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The dreams were always dry—like the desert over hard rock and bleached orange and tan by the sun until everything was sand and it left the feeling of grit between his fingers and toes that wouldn’t fade for hours. There was a sun in the sky that didn’t look like and didn’t feel like any sun that Bones had ever seen from the lush-green and red comfort of Earth. This sky was all heat and it wavered at midday from the dryness of the air. Those things that lived here knew well how to shield themselves from the oppressive sun but Bones felt baked alive by it until he was hot from the inside out and no amount of sweating was going to ease the burn.
Sometimes, when he was deep-deep into the dream he thought he could hear something that sounded like bells in crescendo calling to him. He could run barefoot across the bleached-hot surface of the dream until his body was drenched in Human sweat but he couldn’t find the bells in the distance and the sacred-sought-after grounds that would bring a coolness again to his soul.
He woke up on fire until he wasn’t sure how the sheets weren’t blackened except that they were soaked in his sweat and Jim was making complaints at him instead of asking if he were okay. Some mornings Bones could get out of bed and find the shower and wash the stench of the dream off his skin like convincing himself that it would pass. Other mornings he rolled Jim onto his face in the middle of their shared bed and fucked him without so much as a good-morning kiss. Jim would gasp and grunt and grab his hair with a hiss and a curse that always meant more and never stop. They acted like it was okay when they both knew that his skin was fever-hot and he hadn’t ever been strong enough to hold Jim down and leave bruises on him.
The fact was, sooner or later, Bones was going to have to find the Vulcan bastard and demand answers. The dreams kept coming and the bells were following him into the waking day until he was breaking things with his bare hands and it damn sure wasn’t his Human half losing its mind. So it was a secret or his sanity and if he didn’t have Jim to consider he might just have kept the damn secret a while longer.
--
“Bones,” Jim said with a grunt as he pushed back against his hand when he just wanted him to roll over, “Bones.” He kept pushing back, fighting against the blankets around his legs and Bones’ hand digging into the skin just above his elbow. It didn’t take any effort at all to move him—just the echo of the dream under his skin making his whole body burn. It should have mattered that Jim was elbowing him in the ribs, trying to make it hurt, and it didn’t. “Damn it,” he grunted against the pillows as he fought up to his knees with his chest still pinned to the bed. “Bones,” he said again.
It was almost disgusting, how the only thought he could understand inside the storm of his own mind was some sick hum of pleasure that Jim was easier to grind against, that he knew of his need and was accommodating it. Jim’s skin was bruising under his fingers and he was hissing at the pain and frustration while he went still for a minute to think it through. Bones could hear the buzz of his thoughts flickering in and out of focus as their skin rubbed together chest-to-back. Jim was analyzing the situation, the clues, the exits, trying to figure out what was happening and wanting nothing more than the right to object. Bones bit his cheeks until they bled but he couldn’t loosen his hand. His arms quivered as he ground his hips forward and Jim’s head rolled forward with his fists strangling sheets and pillows.
“Lieutenant Commander McCoy,” Jim snarled at him with his elbow coming back again. His thoughts were all vicious twists like a caged animal trying to work its way free. Bones didn’t let him go but Jim thrashed with his elbows and knees until he ended up on his back with Bones’ hand on his neck holding him down and another on his thigh pulling his legs apart to lean over him. “What the hell,” Jim demanded with his face all red and his voice choking out under his hand.
He didn’t know. He didn’t have any Goddamn idea.
He loosened his hand and Jim pulled him down with nails scratching his neck. Bones kissed him until it hurt and tore his pants when he tried to get them off. The morning alarm was going off while he fucked Jim until he was shaking and leaving pink-red-bloody scratches on his arms and shoulders. He didn’t touch him because he couldn’t sort out if Jim-wanted-him or if he was absorbing Bones’ thoughts somehow. It didn’t matter when it was the brutal clash of skin and bones that seared straight to his blood and finally, finally took the too sharp edge off the dream that wouldn’t leave him be.
Jim panted across the bed, looking beautiful on ruined sheets; hand splayed across his chest and soaked in their sweat. His thighs were pink and his lips were bright red like blood. “Oh,” he said.
Bones sat on the edge of the bed with his hands against his aching head trying to find reason and logic in the situation like the fucking Vulcan he refused to be. When he found nothing ordered or organized or sensible in the purely animal need he smashed his hand against the table at the side of the bed and left a dent shaped like his fist behind.
“What’s going on, Bones?” Jim asked
“I don’t fucking know,” he snarled. Just the sound of Jim’s breathing made his body ache to touch him. The beat of his heart was like some kind of siren song that made his blood boil in his veins and he felt empty and lonely and furious that he was separate from the only thing that could bring relief. “God damn it.” He got up before he turned Jim back on his face and fucked him again.
“Bones,” Jim said.
“Shut up,” Bones shouted back at him. He couldn’t take his voice when it was like that. When it cared, when it wanted to make it better, when it was so close to offering him whatever he had to take. Jim stared at him between being smart enough to be hurt and being stupid enough to be determined. “Not right now,” he said as calmly as he could, “just don’t talk to me right now.”
He had to get out of the fucking room, get away from the sound-sight-smell of Jim. He grabbed his clothes out of the little closet and punched the button to the bathroom. When he was inside where everything smelled antiseptic and purely clean, it was almost enough to find all the familiar Human edges of his thoughts.
--
Bones was only Leonard and only about five or maybe six years old when his father looked at him out on the old pier behind the Sander’s place. There had been no fish biting that day and it wasn’t nearly hot enough to strip off their shirts and go for a little swim. More or less, Bones always assumed that his father told him that day because there was nothing better to do. It might have been because real school was starting, it might have been because Bones was hearing voices when he touched things and answering questions that people weren’t asking but thinking or how last time he was sick his temperature was almost one hundred and fifteen and that wasn’t normal.
