Author: Sarka @ Sarkasticfics
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Genre: Mixed bag. Some romance, some angst, some plot, some smut. And AU, obviously.
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: NC-17 on the whole.
Spoilers: Assumes knowledge of the new movie.
Word count: ~ 20.000
Content notice: Please refer to the Fic Masterpost at: http://sarkasticfics.livejournal.com/2652.html

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction set in the world of Star Trek. Neither the world nor the characters belong to me in any way, and I make no money from this.

Summary: Written for the following prompt, over at part eight of the StarTrek XI Kinkmeme:

Bones is a werewolf. The moment he met James Kirk, got a good whiff of his scent, he knew he was fucked.He had thought those stories about werewolves scenting their mate were all bullshit. But the stories about mating for life have got to be fake, right? Right?

Originally posted here.

Author's notes: This document is a stripped .html document prepared for download by the author. If you downloaded this fic and read it, please let me know if the extra effort was appreciated over at my Fic Journal. Thanks!

Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Epilogue

Part 1

Jim wriggles into his side, unconsciously seeking warmth in his sleep, and Bones sighs before pulling him closer with one arm, trying to ignore his throbbing erection and the way the air is heavy with Jim's scent, dark and spicy and un-fucking-mistakeable.

He'd honestly thought that it was a myth. He'd loved Jocelyn, married her, had a child with her, had a life with her, but she'd never smelled particularly delicious to him. Good, always good, what with expensive perfumes and bunches of lavender folded into the clothes in her drawers, but never sweet enough that just being around her felt like taking in air after staying underwater for too long.

Jim, on the other hand, had reeked of blood, sweat, cigarette smoke, and too much time spent in the same clothes when they first met, in a shuttle full of other people's scents, and it hadn't been until halfway through the ride, when Jim had leaned in to squeeze his knee and say something inane about the risk of dying in a shuttle accident that Bones had felt the air around him clear, the anxiety at the bottom of his stomach dissipating like a fog on a sunny morning.

He'd known he was fucked only two days later, when Jim had made it abundantly clear that he intended to spend his time at the Academy having as much and varied fun as humanly possible. Of course he'd tried to steer clear of the kid after that, but Jim, being Jim, wasn't having it. It was delicious torture, watching Jim Kirk cut such a considerable swathe through the student body that he was nearly an instant celebrity on campus, when all Bones really wanted most of the time was to throw the kid down on the nearest flat surface and claim him as his own.

He's been doing really well so far. Until tonight, of course, when Jim had shown up on his doorstep already drunk, waving a whiskey bottle and rambling something about Bones being his best friend ever. He had, in his defense, sat the kid down and tried to sober him up, tried to pry the reason for Jim's seemingly random bout of alcoholism out of him, but then the kid had more or less face-planted onto his dick and his self-control had abruptly snapped.

At least they hadn't fucked. That is something. Bones is pretty sure he can deal with being a drunken blowjob, but being a drunken fuck would have been too much. Hell, he's not sure how he'll manage with the blowjob bit, now that he's forced to admit to himself that the stories about werewolves being able to scent their mates are, clearly, true.

He's known this for a while, though he's only now admitting to himself for the first time that Jim Kirk, the Casanova of the Starfleet Academy Campus, is his mate, damn his luck to hell and fucking back. He'd thought, considering his previous relationships, that it couldn't be true, even if he'd been nervous about it as a kid. At least back then, he'd assumed that if he were to find his mate through scent, his mate would be able to recognize him back. Yeah, not so much.

He figures he probably ought to know fucking better than this by now; he'd been eleven the first time he assumed something about the legends to his detriment, but it still seems he's made a habit of underestimating the accuracy of myth.

At least when he tries to look on the bright side, he does have the advantage of actually knowing, down to the minute, just when his life became this fucking complicated, though that comfort is cold at best when he considers his current and longstanding predicament.

And now they've had sex, in a sense, Lord help him. But he'd had a lot of sex before he even met Jim Kirk, so the stories about werewolves mating for life are clearly untrue.

Right?

+++

Werewolves mate for life.

He can tell the first time Jim shows up for class reeking of sex with someone else – that is, two days after That Incident They Are Not Discussing.

He has to fight to keep his wolf under control and he's fucking glad he has been pretty diligent about going off for his change rather than suppressing it, because if he was already fighting to keep it back, this is one fight he would have lost.

And while it's true that he hasn't claimed Jim – and doesn't that sound delightfully clichéd and disturbing – his wolf is making its feelings on the subject quite clear: Jim Kirk is his.

Except Bones knows, very well, that Jim Kirk is not his, not at all, and never will be. It takes some getting used to, now that his sense of smell where Jim is concerned is heightened, but in the end he manages to suppress the longing.

He still wants, still longs for Jim, but he knows that Jim doesn't feel the same way about him and he can't let himself take something to which he has no right. So he trains, goes off for his change at every full moon, knowing that the more leeway he gives his wolf, the more strength he'll have to fight his instincts when push comes to shove.

Jim wonders about his absences, but Bones has figured out that the quickest way to shut Jim up is to say that it's a family thing. He's showered enough with Jim to feel slightly guilty about that, knowing as he does that the other man's back is a canvas of faint red and white lines that speak of something that Bones cannot contemplate, or he'll grow furious enough to do actual harm to other human beings.

Perhaps this is why, when Jim is trying to face the prospect of being left behind on Earth while everyone he knows sails off into battle, that Bones cannot find it within himself to leave him behind. He may be a bastard, but he's not a bastard with any illusions; he knows very well what he means to Kirk, and he knows very well what Kirk means to him; when it comes down to it, it's a no-brainer.

That it turns out to be a no-brainer that saves the planet is beside the point.

+++

He'd figured that in space, he'd be free from the influence of the moon. It'd been the one thing he'd counted in favor of the big black, and it therefore comes as an unpleasant surprise when he turns out to be wrong.

True, he is free from the waxing and waning of the moon – but that does not, apparently, free him from the effects of a moon. He'd sometimes cursed his inability to keep track of the lunar cycles on earth, but that was child's play in comparison with exploring worlds that are circled by three moons or four, when some of them affect him and others do not, with no discernable patterns that he can figure out.

He would have been forced to spend most of his free time in lupine form and locked up in his quarters, so that he would have the wherewithal to keep his wolf from making any unscheduled appearances during duty hours, had help not arrived from an… unexpected source.

They've been out from Earth for barely a fortnight, making a couple of milk runs, carting diplomats around; they’re being started out easy and Jim is in his element, tackling every smallest challenge as if it is a matter of life and death. Bones supposes the novelty will wear off soon enough – probably too soon, since he knows that the first time Jim Kirk loses a member of his crew, he'll be devastated.

They're still trying to get the crew to gel, trying to shake together their honestly ridiculously young command staff with the more experienced enlisted crewmembers. There have been a few fights, some screaming matches, and at least one instance of near-mutiny, but nothing that can't be dealt with.

And then the Enterprise had taken some damage in the engagement with the Narada, and apparently some flaws just won't show up unless they're going Warp 8, which Bones considers evidence enough for his opinion that they're stuck on a flying deathtrap, no matter how much Jim pets the goddamn ship – and he's caught him doing that at least five times now.

He's coming back from a coffee break and heading for his office when Nurse Chapel intercepts him. "Doctor, Lieutenant Uhura is waiting for you in the exam room. She requested you speak with her privately."

"Thank you," he says and amends his course, wondering what the Lieutenant wants and sincerely hoping it has nothing to do with her sex life, considering that she's apparently dating the First Officer. He thinks it'll take him a while yet to forgive Spock for leaving Jim behind on Delta Vega, though he has to admit that the man is good at what he does, and while he is frustrating to have a conversation with, there is also something very nearly soothing about him. When he is silent, that is. And not looking at Bones.

Uhura is sitting on a bio-bed in the exam room, perusing something on a PADD, but she looks up when the door closes behind him and smiles. She looks serene and composed at first glance, though her fingers are curled pretty tightly around the plastic casing of the datapad.

"What is it you wanted to talk to me about?" he asks, stepping up to the bed and reaching for a tricorder to take her readings.

She stops him with a hand on his wrist. "My medical history…" she starts – and then her eyes widen and she stares at him in surprise.

He figures it out as soon as he takes a breath to ask her what's wrong – she's been alone in the room for a while and he's standing close enough to smell her hair; she's disguised it well but beneath the layers of vanilla and white musk he detects the scent of another werewolf.

"You're…" he says, then stops. It seems unnecessary to state the obvious.

"And here I thought I was going to have to give you the Werewolf 101 lecture," Uhura says, a slow smile spreading over her face. "Were you born or turned?" she adds, sounding curious.

"Turned when I was eleven," Bones replies. "You?"

"I was born," she says. "It runs in my family."

"I thought I was the only one on board," he says, not quite knowing how to feel – he wants to be relieved, but he doesn't have the best experience with other werewolves. This is Uhura, though, and he's respected her ever since she demonstrated a remarkable and consistent ability to take Kirk down a peg or fifteen back in their first year at Starfleet Academy.

"So did I," she says. "Chekov's uncle is a wolf, so we'd met before and he knows, and Spock knows, naturally, but I hadn't realized you were one of us. You should come train with us; we're about the same level of strength as a Vulcan, so you and Spock would be fairly evenly matched. You can take out your frustrations on each other more thoroughly than you're doing already," she says and winks at him.

"I'm a doctor, not a soldier," he grouses, not exactly keen on putting himself in a situation where he gets beaten up by the damn green-blooded hobgoblin, but she just smirks at him and lifts an eyebrow in a very Vulcan-like manner. "How are you doing with the…" he asks, waving a hand around to indicate the ship and space, trying to change the subject before she can get him to agree.

"Oh!" she says, "Oh, of course you don't… Spock and Chekov have put together a dataset to predict how and when I'll be affected. It is only about 87% accurate, much to their continued vexation…" she grins cheekily at him and he can't help but smile back at the mental image of Spock feeling vexed, "but it is absolutely better than nothing, so mostly I know when to expect the pull. We'll get you in the loop." She gets a faraway look on her face, like she's concentrating on listening to something she can barely hear, before she turns back to him. "Spock would welcome you to our training sessions," she says, tilting her head as if to take his measure. "He says he finds sparring with me somewhat disconcerting. And he's sending the information he has about our next two destinations to your comm now."

He stares at her, taken aback. "Did you just…" he starts, and then it clicks. "He's your mate."

She smiles, gently, happily, and it's the most beautiful he's ever seen her. "Yeah," she replies, and he'd swear she's a little embarrassed, except he's fairly confident that were he to make anything of it, he'd probably only barely escape with his life.

Well, at least that explains why he finds Spock's presence soothing. It's probably his scent. He wonders what Uhura can tell from Jim's smell.

"Have you ever…" Uhura starts, as if she's read his mind, and he's not quick enough to turn away and hide his frown. She's smart, ridiculously smart, and it takes her no time at all to figure it out.

"Oh. Oh," she says, staring at him. "It's Kirk, isn't it?"

He nods.

"Does he know?"

"None of it," he says, bitterly. "He knows nothing; he's never going to know any of it, okay? He's told me often enough he's not made for monogamy and he abhors any romantic notions of love. Why do you think he keeps hitting on you?"

She quirks an eyebrow at him. "I just assumed he was a reprobate."

He stares at her for a moment, all the bitterness leaving him in a rush, and he can't help it; he laughs.

