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Leonard pounds on the door again.
He stands in the hallway of Deck 5, outside of a very particular room and taps his foot impatiently, blending into the chaos around him hinting of a shift change. Beings of all shapes and sizes rush from their cabins to their assigned posts which—he looks at his holowatch—are set to begin in three Standard minutes.
“Jim, do not make me medical override this, dammit. I’m leaving in ten seconds whether you’re out here or not!” Leonard hears what sounds to be a muffled shout and something heavy hitting the floor. He would have thought the bulkheads were more soundproof than that.
Just as the countdown in his head reaches one, a shock of blue greets Leonard from down around his waist, Jim’s crystal stare colored with mirth as he fumbles with the boot he is failing to zip up.
Jim’s smile is blinding. “Sorry, Bones.”
Hazel eyes roll. “Yeah, I would believe you other than the fact that you do this a few times a week,” he grumbles, turning away to begin walking down the hall and towards the turbolift that hopefully isn’t full of ensigns. Chapel has first watch and Leonard has seemed to make it a habit of late to hang around the bridge for the first portion of Alpha for no other reason than to keep an eye on the accident-prone captain currently trailing behind him. He hears Jim stumble into the wall with a low curse, the final zip of his boot sounding out clearly.
Leonard doesn’t stop to wait. “Three years into this and you’d think the captain would have his shit together.”
Jim catches up to him, breathless. “The captain may have stayed up too late last night and drank too much bourbon on doctor’s orders.”
“Pretty sure I told you to slow down at one point, kid. You should have learned by now not to try to keep up with me,” Leonard smirks.
The turbolift opens to a—thankfully—empty compartment and Jim stands close, shoulder touching Leonard’s own as he huffs a laugh. Leonard feels warm down to his toes, his exasperation little more than a front he wears like a practiced actor would play the role he has chosen. Thing is that Jim’s in on the farce, and that’s half the fun.
“Kid, huh? Haven’t called me that in a while.”
Leonard simply shrugs.
They do this almost every day, trailing through the ship together, a strange ritual Leonard can’t remember the start of since the whole thing makes no sense given sickbay rests on the exact deck they’re vacating. Yet, the thought of not accompanying Jim to the bridge and checking that everything seems fine before he slinks back below decks to slave away in the bowels of the ship (alright, maybe he’s being a bit dramatic) seems counterintuitive. Like he’s fighting instinct and not doing this will end in some sort of disaster. Doesn’t make much sense when Leonard has never been known to be a superstitious man. He has no plans to stop, regardless.
Jim pushes the button that’ll take them to the bridge and then sidles close once more, a comfortable silence blanketing over the compartment. Only the low hum of the lift detracts from it, that and Jim’s breathing. Leonard goes to place his hands firmly behind his back in parade rest but doesn’t hesitate to brush at the skin just over Jim's knuckles as he does so, eliciting a small smile; the ones Leonard is so familiar with, yet guards jealously.
With Jim so close, the smell of him is apparent, notes of warm skin and the cologne he prefers, the synthesized smell of fresh laundry that is—as Spock would say—‘illogical’, but is appreciated all the same coming off of his clothes. And mixed in with it all is…something new.
Leonard sniffs audibly, brows furrowed in thought…recognition. Jim being only slightly shorter puts his hair just at the line of Leonard’s nose and it isn’t long before he’s narrowed in on just where the smell is coming from.
“What is that?” He sniffs again. He turns and takes Jim by the shoulders. “What the hell is that—I know that smell.”
Jim is squirming now, snickering as he tries to twist away from Leonard’s grip, playing up the innocent act with a look on his face that has removed him from many a sketchy situation.
“I don’t know what you mean, Bonesy,” he teases.
“The hell you don't!”
Leonard releases him with a small shove, Jim’s shoulders coming up and shaking with barely suppressed laughter.
Leonard narrows his eyes in suspicion. “How’d you get it?”
“Get what?”
“Those blue eyes won’t fool me, where’d ya get it, Kirk?”
“Ooh, he’s mad.” Jim raises one eyebrow.
Leonard steps back, hands on his hips. He’s not mad, not truly anyway. Mostly it’s confusion that has him acting this way—an act quite unbecoming of a senior medical officer, he can admit. He takes a deep breath. “I’m not and you know it. Where’d you get it, Jim? I’ve been out for months, we haven’t been back to Earth since we left almost two years ago. I’m just confused, is all.”
Jim straightens, using one of the handles to pull himself upright completely, his expression turning serious. “I wondered if you would even recognize it.”
“Funny you think I wouldn’t.”
Jim fingers at his own hair, fixing what has come loose in their tussle only to come away with a small amount of product between his fingers, rubbing forefinger and thumb in circles as a smile grows on his face. “What if I told you I’ve had it for a while?”
Leonard can feel the warmth radiating off of Jim’s body as his captain steps forward, his chest coming to touch Leonard’s own as Jim looks up at him through long lashes. Hands circle around Leonard’s waist, fingers splayed against his spine. He can’t help the way he sinks into it, nor does he want to stop it, no matter they’re about thirty seconds away from the doors opening to a very public bridge. Jim’s arms have been home for a long while now, after all. They’ve both grown up since their academy days but the years have been short, and with their careers—and the uncertainties guaranteed them—Leonard doesn’t like to waste time. His eyes darken.