“Son,” his father said with his hand on Leonard’s shoulder. He didn’t look too sure about how to say what he was going to say so he came right out and said it like it really was. “You’re…not entirely Human.”
However he explained the rest, Bones didn’t exactly remember. He gave him some long story about this Vulcan woman that he’d met in college or on vacation or somewhere like that. He didn’t make excuses for the affair to a little boy and he didn’t try to justify how Leonard came to live in the South with two Human parents that hadn’t ever told him he wasn’t exactly like them before. He said, diplomatically, that his biological Mother had given him up and that she wasn’t ever coming back.
His father said, “we love you son, no matter what…peculiarities develop. We love you exactly like you are.”
Bones had always been able to hear thoughts when he touched people but he slowly-and-surely taught himself not to react to them. He didn’t have to touch anyone to feel their emotions (just be close enough to them to feel body heat) and he hadn’t ever quite taught himself not to react to that because now and again he had a hard time pulling apart his feelings from theirs. So he kept his distance and his Father had nodded his head when Bones was twenty-two and told him that it was probably a good idea.
He hadn’t ever had super strength, he hadn’t ever had a chronically elevated temperature, his ears were round and his blood was red so he called himself a Human because he was one.
--
Spock regarded him with a placid and neutral expression coupled with a safe and reserved distance. Bones hated him for it, hated how still and composed he could be all the fucking time—how he acted like he could stare down his nose at Humans for their every little short coming because his mind worked faster (faster, faster oh so much faster) and could remember more. Or maybe he thought telepathy was an excuse for apathy and Bones couldn’t even think much less find some peace inside himself so the sight of it on a smudged-green Vulcan face was enough to make his bones grate in tight fists.
“I was told you required my presence,” Spock stated.
Yes. Bones didn’t say anything pointed back toward the private rooms and waited for Spock to walk first. Perfect posture, perfect steps, perfect hair and fingernails. He smelled like Bones’ dreams and his heart was racing so damn fast the machines couldn’t read it except as a near-constant wail. Bones heard every throb of it like a bell ringing and it took every ounce of control he had left in his muscles and mind to stand at the doorway of the little room with his hands pressed tight to the small of his back. “I’ve got a problem,” he said.
“I had assumed as much,” Spock responded.
He hated him until it was like blisters in his mouth and between his fingers. “Look you son of a—I need your help and you’re the last Goddamn person in the universe I’d want to have to ask but I don’t have a choice because you’re the only chance I’ve got.”
Spock lifted an eyebrow to that and glanced at his posture and expression before looking back at his face. “I will, of course, offer any assistance I can, Doctor.” There was a flinch in his throat as he tightened all the muscles in his body because Bones was a threat that was (at last) credible enough to warrant pre-emptive measures. “What is the problem?”
“I’m losing my Vulcan mind,” he said.
There was distaste and aggravation so bright in Spock’s eyes that there was no pretending it didn’t exist. He was close to explaining, in short sentences and long words, exactly how Starfleet dealt with allegations of prejudice among its ranks.
“I’m half Vulcan,” Bones added before he could start that lecture.
Spock stared. Then he loosened one arm to bring his hand forward like he was going to point a finger and object and ultimately his hand hung at his side while his eyebrow lifted and his lips curled down in a frown. “You cannot be,” he said.
“Oh, I am,” Bones said, “and the Vulcan half is out of its fucking mind. I’m dreaming of sand and bells and I can’t control anything and I’m five or ten times stronger than I should be.” And he was fucking Jim every time he saw him and thinking about it all the time he wasn’t, about the peace of sinking down into his body and losing himself in the feel of his skin and the sound of his ragged breath.
“Doctor, I am not entirely familiar with the Human concept of practical jokes.”
“It’s not a Goddamn joke,” Bones shouted at him, “Read my Goddamn mind. I know you can.” He was across the room, tearing the seams of Spock’s shirt with the twist of his fists and that smell of the desert was so potent it burned his nose and chest. Spock’s tongue was green inside of his barely open mouth and his heartbeat was racing-racing-racing like feet across the sand. “Yeah,” he said to the blank stare he got, “I know you can hear my thoughts when I touch you. I know you can feel my emotions. The woman that gave birth to me was one of you bastards.”
Spock tipped his head. “Fascinating,” he said.
“Tell me,” Bones said slowly, “what’s happening to me.”
Spock’s hand folded across the back of his. The sensation was like being sucked through a straw and playing tug of war with a brick wall. His thoughts were being pulled out of him through his skin, his emotions, his want, his every dirty secret and Spock’s were a subliminal hum in a language he could not quite understand. It knocked into his mind like sharp edges, stabbing at the soft places that remember something like the shape of the sounds. Spock’s fingers touched his face and his mind split open right down the middle and spilled out.
His skin on Spock’s skin had his thoughts from five to thirty three echoing back to him. He watched his whole wretched life and every confusing-stumble-trip and fall he’d ever blamed on his biological Mother before he decided (simple and easy) that it didn’t matter about that anymore and he was Human since that day.
Spock pulled back from him and left the ripped shreds of his shirt in Bones’ fists. His breath was elevated and his emotions were tangled up in knots he couldn’t quite work free. It took a minute before he managed to speak. “You are mated to Jim,” Spock said.
“What?” he demanded.
“It is interesting only because you were once mated to the Human female Jocelyn. Both the previous and current bond are surprisingly strong, perhaps stronger than the average Vulcan mating bond. I admit I cannot understand why you do not have significantly more mental damage as a result of the seemingly violent end to your bond with the Human female.”
“Violent?” he repeated, “I never—”
“The dissolution of the bond was quite violent,” Spock said, “I did not mean to imply either of you were physically violent. You are unaware that you form bonds and therefore have no capacity to terminate it.” He found it fascinating of course, as if Bones’ life was nothing but another case study.
