd made it impossible to sleep, it was the truth – erections weren't going to occur when his brain process in bed was reduced to a recurring chant of sleepsleepsleeppleasegodstayasleep.
“Christine,” she corrected.
He managed to stop the groan before it slipped from his lips. “Until you are off duty in,” his eyes flicked to the chrono, “thirty-two minutes, you're still my nurse. If you want to stage an intervention, you can do so then. Go back to work.”
The look she gave him was laced in venom, reminiscent of the pinched, angry face one of the guards had perpetually displayed.
Giving himself a mental slap to stop the memory before it came to fruition in the form of a flashback, Bones returned his hands to the PADD he'd been engrossed in earlier. He read it mechanically, never really comprehending the words of the synth-narcotic study Medical had recently conducted; so focused on keeping himself from glancing out his door to the treatment area (where Chapel and Beckett were no doubt conspiring against him), he never saw Jim's approach.
Then his office door was closed and his head snapped up, fear in his eyes for a fleeting moment. It dropped away so quickly Jim wasn't entirely sure he'd even seen it, but he knew from Chekov's halting, sad rendition of events from the planet, that it had been there.
“We need to talk,” he started before McCoy could throw up a defense, something he'd done a few weeks earlier and Jim had allowed at the time.
While communication hadn't been a problem in the past, they'd never been the emotionally open type of partners, not like Spock and Uhura had been. Those two, at the hight point of their relationship, had often been found on observation decks late at night, discussing mothers, griefs, and triumphs. It had fascinated Jim whose own relationship with McCoy was strong, but filled with far less talk about the pains and joys of life.
And they'd been completely fine with that – conversations about how they were feeling weren't their style; intimacy was, whether that meant curling up in bed, spooned together against terrible, saddening memories, or they had hurried, rough sex, depended entirely on the triggering event. It was their way and they'd never had an issue with it.
Now, however, sex was the last way they'd connect until Bones had agreed to therapy in Jim's mind and while it was going to be painful and awkward, they had to talk before the situation they'd found themselves in worsened. McCoy was quite literally on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, M'Benga and Beckett having already decided that if he could not submit to taking a few days off to rest that they would override their CMO and force the issue. Warning Jim of that danger had simply been a courtesy since the Medical Code allowed for such actions without the express consent of the Captain.
“I'm on duty,” Bones responded.
“No, you're not – your shift ends now.” Jim moved closer to the heavy desk and sat in one of the chairs before it with a choked sigh, then went on, “Listen, I suck at this emotional crap. Mom wasn't big on talking it out and Frank's preferred form of communication was yelling with a side of drunken terror. But we're going to try it, you and me, because you're struggling with something you think I'm not going to handle well and I'd rather do the girly-handholdy thing then watch you turn into a fucking zombie.”
McCoy gripped the armrests of his own chair, cushioned fabric harsh under the pads of his fingers. He started to rise, only to fall back into the seat as his knees gave out: apparently today was to be the day that he reached the end of his limits. Which meant he could not escape Jim and his questions, his facts, his concerned fucking eyes.
He tried to stop it, but the anxiety flooded his mind and he dazedly threw up on the floor, his body spasming from the force of his esophageal reflux. Breakfast had been eggs and toast, just bland enough to ease the subconscious roil in his gut. The scent of it hit his nose like a punch to the face and he reeled back into his chair, looking at Jim with horror – this had never happened to him before.
Kirk felt his stomach drop out. Damnit, Bones was a red-blooded male and he did not just keel over to vomit on his own shoes, not without some mitigating factor. He snorted at the latter part of his thought: Oh yeah, there was one hell of a mitigating factor.
“Fuck,” he muttered, loathing that he'd allowed this farce to go on as long as it had. “Emotional upsets causing physical reactions...”
“Don't, Jim,” McCoy warned though his usual masterful tone was lost as his stomach cramped again, forcing himself to bend forward once more at the waist and begin dry heaving. He was so absorbed in trying to stop the painful retching that he was oblivious to Jim's call for aid.