“Didn’t know you liked my pomade, darlin’.”
With Jim so close, Leonard’s voice is little more than a purr, and he knows that he doesn’t imagine the shiver that runs through Jim at the intimate gesture.
“You know I’ve liked it since day one.”
And yes, he supposes that’s true.
Leonard is lost for a moment in time, then. Like a holovid playing before his very eyes he can see that day, crystal clear in sense memory.
The smell of recycled dormitory air circulates, midmorning sunlight draping across the mess of sheets tangled around Leonard’s legs, the feeling of stretched muscles familiar as he awakes from a most restful night. Well, not all of it had been restful.
He can hear Jim puttering around in the bathroom, the mattress under his palm still warm from where he had been not minutes before. The smell of sex still permeates the air, and Leonard smirks. He’s overcome with a sudden feeling of content, fuzzy and molten all the way to his bones as the thought of hours spent in darkness and pleasure come rushing back.
This is the first time he has ever had Jim. Now that he knows the taste of the confounding man, first his closest friend and now something more, he doesn’t think he can give it up.
That fateful day aboard the shuttle bound for San Francisco had Leonard meeting a twenty-two-year-old delinquent and yet against his better judgment they’d been inseparable ever since. He didn’t even try all that hard to push him away once he realized Jim was determined to stick around. They spent two years getting to know one another amidst Academy regulations shoved down their throats, long nights spent in study turning into longer nights filled with honesty. Jim asks about Georgia and Leonard about Iowa, about parents and mothers and family that feels as far away as the stars they’re so destined to explore. They've been leading up to this moment for a while, gentle touches and Leonard’s incessant worrying over Jim’s health the brackets containing something more that they both have been dancing around.
And then Jim kissed him last night. And Leonard knew they were done playing will-they-won’t-they.
The sink water turns off with a hush and Leonard sits up, dragging his body to the edge of the bed, the sheet barely covering his cock from hanging out as he splays his legs and rests back on his palms. Jim is naked as the day he was born as he exits the bathroom and Leonard has no issue looking his fill.
“Well, good mornin’, sunshine,” Leonard says.
Jim squints, clicking his tongue. “Don’t use that southern charm on me this early, I just got out of that bed, I don’t have time to get back in it.” But by the way he walks across the room to sit beside Leonard shamelessly, drawing close, Leonard knows that’s a lie.
He takes a moment to look at the visage that is James Kirk. Jim folds up his legs and leans forward, that confident grin on his face apparent as Leonard takes in golden skin, scant freckles on slightly summer-burnt shoulders, curving lips that are just this side of dry. As if he can feel Leonard’s gaze like a physical thing, Jim licks at them, blue eyes shuttering into something sensual and tempting, and by the way his mouth quirks up he knows just what he’s doing to one Leonard McCoy.
When they kiss, Leonard thinks he knows what to expect but, as it always seems to be when it comes to Jim, he’s mistaken. Last night had been a well of passion, suppressed desires flowing out of the both of them like a dam set free but in the here and now, Leonard feels his breath catch for an entirely different reason. He feels comfort. Instead of insistent need he only feels a sense of rightness, of finality. As if the meeting of their mouths and bodies had been written a long, long time ago and now that they have given in to the plot, things are going to go right.
Leonard has never felt so right.
It’s the work of a moment for him to lean the rest of the way forward and grasp Jim’s arms, the healthy muscle of his biceps soft and giving beneath doctor’s hands, his supple skin like suede to his touch. Jim hums into his mouth and his tongue darts out to coalesce with Leonard’s own, their breaths coming quicker as Leonard presses Jim into the mattress, hands sliding down to paw at a well-formed chest. Leonard’s tongue is soon to join, dipping down to mouth at a pebbled nipple, Jim arching up beautifully to meet him, his legs parting wider to welcome Leonard closer, their cocks touching in passing. Jim gasps and Leonard smiles against spit-slick skin as sensation, bright and electric, rolls up his spine. Leonard drags his teeth, nipping at flushed skin as Jim wriggles underneath him, the sensation bordering on being too soft. When Leonard makes his way up to a sharp jawline, tonguing at day-old stubble, he’s brought up short.
He buries his nose in the soft hair just behind Jim’s ear, following his hairline upwards into the gentle coif Jim must have created within his short time in the bathroom. Leonard’s eyes narrow and he brings a hand up to muss up the little that Jim had accomplished.
“Hey!” Jim squirms, trying to get out from beneath Leonard’s body even as the doctor doubles down, placing all his weight onto the younger man, the air leaving Jim’s lungs in a huff.
Leonard sniffs again. “And just what is this, sweetheart? Dipping into my stash?”
Jim goes abruptly still. His cock twitches between their stomachs and Leonard smirks. “My hair was a mess, I saw it on the counter—thought, why not? Where’d you get it anyway, the container makes it look homemade.”