“What the hell difference does that make?” It was too much, that smell, (it was his dream, right there, frowning at him as if he were so stupid, it was the desert, the heat and the bells).
“Vulcan mating bonds are usually permanent and are—”
“Tell me what’s happening,” Bones shouted, “right now. What is this?” He punched his hand against the cabinet on the wall and the door caved in and shrieked an objection. He didn’t even feel it, he just wanted to taste Spock’s blood to see if it would cool the thirst in his throat and the need under his skin. He just wanted to know why.
“It is called Pon Farr,” Spock said, “you are exhibiting the first signs of the Plak Tow—the blood fever. It is…” He paused there and his sweet Vulcan cheeks were blushing green at the thought of having to explain it. “The urge to mate. It is a biological need and if you do not fulfill it you will succumb to insanity or death.”
When the anger seized his stomach he didn’t have the reserves to fight it, he beat his fists against the cabinet until the doors were cracked and broken and his skin was torn apart from the rough edges. He screamed as he wrenched it off the hinges and threw it back toward the door and Spock just watched until he exhausted his fury. He was on his elbows on the narrow biobed heaving for breath (and smelling that sweet, dry desert air) while Spock watched. “Mate,” he repeated, “you mean sex.”
“Yes.”
Bones pushed his forehead against his balled up hands and tried to find reason. He just wanted Jim, wanted to wrap himself up in his body and mind and—
“Doctor, I am aware that you have very limited mental facilities at this time but I believe it would be in your best interest to inform Jim of your…biology and the demands it will inevitably make of him. I doubt you will have the strength to control yourself.” There was something like sympathy in Spock’s voice as he spoke. As if he knew it was only a matter of time until he lost his Goddamn mind too.
“I can’t see him,” Bones said into the bed. “I can’t even think about him without—”
“That is the Plak Tow,” Spock said again. He studied him from his careful distance and his eyebrows twitched as he thought of and discarded thought after thought. “Doctor,” he said, “I urge you to become familiar with the Vulcan ways. Doing so will…”
“Spock,” he straightened up again, “right now I want to bite your throat to taste your blood and then go find Jim and tear his clothes off. Your Vulcan ways are pretty Goddamn worthless to me.”
Spock lifted an eyebrow to that. “Fascinating.”
--
It was decided—not by him because he couldn’t decide a Goddamn thing—that Bones would be put on temporary leave, Jim would be informed and Spock would supervise that meeting and intervene should it be deemed necessary. The last place Bones wanted Spock was in his bedroom while he tried to tell Jim about how he’d forgotten to mention in the past five or six years how he wasn’t precisely Human.
“I do not understand why you have not already informed Jim,” Spock said from near the door. He had attempted to step farther into the room when they first arrived and the thought of him in the room around the smell of Jim and Bones’ teeth on edge and nearly brought him to a point of violence. So Spock stayed by the door and Bones guarded the bed and the stink of sex still in the sheets.
“Shut up,” he said.
Spock pressed his lips together again and kept his silence by the door. When Jim arrived—finally—he looked like he was ready to face the worst news. (Whatever required Spock and Bones to say must have been the end of the world, most certainly.) He wasn’t even through the door—just passing by Spock—and Bones wanted to haul him across the room and fuck him into the mattress. Wanted to rub their skin together until Jim smelled like him and not regulation issued detergent—so that he knew that he shouldn’t glance at Spock like that, he shouldn’t even see Spock was in the room when Bones there. (So he knew that he belonged to Bones, of course.)
“You needed to tell me something,” Jim said halfway between Bones and Spock.
“I believe you should move closer to Dr. McCoy, Jim.” Spock took one step forward and tensed again. His eyes focused and his breathing got shallow as his heart-rate increased. He was a threat and Bones watched him. “He has something of which he wished to inform you.”
“What is it?” Jim asked in his Captain’s voice. His hands were holding his hips and Bones knew that there were finger-print bruises there from where he’d held him down and pulled him back. Under those clothes he was covered in the marks and it wasn’t any fucking fair. “Bones,” Jim said.
“I—,” just wanted to touch him.
“He is half Vulcan,” Spock said.
Jim looked at Spock with his forehead wrinkled up. “No he’s not.” He smelled like the Academy dorm room Bones had found a whole new definition of life and love and home and hope. He was intoxicating and Bones was getting drunk off the sight and sound of him, losing what precious grip on his sanity he had. He shuffled closer as Jim looked-at-him and then-at-Spock and back again. “Bones?”
“It was my Mother,” he said and all he could think about was the freckle on the side of Jim’s nose, the hair at the nape of his neck, his rough-wrinkly elbows and how he couldn’t lose those five pounds he complained about constantly but it was fine because he looked fine and Bones loved him exactly how he was.
“You’re not Vulcan,” Jim said.
“He is,” Spock stated.
“He is not, look at him.” He was close enough to touch and Bones ran a hand up the length of his sleeve and shivered at the tingle under his skin. His two fingertips pressed against bare skin over Jim’s collar and he could feel his every thought in forward motion churning through denial, coping with insanity, arriving at plausibility but fighting acceptance. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Bones touched his lips because he couldn’t stop thinking about how they felt and how Jim always thought of something silly-stupid when he touched them. Grass, fields, that first girl that had kissed him in fifth grade and her strawberry bubble gum. “I’m half-Vulcan,” he said, “I’m bonded to you. I’m sorry.” He was or he would be—now he had two hands on Jim’s skin—across his neck and face and kissed him. It was soft first, building up into something a lot more like it had been that morning.
“What’s that mean?” Jim asked against his mouth. “Bonded?”
“Bonding is a mental and spiritual bond between partners,” Spock said, “it is significant in this circumstance as Dr. McCoy is experiencing…” he paused and Bones kissed Jim again, bit against the distracted way he was kissed back just to be placated, would have pulled his face back (and broken his jaw) except for the hands resting on his arm and waist like soft reassurances. “What Vulcans call Pon Farr. It is, simply put, the biological need to mate.”