All he knew, a minute and a half later, was the peace of sedation, Chapel having already been standing by with a hypospray.
VII.
Bones woke in their bed twelve hours later, feeling as exhausted as he had when Christine forced him into unconsciousness though he'd had no nightmare and he felt a surge of triumph at that. Which was promptly cut down by the grim look on Jim's face.
Sitting beside him on the mattress, Kirk was taut with tension and obviously upset, his fingers pulsing beet-red and milk-white where they held an unread requisition PADD. He looked like he hadn't slept causing Bones to involuntarily purse his lips in annoyance – Jim was the Captain and needed to maintain his physical condition to continue being a member of the landing parties.
“You,” Jim started, startling McCoy who had not realized his lover had noticed his awakening, “told my Ensign to promise the he would not tell me that you'd been sexually assaulted. I can only surmise that you never intended to tell me yourself either.”
“Clearly you've figured it out,” Bones shot back, suddenly angry and he sat up in the bed, reaching for the edge of the blanket Jim had wrapped around him.
“Our quarters are on a twelve hour medical lockdown – you can get out of this bed, but so help me, Bones, you're not getting out of this conversation. We're talking about this before you keel over. Again.” Jim's tone was level and controlled, but the emotion underly it was hard, sad, and a touch terrified. “You aren't fucking sleeping and if we don't fix this, Beckett's going to have to report to Command that you are temporarily unfit for duty. You know what'll happen after that,” Jim added, blue eyes looking anywhere but at his lover.
It broke his heart to think of the regs: A CMO, unfit for service, was to be removed from their post and returned to Earth. If such was impossible to do, then they were to be confined to quarters or Medical Bay where they could be cared for until such time as they could be found a route to Starfleet's Headquarters, to be assessed and treated by someone who reported directly to the CMO of the Fleet, the Surgeon General Jack Quinn; Bones would be taken from his ship and from him, up to such time that he was cleared to serve once more.
Kirk knew that there would be no long hospitalization nor years of therapy for his lover as it simply wouldn't be necessary given that Bones needed sleep more than anything else, but with just under a year left in the mission, the amount of time it would take for all the steps to be taken to return McCoy to his place on the ship would be too long. He couldn't allow that, not after all the accomplishments and discoveries they'd made in the last four years – McCoy deserved to stand with his colleagues and friends when they disembarked and be praised for what he'd done, not ignored in the news reports.
He threw the PADD suddenly and rolled, forcing Bones onto his back and looming over him. “Talk to me. Tell me what happened, please,” he said, trailing off. Jim knew he now sounded far too desperate, only his fingers were twitching to hypo his partner and his brain was screaming to run before he really did hear what had occurred on the planet out of McCoy's own mouth, and he ignored both vicious urges.
“Chekov already told you. Why is it so important for me to say it, Jim?” Bones asked, closing his eyes at his mutinous stomach. As if he hadn't already embarrassed himself by vomiting, his belly was roiling once more at Jim's request.
“Because I fucking love you,” Jim replied, shoving his hands hard into the mattress which caused it to bounce. “I love you and if you dare to try to make this about me looking for sex, so help me, Bones – I've been watching you walk around like goddamn ghost for the last month and a half. You're doing all the right things, but you're dazed, out of it, and...”
“And the crew is seeing it.” Bones shrugged at the thought; Jim was a good Captain and he would not tolerate anyone lowering morale or creating problems.
“No, baby,” Jim said, immediately getting McCoy's attention with the endearment. He knew McCoy hated it, hated being called anything but the stupid nickname Jim had given him on that first shuttle ride to the Academy, yet Jim could not bring himself to care. He was lost in the outpouring of words that was beyond being out of character for him, unable to stop as he looked down at the man beneath him. “I'm seeing it. And I've done nothing about it because I thought you were dealing with whatever the issue was, but you're not. So you've got the choice of me, right here and now, or Alyson Beckett in twelve hours, or one of Quinn's lackeys whenever you get back to Earth.”
