fringedwellerfic

Story Title: It's What Good Friends Do
Author:

fringedwellerfic
Rating: NC-17, mainly for language but a little non-graphic sex
Warnings: Bad writing?
Summary: A bad day for McCoy and the Enterprise leads him to break a promise to himself about his best friend.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters and I'm not making any money off this.

Morning hangovers, God how he hated them. The universe’s punishment for trying to have a good time, or at least forget the bad times.

McCoy woke up, but refused to open his eyes. He knew what would happen. Pain. Pain of the most searing and brain wrenching kind, thanks to Starfleet Academy and their damned self-opening automated window blinds. A punishment for any cadet that dared to sleep past their alarm, a punishment for any cadet that was in too delicate a state to face the bright August sunlight head on.

So here McCoy was going to stay, in bed. In bed with his pillows, and his blankets and his three arms.

Wait.

He counted again. One arm tucked under his pillow, one arm thrown over his head, one arm snaked across his waist.

Damn.

They’d done it again.

Last night had been a blur of bars and drinks, and Jim flirting with woman after woman and then there were more drinks, and then there had been more women which was when Jim had disappeared, which had prompted more drinks,and then he had stumbled home alone, only to find Jim already there, naked and inviting.

Again.

It was beginning to become a habit, and it wasn’t a good one.

McCoy groaned, and then wished he hadn’t. He reached out for the bedside cabinet, and fumbled until he found the hypospray he knew he kept there for these kinds of mornings. He winced as he felt the stimulants punch through his skin, but his head started to clear. Next to him Jim moaned.

“Bones. Make it go away, Bones.”

Smiling in spite of himself, McCoy rolled over and pressed the hypospray to the long muscle in Jim’s neck. Jim peered at him through half-open eyes, and smiled. McCoy felt the heat behind that lazy smile, and turned away.

They couldn’t do this again. He wasn’t going to be Jim’s fuckbuddy anymore. Sooner or later it was going to screw up their friendship. Jim seemed to be able to separate his feelings in a way that McCoy just couldn’t, and the last time that happened he’d ended up divorced, broke and alone.

Not again.

“So, you’re breaking up with me.”

Alarmed, McCoy rolled suddenly and misjudged the end of the narrow bed. He fell with a crash and a string of curses that would make an Orion blush.

Scowling as he made his way back up again, he was faced with Jim’s lazy grin and his lithe muscled body entwined in the white sheet.

“We’re not breaking up, dipshit. We were never together.”

Jim, damn him, just kept grinning.

“I know, Bones. Just like I know that you’re building up to tell me that you don’t want to wake up with me anymore, that our friendship won’t take the strain, that you were divorced once and you can’t take the emotional stress of...”

Jim was cut off by the simple expedient of a pillow to the face.

It was all that was needed. The friendship stayed, but the sex went. There were times when McCoy missed it, felt the need all the way down to his bones, times when he could have sworn that Jim felt the same way, but there was a line drawn that they didn’t cross. It was easier, that way, or so they told themselves. Jim continued to sleep his way through the Academy, and Bones patched him up when jealous boyfriends, girlfriends and non-gendered significant others caught up with him. Bones snuck him onto the Enterprise during the battle with Nero, and Jim demanded that he stay as his Chief Medical Officer when they started their five year hitch.

Everything was fine, until the day it wasn’t.

It was the end of a day that McCoy hoped he’d never have to live through again. Something had gone wrong in Engineering – he wasn’t sure what, but it had caused Scotty to use language that made McCoy wince and it had left him with a med bay full of burn victims. There had been some other fuss halfway through the day, but McCoy had been busy in surgery and the coolly competent Nurse Chapel had taken over the frantic communications from the bridge. Add an amputation for a fresh from the Academy ensign that would kill her career before it even got started, and all McCoy wanted was to have a good hard drink, and his rest his tired bones in his bed.

Of course, even these simple pleasures were to be denied to him today.

On entering his room, McCoy was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight of what looked like a entire family of Bolians camped out in his quarters. Three children were playing a holo projection of vid that he vaguely recognised from Joanna’s collection, and there were two elderly women tucked into his bed. A younger woman was standing looking out of the window, and the noise of the sink in the bathroom heralded the return of an adult male. The adults turned to face McCoy. McCoy stopped dead in his tracks. Nobody spoke. McCoy gave a nervous smile, nodded to the women in the bed, said “Evenin’, ladies,” and backed out of the room.