+++

He and Spock do turn out to be quite evenly matched; Spock has better technique, but Bones is less hesitant to fight dirty, which has Uhura telling sly jokes about Kirk 'rubbing off on him'. It's all the more annoying because it's probably true. He also discovers why Spock finds sparring with Uhura "somewhat disconcerting;" it's because she can wipe the floor with both their asses.

Chekov has an epiphany about magnetospheres and while the predictions do become more accurate, their models stubbornly refuse to improve past 93% accuracy – "93.39667% to be precise," according to Spock.

Kirk sleeps with an ensign from the Astro lab, a lieutenant from Engineering, and Gaila. Uhura glowers at him more than usual, not that Kirk notices.

There is a minor explosion in the engine room, and for four days sickbay is full of people with minor injuries who need to be kept under observation.

Five away missions go reasonably well. Two get them more or less nowhere. One is an unmitigated disaster – and of course that was the one where they were only supposed to retrieve samples from an uninhabited world.

There's an outbreak of Etran flu which takes down two-thirds of the crew at once ("63.47%" Spock tells him, from his own sickbed, mind) and that includes his medical staff.

Sulu tries to teach Chekov to fence. It's not pretty.

Three members of the crew somehow develop an unfortunate skin rash in a delicate location shortly after they've last docked for supplies. Miraculously, Kirk does not manage to sleep with any of them before they come in for treatment.

It's Situation Normal: All Fucked Up, as usual – and then Lerant III happens.

+++

It takes a little while to register that something is wrong. Breakfast in the guesthouse they've been assigned to on Lerant is served buffet-style, so people wander in and out as they please depending on when they wake up and how hungry they are, and their contact team is spread all throughout the room. It isn't until after Jim has had two cups of coffee – and it's likely that the cups of coffee had something to do with his realization – that he leans over to Bones and whispers, "Is it just me or is Governor Phlen looking more twitchy today than he was yesterday?"

Since Governor Phlen chooses that exact moment to giggle nervously at something Lieutenant Calder has said, Bones can't exactly argue with the sentiment, and the man is visibly perspiring, looking often towards the doors of the room, like he wants to escape.

"Have all our people shown up for breakfast yet?" he asks, wondering what could have the Governor so anxious and hoping that it's got nothing to do with them, though with their luck that's not very likely.

"Everyone except for Chekov and Ensign Buckley," Uhura says from the other side of the table. McCoy knows full well that even if Jim probably thinks his whisper didn't travel across to her and Spock, Uhura's hearing is phenomenal, even better than his own, and she picked up every word.

"We should check on them," Jim says, but when he moves to stand up, Governor Phlen frantically makes his way over to them, tugging a young woman along and immediately launching into introductions and a discussion of Lerant's mineral deposits, which are the reason the Federation really wants Lerant III as an ally.

The Governor's rather obvious and somewhat heavy-handed distraction has handily tied up Jim, Spock and Uhura, but McCoy doesn't know shit about mineral deposits and neither does he care; besides, Jim is giving him the 'go now' look that says that he's not required to be polite.

The Governor stammers and tries to change the subject when Bones excuses himself to go, but Uhura forestalls him with a translation question, so he rounds up an ensign from the Security team and goes to try to figure out what the hell is going on.

It doesn't take long to figure at least part of it out; the room that Chekov and Buckley had been assigned to for the night, along with Lieutenant Calder and Ensign Denara, looks like it was hit by a tornado. They'd posted guards in the hallway during the night, but since he saw both Calder and Denara at breakfast, whatever happened probably happened quickly, quietly, and after everyone had woken up.

Why the world has it in for the kid, Bones does not know.

They're making their way back down the stairs to inform Jim and confront that bastard of a Governor when the doors to the house are flung open; there are men in uniform storming inside, guns raised, and he makes a split second decision, flipping his communicator open and pinging Scotty.

"Beam us up, all of us, right now," he says, and the world dissolves around him a moment later.

+++

"I find this proposition most illogical," Spock says levelly, and by now Bones has figured out how to read his lack of expression.

"What he means to say, Jim, is; 'are you suicidal?'" he says, glaring at Kirk who looks, for his part, like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

"Wait, are you agreeing with Spock?" Jim throws back vehemently. "We can't sit around and talk about this, we left Chekov and Buckley down there and we have no fucking idea what's happening to them. I'm sure they'd appreciate a prompt rescue."

Uhura leans forward. "Yes, and to that effect, I'm sure they'd prefer we succeed on the first try." She must be taking lessons in stoic calm from Spock, because she manages to keep her voice almost entirely free of sarcasm.

"If we take a strike force…" Jim starts, again, but Spock intervenes. "Captain, the limited communication we had with the Lerantians indicated that Chekov was taken due to his prodigious intellect, which they would like to utilize for the betterment of their… society." Next to Spock, Uhura's lips twist slightly and Bones smirks to himself – it is sometimes easier to read Spock's opinions off Uhura's face, and her disgust is palpable.

"They had also intended to capture more of us, and make sure that the others were in no state to retrieve those taken, but due to Dr. McCoy's swift action they were unable to achieve this goal. Judging from their statements and the interest they had already expressed in certain individuals among the contact party, I would surmise their underlying goal to be technological advancement."

"Get to the point," Jim growls, slamming a hand down on the table.

"Indeed, my point is that I believe Ensigns Chekov and Buckley are most likely being held at their Cloister of Enlightenment; not only is it the most logical place to keep Chekov if they truly intend to make use of his talents, it is also the most defensible building in their city."

"Great," Jim says, "So we know where they are. What are we waiting for?" He stands up and looks at them, as if he's waiting for them to spring into action on his say so.

"It's a rabbit warren, Jim," McCoy bites out. "Damn place has been built room by room for over fifteen centuries. They took us in there and three doors down I couldn't have found my ass with both hands."

"The complex is also extremely large, and sprawled out over a great area. A room by room search, in the unlikely event we were able to overcome any opposition to such an activity, would take us approximately twenty-nine days, based on my observations of the building, and that is provided we were able to commit to no less than six search parties of four each," Spock states. Jim looks at Spock, then at Bones, then back at Spock.

"You two need to stop agreeing with each other," he says. "It is very creepy." He does sit down again though. "So what are you suggesting we do, negotiate? I'm all ears, here."

Spock looks like he's about to inquire about that particular colloquialism, but Uhura jumps in first.

"Negotiating might work as a distraction," she says. She's looking at McCoy, strangely, and then she winks and taps her nose. He gets her point immediately.

"If we pretend we're willing to trade other people to get Chekov back they might buy it," McCoy says. "In the meantime, we can go and get them."

"You should stay in sickbay," Uhura replies. "Just in case."

"You should not go alone," Spock says. "At least you will require someone with you to bring supplies for the captives."

"You need to be there for the negotiations," she fires back.

"You're too memorable," Bones agrees. "They'll get suspicious if you're missing from the negotiations team."

"I could take Sulu," Uhura says, thinking out loud. "He's light on his feet and his overall coloring would help him blend in with the natives."

Spock tilts his head, considering. "If we were to dress him in some of my Vulcan garments, I believe he would pass muster unless someone were to get extremely close."

There is a deep breath from the end of the table before Jim finally explodes. "Okay, STOP!" Bones is actually amazed it took him this long.

"I gather we have a plan?" Jim asks sardonically. "Which somehow involves Lieutenants Sulu and Uhura here, attacking the Cloister?"

"It's not an attack, it's more of a 'sneak-in-sneak-out' operation," Uhura replies.

"And how are you going to find them?" Jim looks triumphant, as if Spock and Uhura would have forgotten about such an important detail.

"Why, sir," Uhura grins wickedly, "with my nose."

+++

"You knew about this?" Jim sounds so honestly betrayed that Bones has to bite the inside of his cheek, hard, not to laugh out loud.

Uhura in wolf form is a beautiful animal, sleek and elegant, her build almost delicate despite her size. He's seen her before, of course, they've run together when they've had the chance, but there's something surreal about seeing her under the bright blue-cast lights of the transporter pad. Her fur, which normally looks warm, reddish and black, looks now almost blue and she looks oddly ethereal.

Also, she's wearing a collar with a communicator affixed to it. It's there so that Scotty can beam her up immediately in case of trouble, but just the sight of a collar makes Bones uneasy.

Sulu is standing next to her with a burlap sack over one shoulder. The sack is a disguise for their spare weaponry and extra robes for Chekov and Buckley, since the Federation uniforms tend to stand out too much on worlds like Lerant, which favor dark clothing. He keeps shifting the bag and darting small glances down at Uhura, like he's absolutely sure he's gone nuts and she's not really there. He had known about werewolves in theory – apparently Chekov had told him things about his uncle – but he's still clearly stunned to find himself standing next to one, preparing to beam down onto a hostile world and sneak into a cloister.

"Did you know about this, Bones?" Jim asks again and Christ, has he brought out the pout? He has.

"Of course I knew about this," he snaps. "It's medically relevant information, and subject to doctor-patient confidentiality. Stop bugging me." He looks towards the transporter pad again, where Spock is giving what looks like a goodbye ear-scritch to Uhura. "Lieutenants," Bones says, making Uhura look up, "the weakest part of any public institution is its service entrance, especially when it's busy. Just waltz right in like you belong there and nobody will say a word."

Sulu looks startled but nods, while Jim's eyebrows rise halfway to his hairline. "What? You think you're the only one here with wasted youth?" he asks, annoyed. He doesn't like that everybody else is going, but Uhura was right, this could get ugly fast and he needs to be where he is most useful.

Jim and Spock beam down to the planet once Scotty has dropped Uhura and Sulu somewhere isolated, along with a whole bunch of ensigns who are there to pretend to get traded for Chekov. Bones kind of wishes he could see this negotiation – Jim is going to be outrageous - but he makes his way to sickbay instead and makes sure they're all set for tragedy, just in case.

+++

It's a tense few hours until they hear back from Sulu and Uhura. There is, of course, the regular chatter between the 'negotiators' and the ship, which Scotty, God love him, has patched straight into a communications console in Bones's office, so he doesn't need to be calling down to the transporter pad to ask all the time.

The entire crew seems to be holding their breath, so things are slow in sickbay as well. He's just handing Ensign Leroy his weekly portion of synthesized O-negative when the communication console beeps and Sulu's voice comes through.

"Lieutenant Sulu to Enterprise, we've located Buckley. He appears drugged; can you transport him from here?"

There's a slight pause before Scotty replies. "Negative, too much interference from the building, but only just barely. If you get him to a courtyard or somewhere with no roof, we're in business."

"Affirmative. Stand by," Sulu replies, and the communicator crackles.

"Scotty to McCoy," comes through seconds later.

"McCoy here," Bones replies. His fingernails are cutting into the flesh of his palms from the tension.

"I'm monitoring their signals and I'm beaming up Buckley as soon as I have him for certain. They said he was drugged, so I'll be beaming him directly to you."

"We'll be standing by," Bones replies. "I'll be listening in on this channel."

"Righty-ho," Scotty says, and then adds, "You really knew about Uhura?"

"Focus, Scotty," he answers, gruffly. Things are going to get interesting, now that the whole ship knows about her.

A few minutes later, Ensign Buckley is beamed aboard, and Bones finally has something to do to keep himself distracted. The drug in his system is just a basic sedative, but as it is of alien provenance and they're not operating under the wire, Bones just gives him a few things to help him flush it out of his system, rather than a direct antidote.