Bones was silent. Cloudy, hazel-green eyes locked with Jim's, warring emotions glittering in the blue, and he wondered, not for the first time, how he had come to be the focus of Kirk's attentions. Overprotective as he may be, stubborn too, Jim was like the Time Lord from the old Earth TV show, Doctor Who: He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. Jim was intensity and spontaneity in one confounding package that often left Bones thinking about irony, fate, and nature versus nurture.
And once he had something stuck in his craw he wasn't going to let it go, not until he was satisfied with the resolution.
“They were going to take the kid, Jim,” he finally relented and disentangled one hand from the blanket, bringing it up to rest on Kirk's shoulder. “Figured better me than him,” he went on, squeezing the flesh under his fingers, “I didn't fucking want to trade places with him, but he's a damned infant compared to the rest of this crew...”
Jim shook his head with a tiny, depressed smile on his lips. “He was trained at the Academy, Bones – command track cadets are taught about torture and how to deal. Rape's not specific to Earth, you know that.”
“Bastard,” McCoy snapped as his hand whipped away and he pushed at Jim's chest, unsurprised when his lover wouldn't move. A few minutes passed, each dispassionate throw of his hands another nail in his coffin as it sunk in that he was too tired to escape Jim's presence. He collapsed back against the mattress and pursed his lips, before spitting, “And you think the Medical contingent's any less able to deal with the consequences?”
“No, but they're the consequences! Bones, you guys are taught how to keep us grunts from going to pieces over events we cannot control, you aren't supposed to be the ones we have to put back together. I'm the headstrong guy you sew up, clean up, and throw to the counselor,” Jim tried to explain. He was at a loss of how to put it precisely, how to explain that though he hated to say it, Bones should have let Chekov be the one they were watching try to sleep and failing.
McCoy had listened to his lover's lackluster statements with rapt attention, realization taking over his mind while Jim's skin twitched from the renewed anxiety. He let a minute go by once Jim finished as well, still absorbing what the man hadn't chosen to say.
Almost of its own accord, Bones' hand settled back on Jim's shoulder and he spoke.
title. Ceremony of Innocence
rating. Adult/Mature (R/NC-17)
pairing. Kirk/McCoy
summary. Later he would be nauseated by how weak he'd been in that moment, but right then, stripped of his uniform and gear, Pavel was just another human being in need of rescue.
warnings. Implied sexual assault.
notes. Written for this prompt at
st_xi_kink.Chapter Two: The worst are full of passionate intensity
V.
After his release from Medical Bay following the incident on Dekkarat, Bones had understandably flinched away from contact, sexual or otherwise, and Jim had simply let him be. He knew it would pass for Bones as it did for him. Though normally he returned to Enterprise looking to fuck as a reminder that he'd survived, he'd come home, he still had Bones, he also knew how it felt to return from a failed mission, stewing in guilt and bitterness, where the last thing on his mind was sex. It was a biological reaction to stress according to his lover and after the first four or five times it happened, he'd accepted that it wasn't going to change.
Yet, it'd been six weeks and McCoy continued to shy away, involuntarily, from contact. He was still waking in the middle of ship's night, trembling and scared in a harsh contrast from his adamant declarations that he was “fine”, and unable to return to sleep. Jim had resorted to keeping a hypospray in their bedroom for the nights when Bones attempted to rise from the mattress with the intent of going to Medical Bay four to six hours before his shift.
It was draining Kirk's reserves and though he could not be called an oblivious man, he was well-versed in denial. His mother had taught him the concept at a young age, over coffee with the neighbors and talk of births and deaths. Her life had been about denial – denial of the depression that ate her life away a day at a time, denial of how haunted she was by George's last words that rang out in her mind every morning even twenty years later – and Jim had learned that lesson well.
