Title: while lights were paling one by one
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: We do not claim ownership of these characters, nor do we court any profits with this fanwork.
Summary:Four days ago Jim stopped eating and Leonard hasn't slept since.

When Leonard gets to Jim's quarters he expects to have to use the medical override. He doesn't. The door sighs open without a fight and that's when he gets the delicate notion that this is going to be much worse than he thought.

Four days ago Jim was on the wrong side of a blunt object and took a blow to the back of the head.

Leonard finds Jim sitting on the floor in a half circle of PADDs, tricorders and four manuals. The vid-screen is an unintelligible wash of diagnostic data, spilling cool light across the darkened study.

"I don't know what Star Fleet Tech thinks they're doing." Jim's knee bounces rhythmically as he divides his attention between two PADDs and the ghostly blue of the busy vid screen.

"They want a full run up on a re-rout of the transistors and the back-up crystal array for the transporters in the cargo bay that Scotty and Keenser passed over months ago for a trinary matrix that's twice as efficient with half the maintenance issues."

What's really ridiculous about this is, Jim knows damn well Leonard has no idea what any of that means, but he says it anyway, like Leonard was one of his bright-eyed, bushy-tailed engineers.

"But they want hard data on the performance of their set-up before they'll sign off on Scotty's design." Jim taps the stylus against his lips, a restless tick that makes Leonard want to smack it out of his hand.

"I think they're just pissed about being left behind in leaps and bounds by a guy that got posted in the ass end of nowhere for losing a fucking beagle in subspace transit." He smiles up at Leonard, a bright flash of teeth and eyes, a brief bit of beautiful, the patented Jim Kirk Special.

It's so fake it makes Leonard feel sick.

Four days ago Spock more or less carried Jim into his sickbay, sticky with blood and wasn't that just fucking peachy? Business as goddamn usual, except for how it wasn't.

There is a lull in Jim's tirade on the many woes of Starfleet bureaucracy. The monitors tick softy in the intervening silence. It's a hint, Jim giving him an easy way out. Leonard is tempted to take it. It's cowardly and ugly, the shameful truth sitting like a black stone at the bottom of his nervous stomach.

The fact is, he could do it. Excuse himself from this train wreck of a situation with a snort and an eye-roll. Could easily let himself walk away from Jim's lying smile, and abandon the field in favor of the bottle in his quarters and the lies he could tell himself about how it's better not to get fucking involved.

Leonard knows what kind of man that makes him, to want that.

The deal is they can take care of each other, but they don't talk about it. They don't push. He wonders if this wouldn't be easier if they were fucking. If it would be better, if it would be something like having permission.

But they're not fucking and Jim is Leonard's friend.

So he swallows. He doesn't leave and he pushes. Tries to get a sense of just how hard the wall is.

"They made eggplant lasagna in the mess today, god only knows why you like that shit, but there's probably some left. We could -"

"No."

Leonard bites back the retort crowding up in the bitter space behind his teeth. Hard then.

Four days ago Leonard had his hands on Jim, fingers brushing through his sweat damp hair, cleaning away blood and sand.

It would be so much fucking easier if Jim just started a fight (if Leonard had never sat down next to him).

"You know that tuber we picked up on Tau Sigma? Xenobotony thinks we could use it as a caloric filler when we're long between stock runs. They say it can stand an atmospheric vacuum for about a month without the inner core drying out, damn near impossible to kill – I respect that in a vegetable. Anyway, problem is they can't figure out how it germinates. They've got everyone with a background in botany on this thing. It's all Sulu can talk about on the bridge – how they're trying temperature and humidity extremes, and exposure to different levels of visible light, and I tried telling him, I'm a star ship captain, not a fucking gardener. I thought he was going to cry."

Leonard ignores the torrent in favor of stalking over to the kitchenette. He comes back with an apple. Leonard tosses it. Jim doesn't even look up from the PADD when he snatches it out of the air and slaps it down on the floor next to a copy of Practical Application of Fractal Quantum Physics.

"You gonna to eat that?"

"No."

Four days ago Leonard ran his fingers across the skin at the nape of Jim's neck, looking for swelling.

He found eight numbers.

"We're going to retrofit the bio-beds for those new Betazoid components next week. They sound like glorified mood rings, but Spock says they pick up mental anomalies in psi-sensitive beings so what the hell, fresh minds, new ideas. Also, there's a shipment of stem tissue waiting for pick up at our next stop, so you can quit bitching at Star Fleet Medical about it."