“What?” Jim demanded.
“I believe it will be significantly less traumatic if you are…submissive,” Spock said. The embarrassment was so loud in his voice Bones couldn’t keep from smiling as he worked his hands under Jim’s shirt. He was cool to the touch and his thoughts were shifting around this new idea that was even more ridiculous than the last.
“Submissive,” Jim repeated.
“Meek,” Spock suggested, “willing?”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, Jim touched the nape of his neck and tipped their foreheads together, his eyes were closed and his mind went almost blank in that way it did when his thoughts deepened and slowed. Bones just wanted to sink down inside of him, down-down into his mind and soul and feel every part of him. The little touches were like a tease that he couldn’t quite grasp.
“I will, of course, assume temporary command during your absence,” Spock said, “I believe the more intense need will pass within the first twenty-four hours.”
“You expect me to—” believe this shit? Believe that he hadn’t noticed something like this in the past five years, that he missed all the clues and hadn’t arrived a conclusion that shouldn’t exist? That Bones had lied to him? That he was bonded to someone spiritually when he had no idea that it was even possible?
And yet, Jim’s mind circled around that like birds around a carcass. And yet. And yet. And yet.
And yet, the sex had been violent and Bones had been so hot lately. His skin was as hot as a fever—hotter than that. He hadn’t ever been aggressive like that and maybe, (only maybe) it made some kind of sense. “This is crazy,” Jim said, “I can’t just give up command—” For this.
Bones pulled at his back, felt Jim’s body tighten in that way he couldn’t control. How everything inside of him shifted from neutral to fight because it had been beaten into him by life. Never flight and always fight and his hands tightened around Bones’ skin as he bit back whatever thought and words he was going to say. Objection when he shouldn’t have had an objection—he shouldn’t be objecting now, he should be—
“Doctor,” Spock said.
“If he’s Vulcan why hasn’t he—” his voice broke with a soft wheeze of pain as Bones fingers dug into his waist and he was shifting back and getting nowhere, trying to get free without struggling and demand answers to the questions he couldn’t stop asking.
“Pon Farr occurs every seven years. The first onset occurs approximately between age thirty and sixty,” Spock said.
“Bones,” Jim said with his fist against the back of his neck. There was a whistle of pain in his voice that was getting tighter and tighter with that anger. He had reasons (he had good reasons) to be angry. He’d been lied to and he’d been used and he was going to be used again and again and his mind was fucking beautiful in constant motion spinning eddies and chaotic twists higher and higher and— “This is insane.”
“Just say yes,” Bones said because it was all he could say with his face pressed against Jim’s neck, drawing in the smell of his blood and skin and that obnoxious odor of detergent. “Just say yes, Jim, just say—”
“He cannot control it,” Spock said.
“God-damn it,” Jim whispered, “twenty four hours?”
“Approximately. Jim, there is a significant chance that you will—experience discomfort.” Jim’s hand loosened from a fist to a flat hand slipping down Bones’ neck and his mind went blank without thought while he stared across the room at Spock and his monotone warnings. Bones couldn’t see his face but he could feel how blank his insides went. “I will return to execute periodic checks to be certain you are…not injured.”
“Say yes,” because it was all Bones could think as the fabric of Jim’s shirt began to tear between his fists. As the smell of his body and the sound of his breathing was too damn much to think around. His mind was blank and it was hateful and Bones wanted it back—all the thoughts, all the feelings, all the things about Jim he loved best. All those things he stole without meaning to and tried to ignore and couldn’t. He wanted to tell Jim he loved him because he was so fucking beautiful and he couldn’t think. “Say—”
“You’re dismissed,” Jim said to Spock.
“Of course, Captain.”
Jim turned his face back against his, dug his hand into his arm. “Are you in there?” he asked.
“Just say yes,” he said as he twisted the ruined shirt forward off Jim’s arms and dropped it on the floor, as he ran hands over his arm and chest, up his neck to his face, pushed his thumbs against his cheeks and felt that low hum of regret and fury and lovesick pity. Bones wanted to say he was sorry, wanted to say he hated the bitch that made him this way and he couldn’t. He wanted to stop and he couldn’t.
Bones could taste Jim’s salt-damp breath, the grate of his jaw, the shake of his muscles tightening to fight and being forced loose again.
“Yes,” Jim said.
--
It was after the second-maybe-third time, (hell maybe fourth), he was laying across Jim’s exhausted body, tracing patterns in the sweat and come on his skin while he listened to every wind-tunnel suck of his breath pulling into his lungs. Jim slept in little bursts and woke up again, startled and disoriented and resetting his mind to zero as if, eventually, he’d make it all make sense in the sober light of reality. “You never told me,” Jim said as he lay limp on the bed with his arms at his sides and sweat between his fingers.
“Never told anyone,” he mumbled with his cheek sweat-glued to Jim’s chest, “never wanted anyone to know.”
“Why?” Jim repeated. He grunted when Bones shift and lapped at his nipple. He tasted like dried salt and warm metal. He pushed his fingers through Bones’ hair to hold his head somewhere between objecting and trying to temper the inevitable rush of lust. His body was sore and tired and it pulsed through his thoughts under a thick blanket of necessity and duty and the soft blanket of love of hurt-and-fury that made it easy and hard to touch him.
“I hate her,” Bones said. He crawled back up between his legs, kissed his swollen lips and touched his temple and eyebrow because now and again he thought he could hear his mind better that way.