When he gets to his office, Uhura and Sulu have evidently located Chekov and are in the process of getting him out of a room where some Lerantians are asking him – from what Sulu says – some incredibly dumb questions. He can hear Uhura growling in the background and the hiss of phaser fire, and then running footsteps.

Then Scotty shouts, "Gotcha, stop right there," and the communicator whines as it starts disintegrating for transport.

Bones hurries down to the transporter lab and is there early enough to see a grinning Chekov step down off the pad. He's got a black eye and a split lip, but seems otherwise fine. "We didn't even have to shoot them," he says, grinning to Sulu, who is folding up his katana as he walks off the pad. Uhura looks ruffled but fine, too, jumping gracefully down and bounding over to nose at Chekov.

Scotty is talking into his communicator and a moment later the transport pad flashes as the negotiations team starts materializing, Kirk clearly at the front, holding a phaser in a threatening position.

"Oh, hi everybody," he says, once he's registered his change of locale, then grins down at Chekov, who has just unbuckled Uhura's collar. "I see we're all back safely?"

+++

"They wanted to know some things about physics, Keptin," Chekov explains, sitting on a bio-bed, Bones running the dermal regenerator over the young man's face. "Mostly very basic things… but is groundwork for things like transporter theory, and beaming, and intergalactic travel."

"They didn't threaten you physically?" Kirk asks, staring at the faint yellow smudge of the still-healing shiner.

"They backhanded me once – one of their security personnel. I got black eye when they took me from the guesthouse. Then I think they needed the Governor and all security people to deal with your negotiation, because I was left with just scientists and one guard. Scientists are, what is the word… wusses?" He smirks, then looks around until he finds Sulu.

"Hikaru… Lieutenant Sulu only needed to wave his sword once, and Uhura to growl, then they were too scared to do anything. They just let us go. The guard came after us but he was too slow – I think he first time in the Cloister, just as lost as I was. Then we were in courtyard and Mr. Scott beamed us up."

Kirk nods and turns to Sulu, and does a double take when Uhura is standing next to him, already changed. "Damn," he mutters. "I was hoping to see you do that."

Uhura smirks. "Admit it, Captain," she says. "You were hoping that I wouldn't have any clothes on." She's barefoot and wearing a simple shift dress, her hair loose over her shoulders, and McCoy turns his head away and grins a little, getting an answering grin and a wink from Chekov. Fortunately, Jim's back is turned.

"Of course not, Lieutenant," he says, and manages to sound hurt, though everybody in the room knows well enough that she was right. "I am merely curious about how all of this works. Now that I know werewolves exist." He says the last bit with a certain emphasis and Bones just knows that Jim has turned around to glare at his back.

"Confidential patient information, Captain," he says, not turning around from healing Chekov's split lip. "Sorry."

There is a long silence before Jim lets it go. "You encountered no difficulties in finding them?" he asks Uhura and Sulu.

"Apart from the place being completely impossible to navigate? No," Sulu replies. "If it hadn't been for Uhura, I don't know how we would have found them at all, Captain."

"And you encountered no one once inside?" Jim presses.

"My sense of smell and my hearing usually give me some advance warning when people are approaching, sir," Uhura says. "We were lucky in that we always managed to hide."

"So, all in all, an extremely successful retrieval mission," Jim says with relish. "Well done, everyone. Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, take the next shift off. Mr. Spock, please take the bridge and get us out of here. Bones, can I have a word with you in your office?"

As soon as his office door swishes closed behind them, Jim turns to him. "I need to see everything you have on werewolves."

"Jim," he replies, annoyed. "I'm not here to assuage your curiosity…"

Jim stops him with a glare. "It's not curiosity, it's tactics. I need to know what my crew can do; their strengths, their weaknesses, and how I can best take advantage of their talents in any given situation. Uhura is a werewolf - okay, it's her business - but now that I know, now that we all know, I need to know what that means for this crew. Okay?"

Oh, this is going to go to hell very fucking fast, but Kirk, damn him, is right. "Okay, I'll put together what information I have," he sighs, then sits down at his desk and leans back in the chair, suddenly exhausted.

"Hey," Jim adds, suddenly serious. "You did good down there, this morning, having Scotty beam us out. Quick thinking."

"Thanks," he replies. "Captain."

"I meant that as your friend too, you know," Jim says, sitting down in the visitor's chair – which might as well be known as 'Jim's chair'.

There's a long silence before Bones pulls out his whiskey and two glasses and pours them each a drink. "I know," he says. And he does.

+++

Oddly enough the whole ship now knowing about Uhura makes Bones's life more difficult. She's suddenly a minor celebrity, and people start paying attention to lunar cycles and where she spends her time. Everybody seems to understand that she likes to spar with Spock, once people get that she's stronger than your average human, but it's harder to explain what Bones is doing in their practice sessions, until Sulu – who has been let in on the secret at Chekov's behest – suggests that he start obviously carrying a medkit. After all, they do their practice in private, so nobody has any idea what goes on in there; they might just as well be tearing strips out of each other and needing immediate medical attention afterwards.

This seems like a good idea, and is one, for the most part - until Jim gets his teeth into the rumor going around that these sessions get bloody.

Jim's tenacity is usually one of his bigger strengths, but he's driving Bones nuts with his questions. No matter how many times he tells Jim that he's just there as a precaution, Jim seems convinced that something more sinister is going on, until he finally takes him along to a session, in which he sits around reading medical journals while Uhura wipes the floor with Spock, much to Jim's delight.

That, however, gets Jim interested in figuring out how werewolf mating habits work, since Uhura and Spock are never quite as obviously connected as they are when they are sparring. He can understand the fascination; they captivate Bones, too, but he could really do without all the questions about the whole 'mating for life' stuff, from Jim, of all people.

"But, what if one of them gets attracted to someone else?" Jim asks, one evening over dinner.

Bones sighs. "I think that between the werewolf mating bond and the Vulcan lifebond, the chances of that happening are exceedingly slim."

"Yes, but… you mean they can't be attracted to anybody else?"

"I think their attraction to each other would outweigh any fleeting attraction to someone else," he says, trying not to sound as frustrated as he feels. He is far too familiar with this aspect of the mating bond, and since his mate is oblivious, he's been having a very intimate relationship with his right hand for a while now.

"So they can't have sex with anybody but each other?" Jim asks, shooting a glance over to where Uhura and Spock are sharing their evening meal.

"They could, theoretically, but it would never be as enjoyable as with each other," he replies, wondering why the hell he's still answering these questions – though a part of him, the part that wants Jim so bad he hurts, knows exactly why he keeps trying to explain it to him.

But then Jim says, guilelessly, "Wow, that has got to suck," and breaks his heart into a million pieces.

+++

Part Two

Sometimes, being a wolf is simpler than being a human. The wolf's thoughts are simpler, quieter, run more easily and are less likely to get all tangled up in emotion. The wolf has simpler needs; food and sleep and pack will do him just fine, though he's been used to being a solitary animal for so long that having a pack is still new and exciting, even if it's mostly made up of humans who can't run very fast.

Bones the man still finds Spock disconcerting and Chekov ridiculously young, Sulu a little too cocky, and is reluctant to admit how much Uhura is becoming a sister to him. Bones the wolf has nothing but love for Chekov's boundless enthusiasm and Sulu's devil-may-care attitude. Bones the wolf recognizes Uhura as his pack-sister, and Spock, by extension, as family. Spending time with his wolf is much easier than spending time as a man.

Uhura calls him on it about a month after the Lerantian affair.

"So is Kirk still asking you questions?" she asks, as she wraps her hands at the beginning of their training session.

"When does Jim not ask me questions?" he answers back, distracted by his own preparations.

"True," she says, laughing. "What I meant was is he still asking you questions about my sex life?"

Bones is fairly certain he blushes at that. "He seems to be having some trouble with the concept of mating for life," he admits. Christ, now he sounds like Spock.

He has to retract that thought, though, when Spock joins the conversation. "He has admitted to me that he finds the idea of a lifelong bond quite fascinating, if only in the abstract."

"Yeah, that's Jim," Bones sighs. "Loves 'em and leaves 'em, and can't even contemplate anything else."

"Is that why you've been spending so much time with your wolf lately?" Uhura asks, turning to face him head on, and Bones suddenly realizes that the entire conversation has been a pretext to let her ask this question. Damn it, he just does not see this woman coming. At all.

"Yes," he snaps, because hell, she'll know if he lies, so what's the fucking point anyway?

She seems a little taken aback by his honesty, but rolls with it. "Did he say something to you? Do I need to find him and tear him a new one?"

"No," he says, tiredly. "He was just Jim. Can we get on with it?"

So they get on with it, and the next time they're planetside overnight, Uhura scratches at his door in the evening and they go out for a glorious run under a red half-moon.

+++

"C'mon, you've got to admit it is strange," Jim says. "How can you be that dependant on another person?"

"Jim, would you give it a rest, for the love of God?" He's going to end up punching Jim if he keeps up with the questions.

"I'm just curious," Jim shrugs. "And you're spending a lot of time with them, aren't you? I thought you didn't like Spock?"

Today Jim smells like that little redhead from Engineering, what's her name, Nia? Either he didn't have time to shower this morning or they had a quickie somewhere during lunch. It's driving him insane. "Maybe I like spending time with them because they don't ask me idiotic questions about other people's personal lives, you know," he snaps, then sighs and lets his head fall back onto his office chair.

"Hey, there's no need to get snippy," Jim replies. He looks like he's considering whether putting his feet up onto Bones's desk will result in spontaneous amputation. With the mood Bones is in, he hopes Jim doesn't test his patience anymore than he's already doing, asking dumb questions about things that aren't any of his business if he's not actually interested in seeing them through, and sitting there stinking of someone else to boot.

Jim lifts a foot and Bones glares at him and growls a little, and Jim clearly reconsiders, throwing his legs over the arm of the chair instead, sitting sideways and all squished up. He looks ridiculous, but they've had a rough day, which is the reason they're hiding out in Bones's office in the first place.

"Look, let me explain it to you using only small words," Bones says. "Some people, who are obviously not you, think that having sex with one person many times is better than having sex with many people once."

Jim looks startled. "I wasn't talking about sex," he says. "I mean, I can't really understand that part either, but I was thinking about how hard it must be to just… bond yourself to someone like that." He shrugs.

Well. Interesting. "I know you're commitmentphobic, Jim, but…"

"Christ, Bones," Jim says, and he's looking annoyed, now. "You don't have a really high opinion of me, do you?" He lets out a breath that's half a laugh, half a sigh. "Not that you don't have good reason. What I meant is, there's nobody I would trust like that." He looks briefly pensive, then amends: "Almost nobody."

"Oh," Bones says, nearly entirely lost for words.

"It says in the literature that werewolves can smell their mate," Jim continues, "but Spock is not a werewolf, is he? So how did he know? It just seems… risky."

He's getting rather uncomfortably close to Bones's personal life, here, and Bones tries hard not to fidget. "For that, I think you need to ask Spock," he replies after a while. "Or Uhura, but she's more likely to rip your balls off and stuff them down your throat if you go about it the wrong way."

Jim pretend-shivers, then grins at him, raising his whiskey in a half-assed toast. Bones finds a smile to send back, before knocking back the rest of his whiskey. He's going to need some serious inebriation to deal with Jim after the conversation they've just had.

He knows the answer to Jim's question, of course; he'd asked. He'd figured that knowing couldn't hurt – and he'd been wrong. Knowing hurts like hell.