He could no longer ignore the problem, however, when Beckett called him down to sickbay one morning. He'd been sitting on the bridge, he was merely watching the forward screen and thinking about how he wanted, badly, to take Bones to bed. How he wanted to strip the man out of his uniform, gently, and kiss every inch of skin he could: It wasn't all rough and hurried sex between them, and with time before their next destination, Jim couldn't get the idea of a romantic night out of his head. (Rare as it was, he knew Bones liked when Jim set up a nice dinner in their quarters and fucked him slow.)
“Doctor Beckett to Captain Kirk,” her voice rang out in the calm silence of the bridge.
From the corner of his eye, Jim could see Chekov immediately tense and he turned his gaze to the back of the young man's head as he responded, “Kirk here. What's the problem, Doctor?”
A sigh, then, “Sir, I need to speak with you about a private matter related to one of the crew. If you have a moment this afternoon, I'd like to sit down and discuss it before the situation become further complicated or worsens.”
Chekov hunched forward, attention focused on the display panel as though he could preform some sort of Russian-Genius-Mind-Meld on it to attain the information he wanted. One hand came up to run through his hair as Jim told her he would do so as soon as he was off shift, then stood up and walked to the young man. “Commander, you have the conn. Ensign,” he said, one hand on Chekov's shoulder, “Walk with me.”
Loyal and properly subordinate, Pavel nodded, stood, and trained his eyes on the back of his Captain's gold uniform tunic as they left the Bridge behind for the privacy of Kirk's ready room. There, two fingers of deliciously aged whiskey were poured into glasses and one was shoved unceremoniously into Chekov's waiting hand.
“Captain,” he started after he'd polished off the drink, but Jim held up a hand to stop him and he closed his mouth with a nod of his head.
“Pavel, I didn't ask you here in an official capacity – I asked as a friend.” Jim settled into the chair beside the young man instead of the comfortable one on the other side of his desk, stretched one hand onto Chekov's shoulder, and went on without hesitation, “You were on Dekkarat with Bones and whatever happened has changed him. He's himself, personality wise, but it's like someone's sucked the fucking life out of him and he's doing everything by rote.”
Chekov didn't say anything. He didn't need to, if only because everything Kirk was saying, he agreed with and had already thought himself. The doctor was floundering in nightmares borne of memories, which Kirk didn't know, but Pavel was sure the man soon would – he couldn't take it any longer, watching the slow disintegration of a man who'd fought to protect him.
“Something happened on the planet that maybe they told you not to tell or you're not sure if the event really occurred for some reason, maybe you both decided it would be better or easier not to speak of it,” Jim said, “I've lived all those choices myself over the last few years and even before, but I'm asking you now – as someone who's actually worried for you both – to tell me.”
“I'm not the one they went after, sir.”
“No, but you were still there, Chekov, you still had to be there when they hurt him. And it doesn't take someone with your IQ,” Jim smiled sadly at that and patted the other man's arm, continuing, “to see how much it took from you as well. I mean I haven't seen you in rec since the week before you were captured, Sulu reported that you've kept yourself reclused to quarters most days and that you've had some nightmares yourself.”
“It's nothing,” Chekov told him, hoping to shrug it off and drank down the next shot Jim poured without a hint of reluctance. He twirled the glass in a circle, unable and unwilling to look the other in the eye; he didn't need to see the look on Jim's face to know there would be disbelief written in his features.
Jim sighed and rose, moving toward the window behind his desk to watch the flicker of the stars as Enterprise zipped by. He was trying to decide his next move, his next words, when Chekov cleared his throat and Jim turned to glance over his shoulder at the Ensign.
A moment of silence passed and Jim was almost sure it hadn't been an attempt to garner his attention, then Chekov spoke and he felt the bile rise from his stomach.
McCoy was dead on his feet.
Afters six weeks of barely sleeping, nightmares terrorizing what bit of rest he could get, he was running out of steam; eating, staying hydrated, working, those where no problem – he wasn't some fainting maiden who was going to break down, crying out about the vapors, while clinging to Jim like some sort of limpet. He was a grown man, damnit, and he was able to deal with his problems.