“Bones,” Jim said, “you just finished.” He pushed against Bones’ shoulders as he let his legs be pushed up toward his chest and didn’t-help or fight him. He hissed through gritted teeth as Bones squeezed the cold (frigid, fucking freezing) lube against his skin again. The pressure against his shoulders got a little harder and Jim turned his face away like his mind. He was bracing himself to be hurt and fighting back the roar of instinct to fight until he was beat unconscious. Bones dug his fingers into his thighs as he pushed them up, left new bruises and couldn’t sort out what-was and was-not irrational. It felt like, seemed like, must have been Jim being irrational and he knew he wasn’t, he just couldn’t make himself believe it. “Slow,” Jim said when his hands dropped from Bones’ shoulders to the bed and caught in the ripped-and-ruined sheets. “Bones?”
Bones couldn’t look at him so he pushed his face against his neck and listened to his wounded breath whistling through his clenched teeth. He could smell the hurt on his skin, feel the twist of pain in his body as he rocked his hips and fucked him again, didn’t matter how slowly, shallowly or gently because it was all the same. He spread his hand across Jim’s face and wet the pads of his fingertips with the tears at the corner of his eyes he couldn’t hold back.
When Jim touched him again, he had hands against his shoulder blades, chapped-and-swollen lips whispering his name like little prayers that the man never ever bothered wasting. He was asking for it to stop or saying he loved him or crying his hurt and Bones couldn’t find enough of his Goddamn brain to figure out which.
--
“I can’t,” Jim said the next time, “Bones, I can’t.”
Bones was shaking on knees and elbows, cheek-to-rough cheek with Jim listening to the ragged punch of his breath and feeling the quake of his muscles. His body was lined and soaked in sweat and his eyes were dark. His voice was hoarse and thin and Bones wanted-to and couldn’t but he had-to. Behind his eyes he saw the desert and smelled the wind and he hated some woman he’d never met more than he ever had. He hated her with every part of himself—Human and Vulcan all twisting up in a violent storm. He knew, somewhere, that she was dead and that if he were a decent son he would have mourned her passing. Now, shaking with this thing, he took comfort in her death and hoped—viciously, cruelly—that she had suffered in those last moments before she blinked out of existence. He chanted it to himself, again and again, that she must have been afraid and alone on a dying planet with nothing but logic to wrap around herself and her filthy Human secrets to shame her when the end came.
He found hate to hold onto, to burn his skin and blood and it was enough to lift himself away. “I know,” he said. Yes that, needed to hang onto that, needed to remember that. “I know.”
“Just let me sleep,” Jim said and held onto his wrist. Exhaustion made him heavy and pain made him warm. The doctor buried in Bones’ chest was screaming, the Human in his heart was crying to hold onto Jim and the Vulcan was running across sand toward bells and home. “Bones,” Jim whispered with his tongue across his lips, “just let me sleep for a few minutes.”
Bones kissed his forehead and swept his filthy hair away from his forehead. “Sleep.”
--
Inside, in his chest, it felt like an animal was tearing at the insides of his ribs. It wore a green face in his red blood as it squeezed his heart until was thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-racing so fast he couldn’t find one pulse of it from the other. The wall was hot from his bare skin and his knees were all that held him back because he wanted to move.
Oh hell, crouching against the wall, hands tearing his own hair out of his head, he just wanted to move. He just wanted to move because he just wanted Jim. He wanted his skin and his blood and his whole fucking body. He wanted his pain and his love and his life because without him he was absolutely fucking nothing but the animal in his chest.
He-was or the ship-was shaking like turbulence in his veins and everything was one explosion of pain-and-need after another until his thoughts ran like: lips-and-teeth-and-hands-and-skin-and-want-and-I love him-so-fucking-much-I can’t-and i-won’t-but-God damn it, Jim-and if he could-just-fuck-him-again-but it was-wrong and he-couldn’t-believe-this-shit-and he hadn’t ever-he couldn’t-and-if he did-oh hell-he-was-a-Doctor-not-a fucking Vulcan-then-again-and-yet, his father on the shore-saying-we’ll-always-love-you and Jim asked him:
Why didn’t you tell me?
His fingertips were burning and his blood was on fucking fire and he wanted blood because Jim was-his-or-dead.
Every breath from the body on the bed was another sigh of discomfort and pain. There were bruises on his body from shoulders to knees and the smell of his blood was so close to the surface of his skin it made Bones’ mouth water. He couldn’t stand the thought of it and he couldn’t get the animal in his chest to stop ripping at his lungs and chest. So he was tearing his hair out, digging his fingernails into his own scalp, trying to count seconds but every second was another hour of eternity.
His throat ached and his gut ached and his muscles were tense without reacting as he kept his knees to his chest like he could keep himself there against the wall in the corner, away from the bed, because if he moved…
Oh, hell…
If he moved.
--
“Doctor,” sounded like it came from the end of a tunnel that had no light. Spock sounded green and smelled like the desert. He was close, too close. “You are bleeding.”
Yes. He knew that.
“It has only been approximately four hours, Doctor,” Spock said like facts were going to save them now. “By my estimations, you should be in the full thrall of the Plak Tow. While your restraint at this juncture is quite surprising, you will ultimately lose either your sanity or life if you do not—”
His heart was beating a bruise against the inside of his chest (like an animal) and he couldn’t catch his breath so every suck of air through his nose brought that smell of the desert that much closer. The bells were a promise that couldn’t be fulfilled and Spock sounded so damn close to sympathy that it twisted hate in Bones’ gut because it was some bitch that did this to him and Jim was moving on the bed with a snort and a groan of pain.
Bones hurt him and he just wanted to fuck him and touch him and hold him down and steal every part of him until it eased the burn and he could think.
Spock was crouch next to him, turning back to look at Jim and then to him. “Jim,” Spock said.
“Fuck,” Jim said, “he’s bleeding.”
“It appears he is digging his fingers into his scalp or perhaps forehead,” Spock said. He was shifting on his feet now, not moving closer to Jim, not exactly smelling like anything but the desert. Like he was down to his skin and his disgusting-green-blood. “Jim, I would like to offer…assistance.”