He walked down the corridor to the nearest comm link, and paged the one person he knew who’d think it was funny to store random people in his room.

“Jim, there’s a family of Bolians in my quarters. Why are there a family of Bolians in my quarters?”

There was a pause before Kirk’s voice came over the comm. He sounded tired, but Bones could still hear a slight hint of amusement in it.

“Because Uhura gave hers to the Betazoids.”

“Well, naturally,“ McCoy spat, “of course she did. How thoughtful of her. What the hell is going on Jim? I’m a doctor, not a hotelier! Why in the seven hells of Tarsus do I have two little old Bolian ladies tucked up in my bed? “

“Now Bones, “ came the mock-scolding voice from the comm link, “you’ve always told me to keep the hell away from your personal life...”

“Damnit Jim! I’m no mood for this!”

The tone of his voice must have got through to his friend, because Jim’s voice dropped its amused tone.

“I know, sorry. It’s a reflex thing. It’s been a hell of a day for all of us. I’m in my quarters, come by and I’ll explain.”

McCoy grunted his assent and stomped off back to the turbolift, passing the room that contained the bed that was rightfully his on the way. Inside the turbolift he found two confused Tellerites being escorted by Ensign Chekov to their new quarters, which appeared to be his. He was assuring them that it had “A wery nice weiw.”

By the time he made it to the captain’s quarters on deck five, he’d passed dozens of Enterprise crew members herding lost looking civilians into rooms, carrying blankets and pillows into storage areas and generally looking as frazzled as he felt. Something had happened while he was busy in surgery, something that Christine hadn’t had time to tell him about.

He entered Jim’s quarters without having to request entry; they hadn’t woken up together for three years, but their friendship had endured. Jim was sitting in his chair by the window, bent over, head in his hands. His Hippocratic instincts won out over annoyance; he went over to him immediately and began assess his Captain, his friend’s condition.

Who, of course, was having none of it.

“Knock it off, Bones, I’m fine. Just tired. Sit down, have a drink.”

Shrugging, McCoy did just that, helping himself to the Saurian brandy sitting open on the table. Kirk looked at him, his tired eyes still holding a tiny remnant of his notorious twinkle.

“So dear, how was your day?”

Snorting, McCoy finished his drink and sat back in the chair, tension beginning to seep from his body. From his bones.

“Fuckin’ awful, sweetheart, thanks for askin’. You’ve got six members of your engineering staff with second degree burns , an ensign with an amputated leg and another ten crew with assorted cuts and bruises thanks to whatever the hell Scotty was doin’.”

“Nobody dead, Bones, thanks to you. And it wasn’t Scotty’s fault. There was some kind of radiation in that nebula we were in that fried our hull. Spock’s still analysing it now. It got that tourist cruiser too, only they don’t have the shields we do.”

Splashing more brandy into his glass, McCoy asked “Tourist cruiser? That why I’m homeless?”

“’Fraid so. We picked up four hundred from the ship, and we’ve nowhere to put them. Shuttle bays are crammed with the escape pods from the ship, cargo bays are heaving with the medical supplies we’re dropping off at Miswore Four, so everybody’s doubling up. “

McCoy nodded, finally understanding. “Hence my Bolians, and Uhura’s Betazoids.”

“And Chekov’s Tellerites, Scotty’s Risans...I don’t think anybody’s sleeping where they should be tonight. You’ve been put in with me for the next week, until we can get to Starbase 129”

And with that, the whole room suddenly started to get darker, deeper. Maybe it was the brandy, but McCoy saw a new tension in Kirk’s shoulders, tension that had nothing to do with injuries and refugees and hull breeches.

‘Here we are,’ McCoy thought, ‘finally. God knows it took us long enough.’

“Where am I sleeping tonight, Jim?”

Kirk met his eyes, and the tiredness and the twinkle were gone, replaced with a heated look that McCoy knew all too well.

“Unless you want the floor, Bones, you’re going to have to share with me. “

“Well,” McCoy said finally, “It’s not like we haven’t done that before.”

“We’ve done a lot of things before, Bones.”

The room went quiet, as both men continued to sip their drinks, and look anywhere but at each other. McCoy’s eyes strayed to the bathroom door.