Of course, that was as much bullshit as the crap he'd fed Chekov on the planet about him being better equipped to deal with the sexual assaults and the physical abuse; he wasn't, in any manner of speaking, better trained to get through such vitriolic events unless one meant the after effects – doctors were meant to treat the men returning from such situations, not be the victim. In that instance, Chekov truly was the better option, but he was a young man with a glowing smile and Bones simply hadn't been able to handle the mere thought of not listening to the boy's laughter, seeing him dash down corridors in off hours grinning at some strange joke...
So he'd demanded to take Chekov's place, a gamble he won, and now he was paying for it in restless nights and a lack of concentration.
He knew he was skirting the line of what Chapel and Beckett would allow, that they'd watched his movements with M'Benga while they worried over him and he wanted to scream – it was his damned Medical Bay. He'd handpicked his staff, had trained them and bonded with them over poker and whiskey in his and Jim's quarters. He'd counseled them through tough times and celebrated the good ones, sent messages personally to the families of the few he'd lost.
“Doctor,” Chapel's voice was strong at his back and he spun his chair around to look at her. She was wearing the same look of concern she'd had since he'd woken two days after the rescue, screaming out involuntarily at the disgusting power of his nightmare.
“Something you need, nurse?” He responded, using her title as a reminder that he was the one in charge of sickbay and thus could not be dismissed to quarters – as he knew multiple members of his staff wanted.
Of course, Jim could come down from the bridge to drag his ass back to bed, but that wasn't going to happen. Kirk wouldn't leave the bridge unless absolutely necessary, nor would he drag Bones to bed; flashbacks at the most inopportune times had murdered their sex life, though he'd continued to let Jim believe that he was simply too tired to get it up. Which given the nightmares that'd made it impossible to sleep, it was the truth – erections weren't going to occur when his brain process in bed was reduced to a recurring chant of sleepsleepsleeppleasegodstayasleep.
“Christine,” she corrected.
He managed to stop the groan before it slipped from his lips. “Until you are off duty in,” his eyes flicked to the chrono, “thirty-two minutes, you're still my nurse. If you want to stage an intervention, you can do so then. Go back to work.”
The look she gave him was laced in venom, reminiscent of the pinched, angry face one of the guards had perpetually displayed.
Giving himself a mental slap to stop the memory before it came to fruition in the form of a flashback, Bones returned his hands to the PADD he'd been engrossed in earlier. He read it mechanically, never really comprehending the words of the synth-narcotic study Medical had recently conducted; so focused on keeping himself from glancing out his door to the treatment area (where Chapel and Beckett were no doubt conspiring against him), he never saw Jim's approach.
Then his office door was closed and his head snapped up, fear in his eyes for a fleeting moment. It dropped away so quickly Jim wasn't entirely sure he'd even seen it, but he knew from Chekov's halting, sad rendition of events from the planet, that it had been there.
“We need to talk,” he started before McCoy could throw up a defense, something he'd done a few weeks earlier and Jim had allowed at the time.
While communication hadn't been a problem in the past, they'd never been the emotionally open type of partners, not like Spock and Uhura had been. Those two, at the hight point of their relationship, had often been found on observation decks late at night, discussing mothers, griefs, and triumphs. It had fascinated Jim whose own relationship with McCoy was strong, but filled with far less talk about the pains and joys of life.
And they'd been completely fine with that – conversations about how they were feeling weren't their style; intimacy was, whether that meant curling up in bed, spooned together against terrible, saddening memories, or they had hurried, rough sex, depended entirely on the triggering event. It was their way and they'd never had an issue with it.
Now, however, sex was the last way they'd connect until Bones had agreed to therapy in Jim's mind and while it was going to be painful and awkward, they had to talk before the situation they'd found themselves in worsened. McCoy was quite literally on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, M'Benga and Beckett having already decided that if he could not submit to taking a few days off to rest that they would override their CMO and force the issue. Warning Jim of that danger had simply been a courtesy since the Medical Code allowed for such actions without the express consent of the Captain.