“Assistance?” Jim repeated. Oh and his fucking voice.
That animal in his chest was howling, thrashing, tearing into his arms until everything ached with the need to move that wasn’t a want anymore. His thoughts were in shreds and all he could find between Don’t and Move was I-want-him-I-want-him-I-want-him-so-fucking-much.
“At this time, Dr. McCoy and I are significantly more physically compatible in terms of strength and endurance.”
Jim said nothing. Nothing at all.
Nothing meant he was considering it. Nothing meant they were sharing that stare that wasn’t words but it was enough to communicate.
Jim said absolutely nothing.
Don’t (he should have said hell no) move.
--
Spock hit the ground like a wall falling. His knees were still up against his chest when he landed on his back and Bones’ fingers were slippery when he tried to catch his skin, ended up with his palm flat against Spock’s neck as he punched him. His breath was all wheezes and grunts and his hands were dry and warm and strong on Bones’ chest trying to shove him back. His mind was so damn quiet underneath the shrieking scream of the animal in Bones’ chest.
It wanted blood, wanted the desert, wanted Spock dead for even being here.
Every muscle was screaming with it, demanding motion, demanding violence, demanding vengeance for pain and betrayal. He thought he was speaking, thought he was shouting the words of the beast in his gut but the sounds were shredded on his teeth and bloody in his ears so he couldn’t make them out.
He knew that Jim shouted, “Bones.”
Spock shoved him back and he coiled his sticky-wet-tacky hands in his clothes and pulled him up to hit him again. The smell of his blood was so overwhelming it stole his breath and everything was blank and sand as he shook his body by the shirt until it ripped, until the sound of Spock’s head and elbows hitting the ground was the sound of the bells.
“I hate you!” he screamed when he found some sense of sound, “get the fuck out of here, get out,” but his blood and Bones shoved him flat against the ground while Spock shoved two hands against his shoulders. His shock was palpable and sweet and his thoughts all shook with the realization that Bones was beyond rationality, beyond pain and exhaustion and into some strange insanity that would one day over take him.
Spock stared at him with logic and just as logically he dropped his hands and let Bones crawl over his body, let himself be pinned to the floor.
“Bones,” Jim was saying again.
Spock leg was against his waist and he was loose and easy and willing with the full knowledge of what he was offering. There was blood on the corner of his mouth, below his nose and a bruise forming on his cheekbone just below the eye. “You may,” Spock said.
“No Spock,” Jim was saying.
Bones fell forward, both fists pounding against the floor over Spock’s head until it felt like he was shattering everywhere and he knew it was the animal-was-him screaming louder and louder and louder. They weren’t words—just the sound, just his bones that wouldn’t break until he wasn’t exhausted but something closer to Human, on his elbows, head hanging from his shoulders, knees to the ground between Spock’s spread open thighs.
It felt like tears on his face and over his tongue and his fingers coiled into desperate fists in Spock’s thick, dark hair. There was no sound beyond the rush of his heart and the heat in his blood. Spock’s eyes were closed and he whispered words in a language that Bones hadn’t ever fucking learned but something in his fucking blood knew it anyway.
Then Jim’s arms were around him, around his chest, hand on the back of his neck. His voice was as desperate as Bones’ fists. “Bones,” he said, “Bones—Bones, come here—” He was cool and his lips were chapped, he was all skin and all that strange and blinding sensation of love without reserve. “God damn,” was a sob, “Bones,” as he pulled until Bones turned toward him. He put an arm around Jim and followed him down against the ground, felt the kiss against his face, cheek-and-jaw-and-lips. Tasted his-tasted-Jim’s blood. “It’s alright,” Jim said with trembling arms, “it’s alright.” In his mind, a single thought was shaking like it’d been beaten, stay with me, stay right here with me.
Bones wrapped both arms around him and held on—just like that, doing nothing but feeling Jim through his skin and clothes and mind.
--
Jim hissed against his mouth, stroking the back of his neck and pulled at his hip like a series of contradictions that said no-stop-keep-going. He wasn’t meek because he was possessive to the point of violence in his mind. He wasn’t willing because it hurt and his animal brain wanted his conscious mind to protest when Bones moved in him. He wasn’t submissive because Jim hadn’t ever been submissive in his whole damn life.
He was everything that Bones loved about him, moaning into the kiss long after anything should have felt good enough to moan about. When the kiss slid to one side and Bones pushed himself up on his hands to look down, Jim tipped his head to one side to look back.
“Hi Bones,” he said like it was the first time he’d seen him in days.
“Hi,” Bones said.
Jim pulled him down with a hand at the back of his neck and one on his back, pulling like keep going. Bones loved him past the point of rationality, into that dangerous-stupid territory that felt like falling with nowhere to land.
--
After, they picked themselves up off the floor and moved back to the bed. He rested his head against Jim’s chest to hear his heart thumping under his ribs and Jim yawned with a pained stretched and his hand flat against Bones’ shoulder. “Don’t go crazy again,” he mumbled, “I’m right here.”
--
Spock came back hours later. He stood by the closing door while Bones kept his cheek against Jim’s sweating chest and listened to his heartbeat. There was a nagging itch between his fingers that was growing into a steady burn for some touch more satisfying than the quiet and steady drag of his palm up and down Jim’s side while he slept. For now, at least, he could hold that back and concentrate on nothing but the closeness and the warmth of Jim’s every breath and dream-thought. “He’s still alive,” Bones said.
“My primary concern was never for Jim’s life,” Spock stated. There were bruises on his face from where Bones had hit him.
“Just his limbs?” Bones asked. He pointed at the familiar bag hanging from Spock’s shoulder without asking him what he was doing with Bones’ medical supplies. Maybe he didn’t even need to ask when he could just safely assume that Spock brought them so he could start healing Jim before he let him out of the room. (Maybe he didn’t want Spock in the room anymore.) “You make me angry,” he said without meaning to.