Leonard kicks the goddamn apple as hard as he can. The flesh splits when it hits the wall. "For fuck's sake, Jim!"

The kid doesn't even look up.

Four days ago Jim stopped eating and Leonard hasn't slept since.

Leonard kneels and snatches the PADD out of Jim's hand.

"You need to eat something."

Jim's blank face stutters into something tight and furious before he takes back the PADD, stylus flying across the screen as he taps out rapid commands, ignoring Leonard's answering scowl, his anger and concern a non-entity in Jim's world. And isn't that just like them, one always deflecting sideways when the other tries to steer forward. Never looking in the same direction at the same time.

Leonard scrapes his tongue across the edge of his teeth, and makes him self think it, Tarsus IV. He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to think of Jim there, as just some young, brilliant little kid who didn't deserve what happened. It's what Leonard sees behind his eyes when he tries to sleep, those neat little numbers and he wonders if they had to hold Jim down to tattoo them onto his neck. Eight tiny numbers.

Who does that to a child?

20421091.

Four days.

"You need to eat something."

Jim keeps his eyes trained on the PADD, blank-faced and still.

Leonard gets as close as he can, until he can feel the warm whisper of Jim's level breathing against his dry lips.

"You need to eat something."

Quietly. "You're dismissed Dr. McCoy."

"Oh, fuck you, Jim."

And maybe he just didn't think Leonard would have the balls to do it and that's why he manages it at all, but Leonard grits his teeth and reaches out to lightly brush his fingers across the the nape of Jim's neck. It's the wrong thing to do, or maybe it's the right thing. It only lasts for a moment. His legs are knocked out from under him, and he hits the floor with a thump that punches the air out of him like an angry fist.

Jim's always been something of a soft touch with Leonard. It's irritating most of the time, but he's grateful for it now. If he were anyone else, Jim would have immediately moved out of range. But because he's Bones, Jim doesn't. He hesitates, considers, and that moment of indecision is all he needs.

He rolls, turns and throws his weight against Jim, who's totally unprepared for it. He straddles Jim's hips and pulls his arms behind his back. Jim pants a furious curses against the floor and jerks his arms against Leonard's hold, testing his grip.

"Settle down."

"Fuck off me!"

Leonard tightens his sweaty fingers on Jim's awkwardly bent wrist, painfully lost on what to do next. They've been doing this for too long, he thinks. Leonard distracted, trying to pluck apart the complicated knot of Jim's desires while Jim leads them down whatever path looks safe enough to make following their only rule easier than breaking it.

Leonard keeps his hold on Jim and leans down to skim his lips across the sweaty skin at the base of his skull. Jim is his friend and that's not something you do to a friend, but Leonard does it anyway.

Jim breathes out and the fight goes out with it. He's pliant and heavy when Leonard turns him.

He doesn't want to ask because he doesn't want to know, not really. There are things you just can't bare to know about another person.

"What happened?"

He doesn't answer. Leonard tugs the wrist he still has circled between his fingers.

"Tell me."

"What do you want to know, Bones? What it looked like, what it smelled like? Piss, mostly. Fear and rotting things, cordite sometimes, when the resistance got close enough to the compound to use bombs."

Leonard keeps his eyes on Jim and he doesn't want to know. "What else?"

There's something dark and vicious building up behind Jim's face, a shadow of a person Leonard almost never sees, calculating and mean.

"He had a list and I was on it."

"What else?"

"He called me son."

"What else?"

Jim reaches up, tugging his hand free and carefully palms Leonard's jaw for a moment before running the pad of his thumb, feather light, across Leonard's mouth. He doesn't move when Jim pushes past his lips and presses his thumb to the slick front of Leonard's teeth.

"Primates have generalized dentition, Bones. Flat molars for the most part, a set of canines for cutting. Allows for effective maceration of a wider variety of food. We can chew just about anything. We're not true carnivores, though. Not really. We don't quite have the teeth for it."

Jim's thumb slides back out, leaving a trail of spit as it follows the line of his cheekbone. Leonard keeps very, very still. Jim gently cradles Leonard's head with both hands, fingers carding softly through his hair as he draws Leonard down towards him. Their lips almost touch before Jim whispers, "He ate them."