“I'm on duty,” Bones responded.
“No, you're not – your shift ends now.” Jim moved closer to the heavy desk and sat in one of the chairs before it with a choked sigh, then went on, “Listen, I suck at this emotional crap. Mom wasn't big on talking it out and Frank's preferred form of communication was yelling with a side of drunken terror. But we're going to try it, you and me, because you're struggling with something you think I'm not going to handle well and I'd rather do the girly-handholdy thing then watch you turn into a fucking zombie.”
McCoy gripped the armrests of his own chair, cushioned fabric harsh under the pads of his fingers. He started to rise, only to fall back into the seat as his knees gave out: apparently today was to be the day that he reached the end of his limits. Which meant he could not escape Jim and his questions, his facts, his concerned fucking eyes.
He tried to stop it, but the anxiety flooded his mind and he dazedly threw up on the floor, his body spasming from the force of his esophageal reflux. Breakfast had been eggs and toast, just bland enough to ease the subconscious roil in his gut. The scent of it hit his nose like a punch to the face and he reeled back into his chair, looking at Jim with horror – this had never happened to him before.
Kirk felt his stomach drop out. Damnit, Bones was a red-blooded male and he did not just keel over to vomit on his own shoes, not without some mitigating factor. He snorted at the latter part of his thought: Oh yeah, there was one hell of a mitigating factor.
“Fuck,” he muttered, loathing that he'd allowed this farce to go on as long as it had. “Emotional upsets causing physical reactions...”
“Don't, Jim,” McCoy warned though his usual masterful tone was lost as his stomach cramped again, forcing himself to bend forward once more at the waist and begin dry heaving. He was so absorbed in trying to stop the painful retching that he was oblivious to Jim's call for aid.
All he knew, a minute and a half later, was the peace of sedation, Chapel having already been standing by with a hypospray.
Bones woke in their bed twelve hours later, feeling as exhausted as he had when Christine forced him into unconsciousness though he'd had no nightmare and he felt a surge of triumph at that. Which was promptly cut down by the grim look on Jim's face.
Sitting beside him on the mattress, Kirk was taut with tension and obviously upset, his fingers pulsing beet-red and milk-white where they held an unread requisition PADD. He looked like he hadn't slept causing Bones to involuntarily purse his lips in annoyance – Jim was the Captain and needed to maintain his physical condition to continue being a member of the landing parties.
“You,” Jim started, startling McCoy who had not realized his lover had noticed his awakening, “told my Ensign to promise the he would not tell me that you'd been sexually assaulted. I can only surmise that you never intended to tell me yourself either.”
“Clearly you've figured it out,” Bones shot back, suddenly angry and he sat up in the bed, reaching for the edge of the blanket Jim had wrapped around him.
“Our quarters are on a twelve hour medical lockdown – you can get out of this bed, but so help me, Bones, you're not getting out of this conversation. We're talking about this before you keel over. Again.” Jim's tone was level and controlled, but the emotion underly it was hard, sad, and a touch terrified. “You aren't fucking sleeping and if we don't fix this, Beckett's going to have to report to Command that you are temporarily unfit for duty. You know what'll happen after that,” Jim added, blue eyes looking anywhere but at his lover.
It broke his heart to think of the regs: A CMO, unfit for service, was to be removed from their post and returned to Earth. If such was impossible to do, then they were to be confined to quarters or Medical Bay where they could be cared for until such time as they could be found a route to Starfleet's Headquarters, to be assessed and treated by someone who reported directly to the CMO of the Fleet, the Surgeon General Jack Quinn; Bones would be taken from his ship and from him, up to such time that he was cleared to serve once more.