According to Spock, he had just known, straight away. He hadn't said a word about the logic of it or the lack thereof, which told Bones that he was absolutely serious. He doesn't know if it's because Spock is Vulcan or if he's just singularly unlucky, but what he's got in the end is Jim sitting across from him, sharing his whiskey, asking dumb questions about happily ever after, with no idea that he's Bones's answer to every single one of them.

+++

He's always known he couldn't keep it a secret forever. Truth will out, after all, and Jim has always been bound to find out sooner or later.

It's a dingy prison cell – not that prison cells are ever anything other than dingy – on a backwater planet known to its inhabitants as D'hena. None of them are rightly sure what they did to rouse the ire of the local government; it had been a fact-finding mission, more of a goodwill embassy than actual trade negotiations: D'hena is allied with the more prosperous and industrialized Lgort, which has just developed its first warp drives, which means that while D'henan society itself is pre-warp, they're about to hit the rest of the galaxy along with the Lgertans. Introducing themselves to the D'hena had seemed like a good way to show respect to the sovereignty of their civilization.

What little there is of it.

Kirk is screaming from down the hall. Bones has seen him walk on a broken ankle with nary a whimper; seen him smile and walk around patting the crew on the back with a ruptured kidney; has seen him joke around while nearly bleeding to death from a broken bottle to the abdomen. He's never seen the man voluntarily take a painkiller – Kirk doesn't believe in them, anymore than he does in no-win situations – and he's the sort of stoic patient that is impossible to treat because he'll deny his symptoms until he's blue in the face.

Sulu is staring at him, cradling his obviously broken arm to his chest, his face pale, while Spock seems to be poking at the bars to their cell. The trouble is, they'd taken their communicators, and the attack had been timed – it happened almost straight after they'd last checked in with the Enterprise. Unless they get themselves out of this one, nobody is coming for them for at least four hours.

"Doctor McCoy," Spock says softly, just when Bones is about to snap at him, ask him what the hell he's doing, can't he hear that Jim is in pain? "I believe that between the two of us, we may manage to bend the bottom of the door out of shape enough for you to slip through."

It's no fucking choice at all, is what it is.

The bars are made of that tough metal alloy that seems to be the reason for the D'hena-Lgertan alliance, but they bend under their hands, and then, surprisingly, splinter and break. "I have a hunch these backwoods people are about to get dumped from their trade alliance," Bones mutters, holding back his curses as a splinter works its way into the pad of his thumb.

"It seems likely that when the Lgertans get access to superior Federation materials, they will discontinue their metals trade with the D'hena," Spock agrees.

"These people are going to need to learn how to farm," Bones grumbles, as another bar breaks under his hands. He finds the thought somewhat satisfying, and it helps to distract him from the noises Jim is making. Whatever they're doing to him, they seem to be taking a break, because Jim is drawing in agonizing, shaking breaths, and Bones just hopes they can make the damn hole big enough before the bastards start in on him again.

Spock's hands are scored green by the time they've managed to break off a large enough section of the door, but that ceases to matter when Jim starts screaming again. He doesn't think about clothes, just shifts and then worms his way underneath the broken bars. The jagged edges tear at his fur but he barely feels it, and then he's running down the hall toward the scent of his mate's – Jim's – blood, intent on tearing whoever is hurting him apart.

He hasn't known many werewolves and Uhura is the first he's trained with regularly, but she's from a wolf family. She'd told him once that while all wolves are ferocious in a fight, most of them have different strengths: Uhura is ridiculously quick on her feet -almost to the point where she seems psychically able to anticipate where the next blow is coming from - some are strong, and others are quick to heal. Bones, according to Uhura, is the quickest shifter she's ever seen. Shifting from one form to the other takes almost no effort and little thought, and they've been working with that in their training, something he is grateful for as he bounds into the room, jumps and locks his jaws around the arm of the man standing over Jim, who is bound to a chair in the centre of the room.

There are five men in there, and while he does have the element of surprise on his side, he doesn't expect them to be slow. He lets momentum propel him forward, jaws still clenched around the man's arm and feels bone splinter under his teeth.

The man can't keep his balance with eighty pounds of wolf bearing down on him. Bones lets go of his arm as soon as the man hits the ground and uses his back paws to claw at his legs, tearing through fabric and skin with frightening ease. He's lucky, the man who is the quickest to recover his wits is also the man nearest to him, and a good lunge has his jaws closing on the man's hand as it raises his pistol. A shot goes off but it doesn't even come close to hitting him, and he crunches down, crushing the phalanges in the man's hand easily until he's whimpering in pain.

There's a sound behind him, someone unsnapping a holster and Bones lets go of the man's hand, shifts, then snaps up the man's dropped pistol and fires two shots, getting the third man in the thigh and abdomen.

He was never a great shot, but the man is down, so it will do.

He shifts back to take the fourth one out, lunging out of the way of the shots that were fired at his human body, one of them scoring his flank but it's a graze. He lunges again, putting all his weight into crashing the guy into the wall. It works; he can hear a dull thud when the guard’s head hits the brick, and then the fifth man turns on his heel and runs.

He hates to do it, but he knows that if the man gets out of the building they'll be swarmed with more men with pistols than he can handle, so he gives chase, until he's close enough. He shifts as he lunges for the guy, using his forearm to choke the man until he loses consciousness.

He leaves him in the middle of the floor, shifts back and runs back the way he came, needing to see if Jim is okay, because he left him with four maimed men, but none of them were dead, and you only need to lift an arm to shoot a gun.

He gets there just in time to prevent precisely that from happening, though with the way the man's arm is shaking he couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn. He shifts back so that he can pound his head into the floor, once, knocking him out cold.

He breathes out slowly when he's sure as can be that everybody is down for the count, before turning to Jim, looking him over. He's got a sluggishly bleeding wound in his stomach and multiple lacerations all over his chest, bruises just beginning to bloom across his ribs from where he's been beaten. There is what looks like an old-style car battery on the floor at his feet, with wires coiled around it… Goddamn.

There is a knife at the belt of one of the men he took out, next to the keys to the damn cell, and Bones picks both up, before kneeling at Jim's feet to cut through his bindings. He's suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he's naked and Jim is only wearing underwear, and he makes the mistake of looking up into Jim's face while sawing through the rope binding his left foot.

Jim is staring at him, looking pale and shocked. He's bitten through his lip at some point in the past hour and it's bleeding freely down his chin, but he pays it no mind, his mouth open in an "o" of surprise and… dismay?

They can't do this now, they have to get out of here, so when the ropes finally snap, he stands up, cuts through the ties that are binding Jim's hands behind his back and asks gruffly, "Can you walk?"

"Yes," Jim says, but he makes no move to stand up, and when Bones offers a hand to help him up, he leans on it much more than he should.

"Goddamnit, Jim, don't be an idiot," he says, looking down at Jim's feet. He can't see what's wrong, but clearly there's something, because Jim is swaying.

"I can walk," Jim replies and takes a step, then promptly loses his balance and falls back into Bones's chest with a pained gasp.

"I can see that," Bones answers, putting his arm under Jim's and leaning down, picking him up with his other arm under his knees. "Unfortunately, we need to get out of here fast, so we have no time for this. Any idea what they did with our comms?"

Jim stares up into his face, still looking shocked and hurt and fucking vulnerable, which is just wrong. "They're…" his voice breaks and he has to swallow and try again. "Anteroom."

Two of their comms have been smashed, but they only need one to call the Enterprise. Jim manages to reach out a hand and snag one up, and then they make their way down the hallway to where Spock and Sulu are waiting.

Scotty beams them directly up into sickbay, and McCoy draws stares, walking around naked, carrying the half-naked Captain, who is also fading fast, his adrenaline crashing and the endorphins kicking in for real.

Bones is almost ridiculously relieved when he deposits him on a bio-bed and hyposprays him with a sedative. He's not looking forward to the inevitable conversation about secrets that they need to have and is glad to postpone it.

"Well, sir, cat's out of the bag, then?" Chapel asks when he turns around, handing him a pair of scrub pants and a medical tricorder.

"More or less," he answers wearily, pulling on the pants.

"I am certain the Captain must be grateful for the rescue," Spock interjects from across the room. Uhura has come up to sit next to him, holding his wrist while Dr. M'Benga runs a dermal regenerator over his hands.

"I wouldn't bank on it, Spock," Bones replies.

"He should be thankful your abilities allowed you to get us out of the situation," Spock reiterates. "Anything else would not be logical."

Bones sighs and turns around to figure out what those bastards did to his Jim. "Not all things are, Spock," he says, quietly, but he knows he'll be heard all the same.

+++

He heals much faster in wolf form than as a human, so that is his excuse for shifting and curling up to sleep. He has no excuse, however, for choosing to do this at the bottom of Kirk's bio-bed, half on top of the other man's legs.

He's pretty sure he wouldn't condone it if it was someone else, but he can't help it; it took three hours to put Jim back together, and Jim is his best friend but it is entirely possible that this will remain true only for as long as Jim is still asleep.

So he takes comfort while he can still get it, because he isn't sure he can get Jim to forgive him for this one.

He jolts awake a while later, when a foot under him starts twitching, and when he opens his eyes the first thing he sees is the blue of Kirk's, peeking out from beneath his eyelids.

"Christ," Jim breathes, just staring at him, with a slightly awed look on his face.

He stares back, then flattens his ears and puts his head down on Jim's knee, feeling sad and ruffled, still wanting to be close even if Jim maybe does not want him.

"Oh, damn it, Bones," Jim says, "you do not get to give me that look while actually a canine. There's just no way that's fair."

The wolf doesn't want to shift. He's comfortable here, and Jim hasn't kicked him out of bed yet, and he knows he did something bad, something that is going to mean some shouting and it would be much easier to do it like this. He doesn't have all these complicated emotions this way. He just wants to stay near, that's all. He puts a foreleg over his snout and looks at Jim again, sorry, so sorry, begging not to be pushed away.

"… Goddamn," Jim finally says and reaches down a hand to touch him. There's a quick stroke over his head and a small scratch behind his ear, and the wolf leans into it, happy, until Jim snatches his hand away like he's been burned.

"No," Jim says, and now he sounds stern and awake and smells… angry. "We're not doing it like this. Change."

There's enough of a tone of command in his voice that the wolf can tell there's no begging off. He concentrates, shifts, and ends up sitting at the bottom of the bed, legs drawn up lotus-style, head hanging down. His more complex emotions hit him in a rush and he passes a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes, forgetting about the tender new skin on his palms where his hands had been cut by the prison bars.

Jim doesn't notice his hiss; he's too busy looking awed. "How does that work, then?" he asks, gesturing, and Bones suddenly realizes he's asking about the scrub pants. Great.

"Shifting with clothes takes mental focus," he says. "When you're shifting fast, sometimes they're too much of a bother."

"Right," Jim answers, and then just… keeps staring.

"I'm sorry," Bones offers, once the silence has stretched until it's uncomfortable and heavy and laden with things he doesn't even begin to know how to say. Apologizing is easy.

"You should've told me," Jim replies, softly.

"When?" he snaps. "How?"

"Oh, don't give me that," Jim answers. His voice is sharp but still low, and somehow not getting shouted at hurts more. "You should have told me years ago, but if you want me to choose a moment? How about in your office, after the Lerantian mission, when I told you I needed to know what my crew can do, because I'd just found out about Uhura?"

He looks away, the back of his neck burning with shame and regret, because Jim, Goddamn him, is right, and he knows it.