“It is.”
The container of pomade is one of a handful Leonard has, picked up from the last time he visited Georgia, a local friend of the family making the mixture from scratch. He’s one of her most loyal customers, or so she says and he chooses to believe her. He’s got credits out the ass, the least he can do is give them to someone who can actually use them when his daily needs are taken care of by Starfleet and they tend to just hang around in his bank account. He buys half a dozen or so and they last him the year. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do about this particular arrangement when they finally leave on a spaceship to the stars—Jim would say he’s going to be ‘grumpy’ about the whole thing. The kid’s probably right.
Bright blue eyes soften incrementally, Jim looking up and down the length of Leonard’s face with blatant tenderness, a soft smile turning up his mouth.
“I wanted to wear some. Smells like you. Always wondered what it was that gave you that special something, I just figured it was some cologne I’d never heard of.”
Leonard runs his fingers through Jim’s hair, fixing what he’d just finished ruining. Jim’s hair will be longer in a few years, but right now it’s barely grown enough to welcome the product with any useful efficiency. Once Leonard has finished, he looks on his work with pride.
Leonard kisses the tip of Jim’s nose, a perhaps uncharacteristic show of affection coming from him but hell, it’s a special occasion. “Suits you. What’s mine is yours now, I’d say. I can buy a few extra next time I’m off home if you think this is gonna be a repeat offense.”
The gentle smile on Jim’s face quickly turns wicked, the gleam in his eye turning predatory. “I can think of something else that’s gonna be a repeat offense right about now–”
And with a burst of power Leonard didn’t know he had, Jim flips them both, two sets of hands and mouths creating heated paths of lust and want, Jim’s loose and welcoming body allowing Leonard entry with little preamble from last night’s activities. Leonard’s cock buries into Jim and still that scent surrounds them both, an omen of something like comfort—like home.
When Jim comes with a shout and Leonard is quick to follow, the warmth in his chest matches that of his core, bursting with more than just fleshly satiation and blinding heat. His heart sings along with his skin, and all he can think of is JimJimJim. Leonard wraps two firm hands around his lover’s heaving back and draws him close when he collapses, spent entirely atop Leonard’s torso. The doctor squeezes firmly. Jim laughs, breathless.
“I’ll take a container of it…if you’re buying.”
Leonard thinks of the simple domesticity two side-by-side pomade bottles can symbolize and he buries a helpless smile into Jim’s shoulder.
“Whatever you want, Jim.”
The memory is vivid, rushing in and gone before a few seconds have passed in real time. Jim still stands against him in the turbolift, the soft hum making its way into his awareness again.
Jim looks at him with a knowing eye. “You thinking of our first time?”
Leonard raises a single eyebrow—sometimes he really hates that Spock has rubbed off on him in certain ways. “The first time, what? That you committed your thieving ways?”
Jim snorts. “Yeah, that first time.” He sighs, drawing away slowly, his hand grasping Leonard’s as they come to stand shoulder to shoulder. “I stashed a couple extra containers away. Would you believe I forgot about them? They were just there, in my duffle at the back of the closet.”
“With the way you pack? Yeah, I can believe it.”
The display screen on the control panel shows they’re coming up on the bridge and Jim drops his hand with a soft lingering of fingertips. It isn’t that the crew doesn’t know of their relationship, neither of them have specifically tried to keep it a secret, but their deep understanding of one another and tendency to yell at each other across the open space of the ship has placed them firmly within an untouchable sphere of ‘we don’t talk about it’—self-imposed by the crew, of course. Leonard assumes this is partly due to Jim’s status as Captain and his own high ranking position, but suspects the rest may be due to the possibility of bodily harm should their relationship become ‘fleet gossip. Leonard will neither confirm nor deny these suppositions. Regardless, as they do every day, both men allow the veil of responsibility to come down between them with a parting glance and as Jim squares his shoulders and lifts his chin minutely, Leonard is at once struck with the changes only a few years have made.
Jim is no longer that impulsive, reckless young man Leonard first fell for and though the memory of him is forever encased in the brightness of nostalgia, Leonard is happy to accept this version of the man he loves, here and now. Though, Jim hasn’t left all of his impetuous spark behind him.
Right before the doors open, the lift slowing, Jim places himself between Leonard and the door with a knowing look in his eye as he bites his lip suggestively.
“I’ll bring them by later. In the meantime, I’ll think of a few highly inappropriate things I want you to do to me as payment for a very special delivery.”
The doors begin to open and as Jim turns, straightening his shirt slightly as he takes a step out, Leonard’s fingers dart forward and give Jim’s ass a little pinch. Jim hardly flinches (professional as always) and with a surreptitious look around the consoles directly by the lift, Leonard knows he got away with it.
Again.
Leonard keeps his face carefully impassive as he whispers just loud enough for Jim to hear, “Wouldn’t expect any less of you, Captain.”
And if every time he passes by Jim and gets a whiff of his own pomade which drags a few ‘inappropriate’ thoughts of his own into his mind, well…no one has to know but himself.