Kirk knew that there would be no long hospitalization nor years of therapy for his lover as it simply wouldn't be necessary given that Bones needed sleep more than anything else, but with just under a year left in the mission, the amount of time it would take for all the steps to be taken to return McCoy to his place on the ship would be too long. He couldn't allow that, not after all the accomplishments and discoveries they'd made in the last four years – McCoy deserved to stand with his colleagues and friends when they disembarked and be praised for what he'd done, not ignored in the news reports.
He threw the PADD suddenly and rolled, forcing Bones onto his back and looming over him. “Talk to me. Tell me what happened, please,” he said, trailing off. Jim knew he now sounded far too desperate, only his fingers were twitching to hypo his partner and his brain was screaming to run before he really did hear what had occurred on the planet out of McCoy's own mouth, and he ignored both vicious urges.
“Chekov already told you. Why is it so important for me to say it, Jim?” Bones asked, closing his eyes at his mutinous stomach. As if he hadn't already embarrassed himself by vomiting, his belly was roiling once more at Jim's request.
“Because I fucking love you,” Jim replied, shoving his hands hard into the mattress which caused it to bounce. “I love you and if you dare to try to make this about me looking for sex, so help me, Bones – I've been watching you walk around like goddamn ghost for the last month and a half. You're doing all the right things, but you're dazed, out of it, and...”
“And the crew is seeing it.” Bones shrugged at the thought; Jim was a good Captain and he would not tolerate anyone lowering morale or creating problems.
“No, baby,” Jim said, immediately getting McCoy's attention with the endearment. He knew McCoy hated it, hated being called anything but the stupid nickname Jim had given him on that first shuttle ride to the Academy, yet Jim could not bring himself to care. He was lost in the outpouring of words that was beyond being out of character for him, unable to stop as he looked down at the man beneath him. “I'm seeing it. And I've done nothing about it because I thought you were dealing with whatever the issue was, but you're not. So you've got the choice of me, right here and now, or Alyson Beckett in twelve hours, or one of Quinn's lackeys whenever you get back to Earth.”
Bones was silent. Cloudy, hazel-green eyes locked with Jim's, warring emotions glittering in the blue, and he wondered, not for the first time, how he had come to be the focus of Kirk's attentions. Overprotective as he may be, stubborn too, Jim was like the Time Lord from the old Earth TV show, Doctor Who: He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. Jim was intensity and spontaneity in one confounding package that often left Bones thinking about irony, fate, and nature versus nurture.
And once he had something stuck in his craw he wasn't going to let it go, not until he was satisfied with the resolution.
“They were going to take the kid, Jim,” he finally relented and disentangled one hand from the blanket, bringing it up to rest on Kirk's shoulder. “Figured better me than him,” he went on, squeezing the flesh under his fingers, “I didn't fucking want to trade places with him, but he's a damned infant compared to the rest of this crew...”
Jim shook his head with a tiny, depressed smile on his lips. “He was trained at the Academy, Bones – command track cadets are taught about torture and how to deal. Rape's not specific to Earth, you know that.”
“Bastard,” McCoy snapped as his hand whipped away and he pushed at Jim's chest, unsurprised when his lover wouldn't move. A few minutes passed, each dispassionate throw of his hands another nail in his coffin as it sunk in that he was too tired to escape Jim's presence. He collapsed back against the mattress and pursed his lips, before spitting, “And you think the Medical contingent's any less able to deal with the consequences?”
“No, but they're the consequences! Bones, you guys are taught how to keep us grunts from going to pieces over events we cannot control, you aren't supposed to be the ones we have to put back together. I'm the headstrong guy you sew up, clean up, and throw to the counselor,” Jim tried to explain. He was at a loss of how to put it precisely, how to explain that though he hated to say it, Bones should have let Chekov be the one they were watching try to sleep and failing.
McCoy had listened to his lover's lackluster statements with rapt attention, realization taking over his mind while Jim's skin twitched from the renewed anxiety. He let a minute go by once Jim finished as well, still absorbing what the man hadn't chosen to say.
Almost of its own accord, Bones' hand settled back on Jim's shoulder and he spoke.