“I’ve had a hell of day, Jim. I’m going to go and take advantage of that real water shower in your fancy captain’s bathroom, and then I’m going to go to sleep.”

Tension broken, Kirk smiled. “Of course, the shower, you’ve been bitching about the sonic one in your quarters since you embarked. Go ahead, abuse mine.”

McCoy pulled himself from his chair, stepped into the bathroom and programmed the shower for hard pulses of hot water. He stripped off his uniform and stepped under the spray, and immediately felt his muscles react to the heat. Groaning, he laid his head against the cool bathroom wall and would have been content to stay there for the rest of the night if he hadn’t been disturbed by the quiet swish of the door. Before he could turn around to see what the hell Jim could possibly want now, he felt the pressure of a familiar body against his. Jim’s hands ran up his arms, and he could feel Jim’s hot mouth pressing light kisses along the back of his neck. A strong, muscled thigh forced itself between his, and McCoy could feel the length of Jim’s hardness pressing against him.

With remarkable control, under the circumstances, McCoy managed to say

“This isn’t something we’ve done before, is it? I’m pretty sure I’d remember this.”

Jim snorted with laughter, and murmured fondly into his ear.

“You’ve had a long, hard day, Bones. Let me help you relax.” Jim’s hands had wandered, and Bones could feel his treacherous body react strongly to the heat and touch. Taking his wordlessness as permission, Jim squeezed liquid soap over Bones and took his time massaging every inch he could find. Strong, deft fingers dug into tense back muscles, leg muscles, arm muscles, everywhere except where Bones needed his touch most. Frustrated by the teasing, McCoy grabbed his hand and brought it down to his aching cock. Jim caught the lobe of McCoy’s ear between his lips and began to suckle on his neck as he gripped his cock firmly and began to slide his hand up and down in a familiar rhythm.

Between the heat of their pressed bodies, the insistent electric bolts of pleasure working their way down his spine and Jim’s devilishly talented hand building pressure in his cock, it didn’t take long for McCoy to come with a force that caused him to see stars and his knees to buckle slightly. Kirk took his weight, and they stood there together for minutes draped together as the pounding water sluiced any evidence of what happened away down into the depths of the Enterprise.

Eventually Jim took control, shutting off the shower and leading Bones out to the bed where he had replicated fluffy towels. Bones said nothing as he was carefully dried off by Jim, and laid back into the comfortable bed. Jim towelled himself off quickly, dimmed the lights and joined him. They lay there in a companionable silence. Bones started to speak, but was silenced by Jim.

“This wasn’t a sex thing, Bones. This was about friendship.”

McCoy turned his head to look at Jim in the darkness. The only light came from the reflection
of the stars outside. Jim was mostly in shadow, but McCoy could see his handsome profile as he spoke.

“Before, at the Academy, I was an ass. Falling into bed with you was easy, but I never stopped to think about what would happen next. You were right to stop it. Sex is fun, it’s supposed to be fun, but it would have screwed us up as friends. I needed more from you than just fun.”

McCoy snorted, faking a wounded tone. “Glad to know I’m such an exciting person to be around, Jim.”

Kirk gave McCoy an affectionate punch to the shoulder.

“Ass. That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

McCoy nodded. He knew what Jim meant. He’d been the one to rein in Jim’s wildly destructive side, and Jim had told him one night after they had got wasted on some illegal Romulan ale that without Bones to haul him out of the messes he got in, he never would have made it the four years through the academy.

“Today was about friendship, “ Jim repeated, “You were tired and stressed, and I wanted to help you. As your friend. “

“So out of the kindness of your heart you jacked me off in the shower?”

“It’s what good friends do for each other, Bones.”

Even in the pale starlight, McCoy could see that Jim was giving him his best innocent, puppy dog eyes. The ones that fooled absolutely nobody.

McCoy gave in and laughed.

Laying there drowsily, he reached out and grabbed Jim’s hand.

“Thank you Jim, for being so noble and self sacrificing. Now shut up, and let me sleep. “

Smiling, Jim turned so his body tucked along the back of Bones’, and snaked his hand along his waist.

“Of course,” he murmured into Bones’ ear, “a great friend would have returned the favour...”

Not for the first time, Jim Kirk was silenced with a pillow to the face.