"Even if I look past you keeping this from me for years, Bones, that doesn't explain the past few months." Jim actually sounds hurt, and it's all he can do not to just slink away in defeat because he never wanted to make him sound like that, ever.

"It doesn't…" Bones starts, but Jim seems to be putting the puzzle together retroactively now and he isn't listening.

"For fuck's sake, you've been practicing with them; that's why you're in their sessions, not because you're a doctor. Does Chekov know? Hell, does Sulu know? Did everybody except for me know what you are?"

And now his voice is rising, in incredulity rather than anger, his eyes wide and his hands fisted in the sheets of the bed.

"Jim," Bones starts, but Jim isn't having any of it.

"Get the fuck out."

"Jim," he tries again.

"Get the fuck away from me!"

And there's the shouting he'd been expecting.

He slides off the bed without saying anything else and pads away, into his office. It's his sickbay, so Jim can't kick him out, but he doesn't want Bones near him and Bones can hardly blame him.

He falls down into his desk chair, his knees giving out, and after a moment's thought, gets out the bottle of whiskey he keeps in the bottom drawer, pouring three fingers into a glass and taking a slow sip.

He can still hear Jim, all his senses focused on the main area of sickbay, where the other man is breathing in great, hitching gulps of air, the sheets rustling as he evidently lies down again. He can't stop himself from listening until Jim has managed to slow his breathing, until he's just lying there, awake and probably thinking, and Bones feels like the right bastard he probably is for having been told to get away and still managing to invade his best friend's – his mate's – privacy.

He can't do this anymore. Not like this.

He draws a PADD towards him and calls up a blank page, taking a deep breath before beginning to write out his reassignment request.

It doesn't take long. He cites personal reasons and ends on a note of praise by stating that Jim and his command style have nothing to do with the aforementioned reasons. A blatant lie, of course, but a white one at least. Less than ten minutes to make a decision that will change his life in ways that he can't predict, will take him away from everything that has come to represent home to him in the past year, will…

He puts his head into his hands and tries to breathe steadily. It has to be done; he cannot keep going like nothing has happened, not after this.

He's sitting like that, still, when he hears a tiny hitch of a breath from the other room's occupant and then some rapid rustling, followed by footsteps. He looks up to find Jim standing in his doorway, wrapped in a blanket, wearing an inscrutable expression.

"I was thinking," Jim says, after a while where they just stare at each other, "about how this explains some things about you. Like, how I haven't ever been able to sneak up on you, or how you could always get me home at the end of the night, even if you must have carried me across the park…" he trails off, and an uncertain expression flits across his features, but he's Captain James T. Kirk after all and "uncertain" isn't in his vocabulary.

"And then I remembered asking you all those questions about Uhura and Spock and the mating thing and I thought of Jocelyn and…"

"She wasn't my mate," Bones says before he can even think about it – but of all the things he could lie to Jim about, that is not one of them, even if Jim thinking that would have been easier, much easier.

"What?" Jim asks, looking a little taken aback. "I thought… you said werewolves mate for life?"

"They do once they've met their mate," Bones says gently, and then frowns when Jim leans up against the doorjamb. Jim leans on things an awful lot, but he looks like he's about to pass out, there. "Come in and sit down before you fall down," he says, shaking his head.

"Only if you share the alcohol," Jim says tiredly, but he's already over the threshold, making his way to the visitor's - his - chair.

Bones shrugs. He shouldn't, but sometimes rules are for breaking. He pours a little less for Jim than he does for himself, though; the other man has just spent nine hours healing, after all, no need to shock his system.

"When I met Jocelyn," he finally says when Jim has sat down, hands wrapped around his glass like it somehow warms him that way, too, "I hadn't met my mate. I didn't even believe the legend that a werewolf could scent their mate, much less in mating for life." He shrugs. "I loved her, and she left me, but she wasn't my mate."

Jim thinks about that and Bones barely resists the need to hold his breath. There's a lot of ways this could go wrong, right here, if Jim asks the wrong questions, the ones Bones can't answer without giving himself away.

"So… you haven't…" Jim flounders, rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "How do I even ask a question like that?"

"I'm not mated, if that's what you're asking," Bones replies, amused despite the tension pulling tight in his stomach.

Jim snorts. "That just sounds weird," he says. "So what, one day you'll just catch a whiff of someone and that's it? You'll know?" He takes a sip of whiskey, leaning back in the chair, like he's going to get more comfortable.

"More or less," he answers, hoping Jim won't call him on his evasiveness.

Fortunately, Jim seems to interpret it as Bones not exactly being thrilled about the prospect, because he chuckles into his glass, shaking his head and muttering, "Lucky you."

"Right," Bones sighs, immensely relieved, because it looks like they're past the danger now.

They sit in silence, sipping their whiskey before Jim suddenly speaks up. "I'm still mad at you, you know." He leans forward onto the desk, looking at Bones intently. "You should have told me."

He doesn't look mad, though; he looks hurt, and Bones can't meet his eyes. "I know," he says, but doesn't get to say anything else, because in this position, Jim can see the screen of the PADD Bones had been working on.

"What the hell is that?" he asks, and now he sounds angry, pulling the PADD towards him before Bones can react. Bones can see when Jim gets it, because his eyes widen, and then he bites down on his bottom lip, the way he only does when he's furious. "Oh no you don't," he mutters and stabs at the screen with a finger. "Request fucking denied."

Bones doesn't have to see it to know that his reassignment request has been summarily deleted, but his eyes still stay on the screen when Jim tosses the PADD onto the table, because hell if he can meet Jim's gaze now.

"If you want to leave, Bones," Jim says, low and furious, "you can just fucking ask me. Do you want to leave?" There's an odd note in his voice and Bones suddenly realizes that Jim isn't asking whether he wants to leave Starfleet, or leave the Enterprise. What Jim is asking is, 'do you want to leave me?' and the answer to that one is simple.

"No," he snaps out, because if he isn't grouchy about this, he'll reveal too much. "No, I don't. Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a fucking astronaut. Do you think I'd be in space if it wasn't for you?"

Jim looks taken aback. "You joined Starfleet," he shoots back.

"They have plenty of research facilities on the ground," Bones growls at him. "Two year tour of duty and I would have been able to transfer to the research division. Instead I'm on a five year exploratory mission of space, with you." He's cutting too close to the heart of the matter here, and if he doesn't back off, Jim is going to either figure it out or start asking questions for real.

Jim, however, does what Jim tends to do when faced with high emotion: laughs it off. He just happens to do it by snorting, shaking his head and saying offhandedly, "Right. I love you too, Bones."

It's a good thing he's looking down and not at Bones when he says it.

When he can breathe again, Bones does the only thing he can do. "Fuck off, Jim. And go back to sleep, you cretin, you're supposed to be healing."

"I can't sleep in the bio-beds," Jim whines, but he stands up, sways on his feet and almost falls down. Bones shoots out of his chair and catches him, before he has to treat him for concussion on top of everything else, then sighs and picks him up.

Jim lets him, curls into him, in fact, and when Bones reaches the bed he was sleeping on, he is loath to let him go. "Weren't you supposed to be sleeping, too?" Jim asks, when he's settled, evidently tired because his eyes are only a sliver of blue beneath his lashes.

"I'll sleep on the cot in the office," Bones says, turning away. He's barely gone two steps when Jim speaks up again.

"It was nice to wake up with you on my feet, y'know." He sounds tentative, like he wants to offer but doesn't know how, and Bones is abruptly too damn tired and achy to question it. He shifts into his wolf and jumps up, arranging himself across Jim's legs and closing his eyes, though he doesn't fall asleep straight away. He waits instead, until Jim's eyes fall shut and his breathing evens out, and only then lets sleep take him.

+++

The uneven rhythm they settle into is nothing like the easy camaraderie they'd had from the moment they met. Jim doesn't have faith in him anymore, that much is obvious.

Oh, he trusts Bones just fine to do his job. Jim's never doubted his abilities as a doctor, and he wouldn't start now; Bones is still as much a member of the command staff as he ever was.

It's their friendship that has changed. Jim is... difficult to have a relationship with at the best of times, but Bones had never truly realized how much Jim trusted him until Jim doesn't trust him anymore.

Their balance is suddenly a lot more delicate than it ever was before, and Bones has never been much for tactful personal interactions, not since his divorce; after Jocelyn he figured that he'd better be himself, unfailingly, unflinchingly, because he clearly sucked at negotiating relationships.

Jim has always been supportive of this and laughed at his little idiosyncrasies, except that Bones is apparently very good at fooling himself, and Jim feels foolish by extension. He's put forth every aspect of his human side, letting his human paranoia and human weaknesses show without restraint, but he'd kept back an enormous part of himself when he hid the wolf and Jim feels deceived. He's a doctor, not a psychotherapist, but it doesn't take a psychotherapist to tell him just where he went wrong.

They make a good show of it, of course; Jim is clearly used to that, and it breaks his heart more than a little to be putting him through it, again. They've got most of the crew fooled, Bones thinks, except for the few who train with him regularly. Uhura can't figure out which of them she's angrier at - Bones for not telling Jim, or Jim for shutting Bones out; it would actually be funny to watch if the situation wasn't so difficult. Spock treads carefully somewhere in the middle; he's undeniably a part of the pack but his friendship with Jim, which will allegedly become legendary, is just beginning to blossom, and he's very careful about what he says – not that this makes a great change. Chekov and Sulu stay out of it, which is understandable, but Bones catches them looking with certain… irreverence, which tells him they have their own opinions, for all that they're staunchly keeping them to themselves.

It's strained and uncomfortable because they're all tiptoeing around each other, so of course the only thing that could possibly make it better is a crisis of the sort they need to deal with immediately, before it gets out of hand.

It's humans, this time, which makes it somehow worse, because they cannot balance the ruthlessness of the colonists of Titania against their alien-ness; they're people, just like most of the crew of the Enterprise, and their follies are unquestionably human.

They'd been delivering medical supplies; basic inoculations and hyposprays, nothing very fancy, just the sort of thing every colony needs. Except the inhabitants of Titania weren't happy with what they got, and they were willing to go to extreme lengths to get what they wanted instead.

They’ve taken twenty-eight crewmembers hostage, cutting them off from communications and transport facilities by keeping them in a lead-lined basement, and it's that element of preparation that really makes Jim's blood boil. And since they are human, they know what to ask for and what to avoid; they know how to force them to negotiate because, damn them, they've probably read the fucking Starfleet Manual.

What they want is the captain, alone and unarmed; they'll release the hostages if they can get Kirk, and if they have Kirk, they'll have the Enterprise. It's that simple.

They've been given forty-three minutes before the first hostage gets executed – forty-three minutes because that's the time until sundown, and McCoy briefly wonders how he found himself living in some sort of a bizarre spaghetti Western.

Kirk is determined, of course, to give himself up, because that's how these things work; the captain gives himself up and then the crew rescues the captain. It's Spock who suggests that perhaps the captain could have a dog.

Bones can pass for a Siberian Husky if he carries himself the right way and doesn't snarl, and the basic idea is that if he's established as Kirk's dog, he'll have the run of the place; he'll be able to report back to the Enterprise and help them plan their rescue.

What neither of them expects is for the manager of the colony to sneer at him. "Who's the mongrel, Captain?" he asks, and Jim bristles.

"It's just my dog. He has a will of his own," he says. "Let the crew you have taken hostage go."

The exchange of hostages is tense but it works, and once the last ensign is out of the way, Jim submits his phaser and his communicator. It's when Bones attempts to dog his heels to his cell that it all goes to shit.