Jim's fingers tighten painfully in Leonard's hair when he tries to pull away.

"You satisfied, Bones? Can you see it, now? Do you feel like you were there?"

Leonard rips himself back, out of Jim's hold and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes so he doesn't have to look. "God. God."

Jim laughs, high and clear, with a tight edge to it that maybe should have been tears a long time ago. Leonard takes a breath and makes himself drop his hands, makes himself look.

"You're fucked-up."

Jim's face twists, terribly, beautifully, as he stares at Leonard.

"What?" Like he can't believe what he just heard.

"You heard me."

"Yeah. I did." Jim's eyes are hard and fury-bright. The space between them crackles, taunt with a mad energy that makes Leonard itch. "Say it again anyway."

"You're broken."

"Uh huh. Let me tell you what's fucked-up, Leonard." The hard intensity of Jim's gaze flares, almost exactly like the way Jocelyne's use to before she said something cruel. "Fucked-up is staggering piss drunk onto a shuttle in the middle of nowhere so you don't have pretend to fight for something you don't want."

Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes.

"Broken is leaving your kid so she doesn't have to see what a miserable piece of shit you are."

"Yeah," Leonard nods, because he can be cruel too, "and you would know all about that wouldn't you, Jimmy? Winona left so she wouldn't have to look at you."

Jim hits him so hard all Leonard sees is black and his mind goes blank long enough for him to be surprised when he realizes that he's hitting Jim back.

They knock into the desk and trip over the shit on the floor, trading blows. Leonard's face is bloody, and his ribs ache, but he doesn't stop.

It's mean and fast, and when Leonard manages to get Jim under him again they snap at each other like animals. Jim's teeth close on the lobe of Leonard's ear and the white hot star burst of pain does nothing to stop the fight, it just changes the trajectory when he leans down and bites at those cock-sucking lips. Lips he hasn't seen pulled into a smile or smirk for four days now and he hates how much that matters to him.

Jim gasps when he drags his mouth down Jim's throat.

Leonard presses his teeth to Jim's collarbone as fingers pull at the button of his uniform slacks and he doesn't tell Jim it's fine now, it's over, because it's not, and it never will be. Not in Jim's head, where it matters. And there's not a damn thing Leonard can do about it. That's the rub, right there, the thing that's been twisting him up for four days. Uselessness, and impotence and he understands now why Jim hasn't eaten. He understands and that doesn't change anything so he tugs his own clothes away and lets himself fuck his frustration into Jim, just takes it when Jim bucks and kisses back, the hitch of his breath harsh and obscene in the silence of the captain's quarters when he runs out of air.

There are things the body isn't meant for, not without certain considerations and the intelligent, rational part of Leonard screams at him to stop, because he's hurting Jim, never mind the kid's greedy fingers urging Leonard's hips forward or the feel of Jim's feet digging into the small of his back. There's a right way to do this. Dry-fucking Jim on the carpet, hands made mean and dumb with misery and angry lust isn't it, isn't what he wanted when let himself want at all. But Leonard doesn't stop. He pushes instead, shoves, grunts at the effort, at the burn of flesh that doesn't want to give and at the animal noises that Jim makes as he buries himself inside him as deep as he can.

The first thrust makes Jim seize around him and gasp soundlessly. He's hard and leaking between them, the head of his cock brushing wetly across Leonard's abdomen when he moves. The high, alien sobs that come when he does it again and again makes something dark and hungry tighten low in Leonard's belly, so he digs his fingers into the lean angular lines of Jim's narrow hips and fucks him just as hard as he wants to.

Jim tosses his head and keens, face red and sweaty as he struggles to match Leonard's pace, labored, sex-stupid noises drowning out the wet slap of skin on skin. It goes on forever, and not nearly long enough.

When Jim comes with a strangled whine Leonard drops to his elbows and tucks his face into Jim's shoulder, muffling himself with Jim's skin until the orgasm is torn out of him.

His hand aches from where Jim's fingers are clenched tight in his.

"Are you going to eat tonight?"

"No."

"Are you going to eat tomorrow?"

"No."

Leonard squeezes Jim's hand and fights back the prickly heat of tears. He hasn't cried since Joycelin left him. He doesn't want to cry now, because it feels too much like giving up.

"The day after?"

Jim's voice is soft and vulnerable in the dark. "I don't know."