“I am aware,” Spock said.
“No, I meant—you being here now.” Standing there, looking at Jim and not him. Wearing a placid face with green bruises on his cheeks and he smelled so much like the dry desert that was fading out of his conscious thoughts that it brought that savage burn back into his belly when he wanted it gone.
“Spock, leave,” Jim said. He didn’t sound nearly as asleep as his thoughts felt. His hand was cool against Bones’ back as he brushed his palm up and down between his shoulder blades like he knew or could feel the anger gathering like a storm in his gut. “We’re fine.”
“Of course,” Spock said. He set the bag down by the door and left without any further protest.
Bones turned his face against Jim’s chest, chin almost against his shoulder and mumbled, “I want you again,” to the flushed-pink skin there. Somewhere in his logical brain, somewhere past the animal instincts rising up again he knew that he shouldn’t be wrapped around Jim because he was too damn hot. That blush to his skin was like a fever and it wasn’t healthy. He was a Goddamn doctor and he knew better and he couldn’t make himself care.
“Can I fuck you?” Jim asked as he stretched and his belly-and-hips lifted up off the bed before they dropped down again and he pulled his leg up. There were bruises on his thighs, bruises on his hips, bruises on his shoulders-and-arms and wrists. His lips were rubbed raw and those dark circles around his eyes weren’t any lighter for having slept. “Would that work?” His fingers threaded through his hair. “Blow job, maybe?”
That was a stupid idea—he snorted and Jim chuckled. “I’d break your jaw.”
“I’m kind of afraid of you burning my dick,” Jim said. He stroked his hand down his face. “You should have told me.” It was so close to being but wasn’t reproach before he sighed and slid his arm around Bones’ shoulders to pull him back up. His offer wasn’t unconditional or easy. He shifted on the bed like he was just waiting to be beaten and his thoughts tried-not-to but couldn’t ignore how he didn’t really want this. When Bones rested a hand against his waist, Jim flinched and whispered an apology into the kiss.
“I want you,” Bones said opened mouth while Jim pulled his knees up and gave him room. He tipped his head, drew in the smell of Jim’s skin and breathed against his cheek because it made his mouth water. “God damn, I want you.”
“I’m right here.”
No. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Then he pushed himself up and shoved himself back onto his knees. His body shivered, his muscles ached and the animal in his gut was rattling against his ribs again. His bag was by the door so all he had to do was make it that far to pick it up and bring it back.
Crawling out of bed was the hardest part, moving away from Jim when he wanted to be closer (like inside) of him. Once he had his feet on the floor his fists were clenching against the itch between his fingers. The first step made him take the second one faster because the edge of irrationality was a disgusting twist of desire-and-need that didn’t care about physical limits. He made it to the door in four-maybe-five long strides and ran back with the bag in both hands. Jim stared at him as he shifted closer and put an arm around him.
“Bones,” he said against the quiver and shake of Bones’ body, “it’s alright if you have to—”
“Shut up,” Bones said, “just get closer and shut up.”
Jim moved so his chest was pressed against his back all along the right side and his arms were around him. His cheek was cool against the back of his neck and his hair was tickling him. “I feel a little stupid like this.”
All he could do was breathe, not think, so he concentrated on breathing. It was draw in one breath and let it out again before the smell and touch and sound and feel of Jim calmed the rabid rush of blood through his veins enough he could talk. “Where are you hurt the worst?”
“That’s a dumb question, Bones.” He moved back on his knees with his arms still around his shoulders loosely. “How hot are you?”
“One hundred fifteen, hundred and twenty—it’s usually something like that.”
“You’re not really going to use the dermal regenerator on my ass are you?” Jim asked against his ear. It was irony and embarrassment and something like hope that Bones would actually do it and that he wouldn’t even honestly think of such a thing. It was a spinning paradox on constant repeat. “Don’t you have something for pain and like—numbing salve or something?”
Bones opened the bag and went through the contents again—wondered how Spock knew which one was his away medical bag and which was the standard issue one. (He wondered if Chapel told him.) He found the vial he wanted for the hypospray and pushed around a few containers that had this-and-that in them until he found one that worked almost like Jim wanted it to.
“You seem like you,” Jim said. He tipped his head to one side so Bones could push the hypo against his neck and bit his lip rather than start cursing at him like he almost always did. It worked in a matter of seconds, loosening the tension in his body from the shoulders straight down to his suddenly floppy elbows. His smile spread into a grin and he pressed his cheek against Bones’ shoulder. “This is a narcotic, isn’t it?”
“You’re thinking about kites,” Bones said. Brilliantly colored kites and a bright blue sky on a hot day. Somewhere in the distance there was the sound of laughter and shrieking squeals of happy children and grown-ups going around their business. At the top of a short hill, all Jim could think or see was kites in the sky.
“I’m so mad at you.”
“I know.”
Jim nodded and turned his face to kiss his neck. “You’re still shaking.” Then his hands tightened as he leaned his weight back and pulled Bones over him.
--
Spock returned again about the time Jim had drooled a puddle into the pillow and Bones had healed most but not all of the bruises on his back and hips. It felt almost like meditating if meditation were supposed to make his mind feel like gray soup. He thought it must have been the drugs dulling Jim’s thoughts and dulling his but the idea seemed preposterous.
“Still alive,” he said to Spock.
“Again, my primary concern was not for Jim’s life.” Spock was bold now. He moved close enough he could clearly see Jim’s skin and the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathed into his wet pillow. He watched Bones hovering the regenerator over Jim’s skin and then frowned between his eyebrows as if it made no sense at all to him. “Doctor…”
“If you get another step closer to him I won’t worry about your face, I’ll beat a hole through your chest,” Bones said. He looked up for a moment and Spock quirked an eyebrow up before letting it fall again.
“Fascinating,” Spock said.