"I don't know how you deal with mongrels in Starfleet, Captain Kirk," the manager scoffs, "but this is what we do on Titania."

He's a damn quick draw, quick enough that Bones can't evade the damn bullet aimed at his head, and the last thing he hears before the world goes dark is Jim, shouting: "NO!"

+++

Part Three

According to legend, werewolves succumb to two things: old age and silver bullets through the heart.

The Titanians' bullets are old-fashioned, lead in copper casing, not a hint of silver.

The wolf awakens to silence and darkness; the light of the colony's moon is barely edging its contours, and he's weak, too weak, but the moonlight is helping. There is a statistic running through the back of his mind, accompanied by an echo of derision from his human counterpart and an image of the pack-mate who is neither-wolf-nor-human.

The scent on the air tells of wood-fired stoves and cordite, with a faint undercurrent of mate, and that is the scent he chooses to follow because it is his first instinct and because his human is quiet, too quiet, and Bones is never quiet around their mate.

There is danger, he knows, because his human is still there, fragile but aware, and Bones knows what happened, can decipher it better than the wolf can, but the wolf translates it into peril and careful, so he slinks through the shadows, grateful for his dark gray fur that cloaks him from casual view, until he finds the structure of cold stone and iron where their mate is kept.

Their mate is curled up on the cold floor, shivering, smelling like desolation and remorse, and there is steel between them, bars of steel, and the floor too hard to dig through. The wolf whines, disconsolate, pushing his snout through the bars, and then his mate, his human, is jerking upright and turning around, suddenly alive and warm and hopeful, and the wolf's human counterpart unfurls at the back of his mind until they're whole again, like they should be.

"Jim," his human counterpart sighs, and that's their mate. Their mate who is waiting for a rescue, which they can help get to him that much sooner. He pushes his nose against Jim's palm before slinking outside, following the trail of the one who is pack-but-not-wolf-and-not-human, until he finds the little flashing thing, and then his human takes over and shifts so that he can speak.

+++

They're barely back on the ship after they've gotten Jim out before the Captain turns up in his quarters. Bones is still bristling from the indignity of having Uhura declare him unfit for duty, even if he knows that he needs a little more time to figure out which parts of him are wolf and which parts are human; the wolf is what saved him on the planet, despite getting shot through the head, and while he hasn't always been fond of werewolf myths turning out to be true he's actually rather happy with this one.

Still, he hasn't quite figured out how to be human yet (again), so he's stalking around his quarters, his claws scrabbling against the metal floor, when the chime sounds and he needs to shift, briefly, before letting Jim in.

Being human right now is almost painful, so he switches back as soon as the door swishes shut behind the Captain, not caring very much that the Captain is staring at him like he's never seen him before.

"Bones," he breathes, looking like he's about to keel over, so the wolf tugs the Captain towards the bed, because at least he can sit there. The Captain follows him meekly, sitting down on the edge of the mattress, still staring at him, until the wolf steps up to him and Jim buries his shaking hands in his fur and whispers, "I thought I lost you," into the silence of his quarters, refusing to let go of him until Bones succumbs and curls up on top of the covers, Jim curving himself around him, and that's how they fall asleep, entwined.

+++

If he'd known all he needed to do to win Jim's trust back was to get himself killed, he'd have done it sooner.

Or maybe not.

Still, the disaster of a mission to Titania seems to have punched through Jim's reservations, in a way that Bones suspects he never would have managed on his own. Thank heavens for small mercies, at least.

Things get easier somehow or other. None of them can quite suss out who precisely invited the Captain into their practice sessions, but once he's there it seems silly to throw him out; Bones has taken a bullet to the head and come out fighting, after all, it's not like they can shock him at this point.

Jim seems awed, most of the time, stunned by the speed Bones and Uhura are fighting at, stunned by the brutality they employ against each other, but perhaps more than anything else, stunned by the precision of Uhura fighting Spock, the way that even when they're moving against each other, they're moving in sync.

Of course, Jim is Jim; this is the way the world works, and while he has graduated from asking Bones stupid questions, his curiosity is obviously not assuaged. Jim likes being around when Bones and Uhura let themselves be subject to the pull of whatever moon they're near, likes curling up with Bones's wolf on the softest patch of floor they can find and tucking his nose into the patch of fur behind Bones's ear.

It seems remarkably contrary to Jim's personality, this quietness, the way he pointedly does not ask how it works anymore. He does occasionally mention the idea of Bones finding a mate, but he mentions it like he's trying to turn the whole idea into a joke and Bones lets himself go along with it because he's pretty willing to trade one set of uncomfortable questions for another. He doesn't push it, because Jim still seems so intensely discomfited with the idea of bonding for life, to the point where he sometimes watches Spock and Uhura like they're specimens under a magnifying glass.

It's Chekov who blithely points out the part of the puzzle that makes all the other pieces fall into place one day when he comes to sickbay for a cut he swears up and down is not from fencing practice. Bones wouldn't buy it even if Sulu wasn't hovering guiltily in the background.

Chekov is trying to deflect Bones’s attention away from the circumstances surrounding his injury by talking about his other packmates, discussing their most recent training session. Since Bones had attended said training session, this would not normally work, but it's the way Chekov describes the Captain that gets his attention.

"Was very cool to watch when you three all fight each other. You and Spock are working better together, I think. Not as well as Spock and Uhura, of course; they are almost like dancer, you agree? We all must watch them with awe, even Keptin. He makes jokes, about how he can't understand they are together, yes, but sometimes I think the Keptin will, how you say? Expire? From his jealousy."

He almost drops the dermal regenerator he's using on Chekov's forearm as his perception of the world tilts, takes a 180° turn and shifts, the universe rearranging itself around him in a way that is entirely different to the way it had been when Chekov came in.

Sweet merciful Jesus.

+++

He almost blows off their training session that afternoon, but he knows Uhura would hunt him down and interrogate him, and then she'd probably try to sympathize, and he just can't take that. Also, she's extremely likely to tell him to talk to Jim, and that's just not happening.

Jim does show up about midway through, when Uhura is sparring with Spock, and Chekov is right, they are like dancers, beautiful and graceful to watch, awe-inspiring, because a misstep from either of them would almost certainly result in blood. He understands being jealous of this, he is jealous of this.

So when Jim sits next to him, where he's winding down from his own fight with Uhura, he breaks all his self-imposed rules and mentions the subject first.

"They're really something, aren't they?" he mumbles, nodding towards the pair.

"They are," Jim says. "They look beautiful together. They're lucky they found each other."

"Ever wish you could find someone like that?" he asks.

Jim hesitates, then smirks. "Well, at least I’m having plenty of fun searching," he says, winking. He smells clean and spicy and earthy, the way only Jim smells, and he suddenly realizes that Jim has been smelling a lot more like Jim and a lot less like other people recently.

"Are you okay?" he asks reflexively, before he can think better of it.

"Hm?" Jim replies, as Uhura manages to catch Spock's elbow and twist his arm down. Spock breaks her hold, but it's tense, and it looked like it hurt. "Sorry," Jim says again, when the pair have resumed their fast steps across the mat. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"You're just…" he takes a deep breath. "You don't smell as much of other people, lately," he finally says, somewhat lamely.

Jim whips around to stare at him. "You can…" he starts, then reconsiders. "Of course you can," he amends. He's blushing, and Bones wishes he had an excuse to shift to his wolf right now, because he can smell Jim, true, but he needs the wolf to sort out how emotions smell.

"Get tired of it?" he asks, internally kicking himself for even asking these stupid questions.

"Mmmm," Jim replies, noncommittal, not looking him in the eyes.

On the mat, Uhura falters and isn't quick enough to parry, the heel of Spock's hand thudding against her side. She retaliates, quick and decisive, Spock having gotten in too close, snagging a foot behind his knee and bringing him down fast.

That's about when his comm rings to let him know that apparently a part of the enlisted crew who went planetside for their last shore leave seem to be developing weird symptoms at an alarming rate, and can he please come back to sickbay ASAP?

+++

It takes them three days of non-stop work to figure out how to get ahead of the infection spreading amongst the crew. Sickbay gets full and they end up having to clear out the mess hall closest to them for an auxiliary med bay, and then the large rec-room on the same deck. The mess hall freezer ends up getting used as a spare morgue, and they're just at the point where they need to ask for another room for cold storage when they finally find a drug cocktail that works.

The virus had started its life as food poisoning. Adverse reactions to foreign cuisine were not uncommon after shore leave, so they had been treating the group of enlisted men, who had mostly spent shore leave together, with relatively little alarm, until other people started showing up and Bones's sickbay crew started suffering. They'd had the crew called to general quarters, which seemed to have contained the damage some, but not enough.

In the end he'd commandeered every non-human on the ship – the infection apparently does not travel between species – and had Christine Chapel running a supplementary nursing force from her own sickbed.

The final tally is twenty-three dead, forty-eight needing to spend a few days recuperating, ninety-three able to stagger back to their own quarters for three rotations off, and he's so far beyond exhausted that he falls asleep in his office chair, forehead on his desk.

Four days later, the ship is just about getting back to its normal routine, and he's just about caught up on his sleep. They've relinquished the rec-room, after disinfecting it thoroughly, and they'll be able to let go of the Deck 4 mess hall in a day or so. Jim had shown up in his office and chivvied him off to his bed sometime into day two of watching the cure work. He's pretty certain Jim had used his captain's overrides to make sure nobody disturbed him, since he'd slept without interruption for eighteen hours.

He's having lunch when Spock unexpectedly sits down opposite him.

Their animosity is mostly a thing of the past, for all that neither of them can pretend to understand the other, but they still do not spend a great deal of time together without Uhura there.

"Spock," he says, carefully.

"Dr. McCoy," Spock replies, tearing apart his piece of bread to go with his plomeek soup. "Did you tell the Captain to inquire of me how the bond between me and Lieutenant Uhura works?"

Bones inhales a bit of his coffee by accident, but when he's managed to stop coughing he says, "I told Jim that if he wanted to know how the werewolf bond works from your end, he should ask you, yes. It was a while ago; I'm surprised he waited this long."

Spock looks at him with an expression that is even more unreadable than usual, before nodding slightly. "Very well," he says, and starts eating.

He can't get the exchange out of his head, though, because why the hell is Jim suddenly asking that question?

+++

They have a standing weekly chess match, which is less a competition and more an excuse for them to sit around and drink whiskey. Well, they drink whiskey when they have it, which is less and less the case these days.

This time, Jim shows up with something appallingly purple, which turns out to have a smoky rich flavor – nothing like whiskey, but it's not too bad.

They've had a couple of glasses each, and Jim is trouncing him at chess, which is what he normally does, though he seems distracted. Not that he can tell, much, but Bones notices that he seems to be doing somewhat better than usual.

"What's bugging you?" he asks when Jim moves a pawn out of the otherwise flawless defensive position he's been maintaining.

"Nothing," Jim says, not looking up from the chessboard.

"Oh, come on," he groans, pointedly moving his bishop to precisely where Jim's pawn opened up a line to Jim's king. "Whatever it is, it's not nothing."

Jim stays silent, looking at his hands, for a long while. When he finally looks up, he's wearing an odd expression, one which Bones has never seen before, and he looks oddly vulnerable, his eyes very blue.

"It's me, isn't it?" he says quietly, and Bones's heart plummets towards his stomach.

"What are you talking about?" he asks, but the way Jim's eyes are flashing, he knows he's not going to get very far faking ignorance.

"Don't pretend you don't know exactly what I'm talking about, Bones," he snaps. "I went and asked Spock, of all people. Goddamn. First time we ever met, you knew, didn't you? And you never said a fucking thing."

He takes a sip of his purple not-whiskey before he replies, trying to figure out how to respond to that. "What should I have said? 'Hi, I'm Leonard McCoy and I'm pretty sure you're my mate'?" he finally asks, tired. "It's not exactly what you were looking for, is it?"

"What the fuck do you know about what I was looking for, Bones? You never fucking asked." He's sounding quietly restrained, his voice barely raised.

"Right, Jim, because you didn't make it clear in your first week at the academy just how much fun you were hoping to have," he sighs back, wondering what the hell Jim is hoping to achieve by bringing this up. "It wasn't like you'd been waiting for me your whole Goddamn life, or that you even considered me, much, before moving on to greener pastures."

"Yeah, because I was the only one who did that," Jim says, derisively. "Must've been rough, not really wanting the person you were, 'biologically drawn to', to quote our erstwhile first officer."

Bones knows he's gaping, but considering what Jim just said, he thinks he can be excused. "You think I don't want you?"

"Why else would you avoid doing… whatever it is you do, for all these years? It's not like I would've said no," Jim says, and he's starting to lose his calm.

"You didn't," he replies, quietly, not sure where exactly this is going, but willing to at least try seeing it through.

"That was… it was just a…" Jim stutters. "I gave you a blowjob, that's it. What was it, a test run?"

"Hell of a test run," Bones replies wryly. "I haven't had sex since."

"You…" Jim starts, and then just gapes. Bones almost wishes he had a camera; he's pretty sure Uhura at least would like to see the Captain lost for words.

"…followed you into space, remember?" he says, softly, hoping he's read the situation right, because if not, he's in for a world of hurt.

"But you were going to ask for reassignment," Jim pushes, staring at him. "You were going to…"

"I couldn't leave you if I tried, kid," Bones mutters, before Jim has a chance to finish that thought. "It had been written for half an hour by the time you saw it, but I hadn't submitted it. I don't think I could've."

Jim stares at him over the chessboard, eyes wide and his pulse clearly fluttering in his throat, and Bones is hard pressed not to shift into his wolf to smell what he's feeling. They stare at each other in silence for a long moment, an endless fucking moment, before Jim whispers, sounding small, "But why would you want to…"

And there's only one Goddamn way he's answering that stupid question. He's on his feet and around the table before Jim knows what the hell is happening, yanking the other man to his feet and into a kiss. Jim tastes of surprise and the damn purple alcohol, and it takes him longer than Bones would have thought to kiss him back. He doesn't fight Bones, though, opening up under his mouth, letting himself be kissed, and then his fingers are at the nape of Bones's neck, curling into his hair, pulling him closer.

It takes all he has to end the kiss, and he's breathing hard when they finally break apart, Jim clearly not willing to stop but he's gotta ask, because Jim is too damn reckless and Bones isn't willing to be one of the consequences he never considers.

"You better tell me right now if this isn't what you want, Jim," he breathes, his forehead against Jim's, and he watches the other man's eyes flutter shut from up close, his heart thundering in his chest as he waits for whatever Jim decides to do.

Jim, the idiot, tries to kiss him in response, but that's not going to be good enough, not this time. "Tell me," he growls, a hand on Jim's shoulder, pushing him back, even if all he wants is to pull Jim closer.

"Should've known," Jim mutters, pushing against the hand on his shoulder.

"Don't be cute with me, Jim," he says, not letting him come any closer.

"No, I meant. I should have known. This. This is what I should have known," he replies, bringing up a hand to tangle in Bones's shirt. He looks up and meets his eyes, and Goddamn if he doesn't look like he knows what he's doing. "Want to know what I felt, that day on the shuttle?" he asks, softly, not breaking eye contact, and not waiting for Bones's reply either. "I knew you weren't going to leave me. Couldn't have told you how I knew, but I knew." He brings up a hand to wrap around Bones's wrist on his shoulder and pulls, and Bones lets him, lets him come in closer until they're chest to chest, and then they're kissing again.

Jim's mouth is hot on his and he's got a hand in Bones's hair, another pulling at his tunic at the small of his back, and he's pressed up close to Jim but not close enough, so he pushes him back a few steps, until he's got him up against the wall of his quarters, Jim leaning back and letting his head hit the wall when Bones kisses and sucks and bites down his neck to his clavicle, exploring all the skin that he's been fantasizing about for years.

Jim's hands get more insistent on his tunic and he finally pulls back just far enough that Jim can pull it over his head – he's wearing a sleeveless undershirt and Jim groans in disappointment when he doesn't get to skin immediately.

"Fucking tease," he mutters into Bones's mouth, which makes Bones laugh, because how Goddamn long has he been waiting for this? And now Jim is frustrated by a fucking shirt. Jim's hands are still scratching at the backs of his shoulders, trying to get enough leverage to pull up the undershirt too, which is not gonna happen while Bones is pressing their groins together like this, Jim's dick hard against him, pressing hot and heavy into his hip, and Jim moans breathlessly when Bones crowds him up against the wall.

There are easier ways to take off shirts than pulling them over someone's heads, and he pulls Jim's shirt apart from the neckline down, the tearing sound loud over their groans. Jim chuckles and breathes something like 'not fair', but it gets lost in his moan when Bones runs a hand firmly down his side, thumbing a nipple on the way.

And then it's just the waistband of Jim's pants, and while tearing Jim's pants off might be amusing, he figures the Captain can always borrow one of his shirts, but pants might present more of a challenge. "Fuck, Bones," Jim says, and takes advantage of the extra couple of inches between them while Bones is undoing his buttons to pull up his undershirt, until Bones has to let go to let Jim draw it off too.

Then Jim's clever, clever hands are all over him, pulling him closer, and he gets distracted, though not bad enough to forget that he's got Jim's pants opened, pushing his hand down until it's wrapped around Jim's cock, pulling gently, making Jim curse under his breath and retaliate by biting down on Bones's shoulder while he rolls a nipple between thumb and forefinger, and Christ, they should have been doing this for years.

He hasn't been kissing Jim for a few minutes, and this suddenly seems like a travesty, so he uses the hand that's not down Jim's pants to pull at Jim's hair until he leans back and Bones can kiss him, hard and bruising, Jim's arms thrown around his neck, blunt fingernails scraping at the top of his spine, and then a hand is fisting in his hair and Jim pushes his dick into Bones's hand sharply, once, twice, and comes, his whole body shivering against Bones's, the smell of it sudden and sharp and overpowering.

"Fuck," Jim sobs into his mouth, suddenly slack and relaxed and leaning into him for support.

"What," Bones murmurs back, mouth still at the corner of Jim's lips because he couldn't stop kissing him if he tried, and he's not willing to put it to the test either. "You think that was it? We haven't even made it to the bed yet."

Jim whimpers, no other word for it, and his fingers scratch the back of Bones's neck as they curl into fists. "You're going to have to carry me, if we're going anywhere," he half-laughs, letting his head fall down onto Bones's shoulder, his breath hot against his chest.

"Not a problem," he replies, wrapping his arms around Jim, pulling him up and against him until Jim gets the idea and wraps his legs around Bones's hips, Bones pulling him up until he's holding him there, and Jim takes the opportunity to tilt his head up and kiss him again, until they're both breathless.

"You need to fuck me up against a wall like this sometime," Jim muses. He's lax in Bones's arms, letting him do most of the work, not that he minds, and just to make that point he pushes off the wall and carries Jim across the floor towards the bedroom.

"Who needs the wall?" Bones asks, smirking, and he can both hear and feel Jim's gasp at that one.

"Christ, you're killing me here," Jim mutters into his neck.

"Half the point," he says, and then they're through to the bedroom and he can throw Jim onto his bed, which, let's face it, he's been wanting to do for quite some time. He curls his fingers into the waistband of Jim's pants and underwear and pulls them down, and Jim helps, lifting his hips and letting Bones peel them off.

"And the other half?" he asks, cheekily, while Bones kicks off the rest of his own clothes, then crawls up into the bed and between his legs.

Bones responds by kissing him, long and deep and sweet, not letting his hands explore, one at the nape of Jim's neck, the other on his jaw, until he's forced to stop by the need to breathe.

"Point taken," Jim whispers when they've gotten their breath back, and he's staring at Bones, looking a little awed.

Jim looks good naked and a little debauched like this, a splatter of come on his stomach, his lips bruised from kissing, a bitemark on his shoulder, marked and his and he pushes himself down the bed again, trailing his mouth over Jim's chest, sucking on a nipple until Jim is making hitching little noises, then moves down to bite at his bellybutton, trailing his fingers down Jim's sides. He's a little surprised when that gets a bigger reaction than his mouth on Jim's stomach and he tries it again, stroking down from ribs to thigh firmly, noticing how Jim's breath changes and catches when he thumbs his hipbones and he smiles when Jim loses his breath entirely when he wraps his hands around his thighs and pulls them apart a little.

"God, Bones, I can't, not yet…" Jim whines, hips still bucking up towards him.

"Who said I was going to suck your cock, Jim?" he murmurs into the top of Jim's treasure trail, sliding his lips down and gently sucking a bruise into the edge of Jim's pubic hair. "I see you're a natural blonde," he teases when he stops, watching the fast rise and fall of Jim's chest. "Give me your hands," he adds, smirking when Jim glowers a little at him for the 'blonde' comment.

Jim looks at him with surprise, but lets Bones take his hands and spread them, palms down, over his abdomen, below his bellybutton. "Keep 'em there," Bones says, and waits for it. It takes a few moments, but then Jim's eyes widen as the warmth of his own hands sinks into the skin of his stomach and down, sending sparks between every single nerve ending in the area.

"Bones," Jim whimpers, and he decides to forestall any complaints, licking up the join between Jim's hip and thigh, biting gently at his hipbone, then licking back down, letting his tongue brush the edge of Kirk's little finger the entire way. Jim bucks up with a cry, surprised, but he keeps his hands right where they're supposed to be.

He trails his tongue lower down the join, until he's mouthing the skin of Jim's balls, gently but surely, and Jim is making hitched sobs whenever he changes direction. He lets inspiration take him wherever; sucking Jim's balls gently, mouthing at the loose skin behind Jim's balls, pressing a thumb down on the spot where the skin is firm until he keens, high in his throat, and Jim's legs shake from the effort of keeping his hips from bucking up.

Jim is moaning a litany of his name and calls to various deities, some of whom are only worshipped in the part of the universe they've been exploring, and Jim’s dick is hard again when he finally stops, pulling Jim's hands away and mouthing his way up Jim's stomach to kiss him hard, careful not to give Jim's dick any friction.

"Christ, Bones, you're an evil sonofabitch," Jim sobs against his mouth, but he's just the way Bones wants him now, pliant and responsive and unbelievably turned on.

"Never said I wasn't," he replies and reaches over to the nightstand to get the lube. "Want to come before or after I fuck you?"

Jim's eyes fly wide open at that and he stops breathing long enough for Bones to almost worry. "Holy shit," Jim finally says, "what sort of fucking question is that?"

"Well," he replies, kissing Jim hard and then going on, "if you don't come now, I won't be letting you while I'm getting you ready. On the other hand, if you come now, you'll need less prep and hell, if I do it right, there might be a third one in it for you." Jim whimpers under his mouth, trying to shake his head without breaking their kiss.