No it wasn’t. Bones sneered at him and Spock took a few steps back before he excused himself entirely.
--
When it was over, like twenty four hours after onset and he was feeling Human again, Jim sat on the side of the bed with his feet on the floor and his head hanging forward. Bones sat behind him on his knees and rubbed his shoulders with only as much strength as he dared. Now and again when he hit the right places, Jim moaned like it was orgasm-worthy and sighed out a whimper afterward.
“You realize you’re going to spend the next month or so sleeping on the couch,” Jim said as he leaned forward so his elbows were on his knees and Bones could work his way down his back. The bruises were mostly healed but the aching stiffness of his body for the abuse it endured over the past twenty four hours (and days almost into weeks before that) couldn’t be so easily wiped away. He groaned again and whimpered and pushed back against Bones’ hands that were still hot and too damn sensitive to touch and thought. “Why didn’t you tell me, Bones?”
“Because I’m Human—or I was.” He was low down now, down to Jim’s lower back over the waistband of his trunks and their bodies were close enough the air between them was all muggy with the heat of his body and the fine sheet of sweat on Jim’s. “They didn’t want me and I didn’t want them.”
“You didn’t think ‘hey I can hear your every thought’ was worth mentioning?” Jim leaned forward a little farther then sat up a little farther and then went back down with a hiss and a barely mumbled appreciation for Bones finding another sore spot. “Seems like that’s something that’d come up on the first date, Bones.”
“We didn’t have a first date,” Bones said, “we had a first disaster.”
Jim snorted.
Bones sat back on the bed with his oil-slick fingers against his own thighs and let out a sigh as he pushed his hair off his forehead with his thumb. “I can’t hear your thoughts unless I’m touching you and I can ignore them or focus in on them. It’s the emotions I can’t ignore.”
Jim turned around to look at him. He was angry and wasn’t. He was hurt and wasn’t. He was searching for sense in this new world around him. “And we’re bonded?”
“That’s what Spock says,” Bones agreed.
Jim thought about that for a minute and rubbed his shoulder absently before he looked at him again. “I think you should…think about taking—Vulcan lessons.” He said it like he knew it sounded absolutely ridiculous and that the last thing Bones or Spock wanted was to have to put up with one another. He said it at the end of twenty four hours of having his body and mind spread open and used until there was no part of him Bones hadn’t rubbed against. “What does that mean anyway? Bonded?”
Bones shrugged. “I think it’s what they call being in love.” He sat on the side of the bed next to Jim without touching him and shrugged his shoulders at the stare he got from Jim. “They’re pretentious elitists, Jim. You think they wouldn’t call love something else and act like it was better than anything we could come up with just because they’re so much—better.”
They were silent together while Jim considered that. “Maybe you shouldn’t tell Spock that when you ask for Vulcan lessons,” he said finally.
“What the hell do I need to learn from him?” Bones demanded.
“How to be honest,” Jim said.
His anger was so strong it went through Bones and the arid heat of it made every of his muscles tense and twist. Something animal in his brain shouted in defiance, throwing itself against the logic of his Human mind to blame Jim for rejecting him when he was nothing but angry and had every reason to be.
“Jim,” he started.
Jim put his hand up and stared at the floor before he managed to look at him. “I know,” he said, “I know.” He licked his lips and went back to looking at the floor. His elbow was close to rubbing against Bones’ so his thoughts were hazy behind the distance but they all revolved around anger and love and something more complicated that just wouldn’t give. “Are you going to be ok if I go?”
Bones just nodded.
--
“Doctor,” Spock said when he answered the door to his quarters. The madness was still in his blood making Spock smell like every definition of home he’d refused to believe in his whole life. His curious eyebrow and his carefully blank face were every bit as obnoxious as they’d ever been so Bones figured (safely enough) that whatever instinctive desire he still had to lick Spock had to do with the smell of his blood and nothing to do with any actual desire. “Can I be of assistance?”
No.
Yes.
The bruises on his face were still livid and his lip was still split on the side. It should have been causing him pain but it wasn’t because Vulcan pain tolerance was to the point of being dangerous. Spock would swear he was fine even if every rib in his left side was broken because he could still move and handle the pain it caused. “I,” he started and then curled his hands up in frustrated fists. “I ne—I want your help.”
“Of course, Doctor,” Spock said, “I believe instructing you in the basics of being a Vulcan will be…an interesting challenge.”
“For both of us,” Bones agreed.
“Indeed.”
Bones nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. “Not today. I’m not—” Normal yet. Ready. Capable of being around Spock without breaking into a sweat between the urge for violence and the need to bite or lick him.
“Of course, Doctor,” Spock said. Oh and he had questions too, they were filling up behind his eyes, all those things that Bones knew about what was inevitable for Spock to face. All that loss of control and the unknown had to be terrifying to a real Vulcan (as terrifying as they would admit to anything as being).
“Thanks,” Bones said, “for—everything.”
Spock inclined his head once. “I expect you will do the same for me, Doctor.”
He nodded.
--
“You should rub my back again,” Jim said as soon as the doors were closed behind him. He was sitting in the chair by the desk with a stack of PADDs and that tired and haggard look of being beaten down by monotony. His shirt was lying across the end of the bed and his boots were laying one on top the other under the desk. “Where were you?”
“Asking Spock for Vulcan lessons,” Bones answered. He found the lotion in the blankets and rubbed it between his palms until it was warm. Jim hissed between his teeth when he started rubbing at his shoulders and the back of his neck. All the muscles were tight, tense and sore under his touch and resistant to relaxing. Jim’s mind flitted across a dozen thoughts before it circled around the single idea that Bones could hear him thinking and then just went blank as a hum. “I’m sorry,” Bones said.
“I love you anyway,” Jim said and then, “lower,” as he tipped his head forward.
“Bossy bastard,” Bones mumbled.
Jim chuckled, “lucky bastard.”