"Fuck, Bones, no way. There's no way in hell; nobody is that good."

Bones smirks, trailing the fingers of one hand down Jim's cheek and neck, stroking over his collarbone. "Want to bet, Jim?" he asks, meeting Jim's eyes. "You should trust me, you know. I'm a doctor."

Jim laughs, shakily, not breaking their gaze. "I… fine, okay, do your worst," he says, looking at him uncertainly.

Bones smirks at him before kissing his way back down Jim's body, staying away from his cock but mouthing his balls instead, until Jim is fisting the coverlet and moaning; then he kisses and licks up the skin towards the root of Jim's dick, and keeps going, licking up the underside of Jim's cock until he's reached the tip. Jim all but shouts underneath him, and when he bucks up, Bones takes his dick in, sucking him down to the very root.

"Fuck," Jim groans, and Bones slides his hands around his hips, pulling him upwards until Jim gets the point and pushes deeper, fucking into Bones's mouth with sharp, wild thrusts and Bones relaxes his throat and takes him, licking him hard on the upstroke, using his tongue to sweep across the sensitive ridge of the glans when Jim pulls out and it doesn't take much until Jim is shouting, "Oh, God, fucking… Leonard," and coming.

He waits until Jim is looking at him to swallow.

"Christ," Jim says, disentangling his hands from the coverlet and throwing an arm over his eyes.

"How long has it been since you last called me by my name?" Bones asks, then takes Jim by the hip and turns him over onto his stomach. He takes the opportunity to push Jim's hips apart and lick up from his balls to the top of his ass, noticing that Jim positively jumps when he does it.

"Bones…" he starts uncertainly, muttering into the pillow but trailing off with a moan when Bones lubes up two fingers and pushes inside, trailing the fingertips firmly over Jim's prostate.

"Some other time, Jim," Bones says. "This will do for now." He pushes deeper, pushing his fingers apart but making sure they never stray very far from Jim's sweet spot, pressing down on it more or less continuously even as he stretches him. Jim's ready for a third finger pretty soon, relaxed from two orgasms, and he's gasping now, pushing himself back onto Bones's hand, which tells him that Jim's enjoying this a hell of a lot, even if he's probably not hard yet.

Bones takes it slow, both because Jim deserves that, but also because he's only human and can only hold out so long once they're fucking. He listens to the way the noises Jim is making get shorter, higher, more breathy, and smirks to himself when they turn from moans and mutters to outright begging.

"God, Bones, please," Jim grinds out, "please, please, please fuck me, Bones, please."

"Get up on your hands and knees," he says, finally, pulling his fingers out and slicking himself up, and Jim responds quickly, though he gets up onto his elbows only and rests his forehead on his wrists.

He smiles to himself as he strokes both hands up Jim's spine and then down his sides, until he's pulling Jim back by the hips, sinking into him slowly but firmly, until he's buried to the hilt. Jim is shaking beneath him, from the intensity or from the effort of holding himself up on his knees, and he sobs when Bones rocks into him, utterly incoherent now.

"Oh God, Jim," he moans, keeping his thrusts slow and steady and angled very firmly onto Jim's prostate, keeping the other man securely on the edge between pain and pleasure, between too much and not enough. "Never thought I'd get to do this with you," he whispers and bends over Jim's arched spine to kiss his shoulder.

Jim whimpers beneath him and manages the first proper word he's said in a few minutes. "Idiot," he breathes, making Bones laugh.

"Yeah," he sighs into Jim's shoulder, before straightening up, and then pulling Jim back onto him by the shoulders, until the other man is sitting in his lap, shaking from sensation.

He pushes up and into him and he knows that from this angle he'll be hitting Jim's sweet spot without any effort whatsoever, so he lets himself lose a little of his control, fucking into him hard and fast until Jim is a wild thing in his arms, rocking back and crying out sharply every time Bones pushes into him, so he presses a hand into Jim's lap and curls it around Jim's dick, jacking him slowly until Jim lets him take over entirely, head fallen back onto Bones's shoulder, mouth open and eyes closed, and he's just breathing now, barely making any noise.

"Come for me," he whispers into Jim's shoulder when he feels himself start tensing up, the pleasure at the bottom of his stomach beginning to coil tighter, his thrusts getting wilder. "Jim, please," and Jim does, tensing around him until the world goes white around the edges and he bites down on Jim's shoulder as he comes, too, and Jim is crying out, "Oh, God, fuck, yes, Bones, I…" before going utterly lax in his arms, his head still on Bones's shoulder, his eyes only a sliver of blue beneath his lashes.

It's possibly the most gorgeous fucking thing Bones has ever seen.

He has to lift Jim off his lap and push him down into the bed, and Jim seems to almost be in a fugue state, but his eyes are open, if heavy-lidded, and he watches Bones when he goes to get a wet cloth from the bathroom and when he cleans them up. When Bones slides into bed, Jim doesn't say anything, just crawls closer until he's lying half on top of him, his head on Bones's chest.

They lie like that for a while, hands idly trailing over skin, just touching. "Jim," he finally says, when his head is straight enough to think again.

Jim looks up and meets his eyes. "Don't you fucking dare ask," he says casually, but there's an undertone of danger in his voice.

"I wasn't going to…" Bones starts, suddenly feeling defensive.

"Oh, you were," Jim says, and then there is a spike of… worrywantlovehurt at the back of his mind.

"Holy shit," Bones whispers, staring back at him. "That was you?"

Jim looks down. "Yeah." There's a long silence before he goes on. "Spock could probably break it if…" alarmfearlovelonely "… we want."

"Not a chance," he replies, finally tilting Jim's chin up so that he can meet his eyes when Jim won't look up himself. "You hearing me? Not a chance." He tries to send out reassurance and determination and affection and then Jim's eyes widen slightly and he knows he's been heard this time.

"So," he goes on. "You feeling a little… headachy?" He smirks, and Jim just looks baffled.

"No, apart from being, you know, tired," which he manages to say with a leer, "I'm fine."

"Hmmm," Bones sighs. "Pity. I was hoping we'd have to take a few days off to work through the… complications."

Jim stares at him like he's grown an extra head. "The complications of wha…" then he gets it. "Oh, you mean the complications. Yes, yes, I do think I agree with you. Maybe you should arrange for medical leave."

Spock nearly develops a facial expression when Bones calls him to put himself and Jim on stand down for medical reasons.

+++

Uhura turns up on the second day of their 'medical' leave. Bones is a little surprised she managed to restrain herself that long, but he supposes it's the influence of Spock – he's probably an advocate for patience.

She takes one sniff of the air in the room and breaks out in the widest grin Bones has ever seen on her face, giving him an exaggerated wink. It makes Jim groan from where he's sitting on the sofa, reading some sort of report from Engineering.

"Taking a break between rounds?" Uhura asks, positively leering at him. Jim glares.

"It's none of your…" he stops, stares, and then sighs. "You're going to be insufferable, aren't you?" he asks, eyeing her.

"Turnabout is fair play!" she says, grinning evilly. "So, how good is Bones?"

"What did I do to deserve this?" Bones asks before Jim can say anything.

Uhura looks contrite. "You're right. I'll only interrogate him when you're not around, Leonard."

"That makes me feel so much better," he mutters, but it's not like he'd ever stop her from tormenting Jim, now that she finally has ammo.

"For the record," Jim interjects, "I would not actually have minded answering that question." He smirks. "Good. Really good."

Uhura just laughs and elbows him in the side. "Trust me; it gets better."

Jim looks like Christmas has come early. "How so?" he asks, putting down the PADD and with it any pretense of disinterest.

"Well," she says, "that is sort of what I came to talk to you about."

"Yes," Bones says, as dryly as he can make it, "I was a little surprised when Jim could suddenly read my mind."

"Oh, come off it, Leonard," she replies. "You've seen me and Spock do it often enough. And besides, you're exaggerating; right now you have a low-level empathetic connection at best."

"Yes, but I had…"

"Attributed most of it to him being Vulcan?" Uhura raises an eyebrow.

"Humans aren't naturally psi-compatible," he says, feeling a little foolish.

"True. And I and Spock are a unique case. But I still grew up among wolves, so I know what the two of you can expect."

"So what you're saying is…"

She smirks, and shoots Jim a glance. "The more you use it, the faster you get used to it."

Jim definitely seems to be getting the hint.

+++

Epilogue

It's not easy.

Jim seems to exist in a permanent state of lust-filled glee, occasionally interspersed with somewhat frightening ruthless efficiency whenever the shit hits the fan. Bones can't figure out which he finds more distracting: the random bouts of ohGodwantitnow during normal operations, or the fact that he rarely feels fear from Jim, even in the diciest of situations. (Of course, it is much, much easier to resolve the sudden fits of passion. And a great deal more enjoyable, besides.)

Jim, on the other hand, complains that Bones's natural grouchiness feels like 'angry bees at the back of his skull'. So far, it mostly seems to manifest in a truly impressive level of sarcasm.

Distance seems to mute the bond somewhat, though not the sort of distance that might be achieved aboard the Enterprise; ship-to-planet-surface makes a difference, bridge-to-Engineering does not. The worst part of one of them staying behind on-ship, though, is not the distance dampening the connection; it's the split second of absolute quiet during transport, and Bones did not need another reason to hate the fucking transporters, thankyouverymuch, but there you have it.

Sex helps, not that they needed any excuses to have a lot of it, but they also find themselves spending a surprising amount of time not having sex. Jim likes to sleep with him, no matter which form he happens to be in, (even if he grouses that the fur and the fangs put him off morning sex) and they get into the habit of resting together, which is rather nice, especially as their sex life is anything but habitual.

Another thing that helps, surprisingly, is fighting, even if Bones discovers firsthand why sparring with your mate is, to borrow Spock's word, disconcerting.

For the first, he knows exactly how rough he can be with Jim, because he feels the echoes of his own hits reverberate through the bond. Second, it's… been a while since Jim managed to take him down in a fight. Of course, the kid did teach hand-to-hand, so he's damn quick to pick up on the fact that he now doesn't even have to look at Bones to see his tells.

Jim strikes with his right, which Bones parries easily with his right arm, then steps into range, right side first, using the swing to bring his left elbow into Jim's solar plexus. Jim steps back but not far enough to be out of the range of a roundhouse kick… which Bones realizes too late was deliberate; he grabs Bones's leg, stepping to the side still holding it, unbalancing him and bringing him face down onto the practice mat, thumping down onto the small of his back and still pulling his leg so that he can't get up.

"Ow," he says, tapping the mat. "Damnit Jim, getoff, I'm a doctor, not a fucking chair."

Jim laughs from where he's sitting and rolls off, landing on the mat beside him. There's a spike of lust through the bond and Bones groans. "Are you always horny, Jim?"

Uhura snickers from where she's stretching, ruining her otherwise picture-perfect pose by looking up. "I don't suppose you noticed, considering the denial you were in, but Jim either smells of lust or sex. It's his default state."

Jim smirks and leans in to whisper in his ear, "I just can't help it; you have that effect on me."

Uhura waggles her eyebrows at him from across the room and Bones laughs. "Jim, for the record? The reason your communications officer is the best in the damn fleet is because she's got ears like a bat. You might as well say these things out loud."

"Fine," Jim says, grinning. "You said it, not me. I need a shower before shift, come with me and I'll go down on my knees for you." There's smoldering heat in his eyes and the desire is coming through the bond in waves, and Bones doesn't even consider saying no to him, just winks at Uhura and gets up.

Uhura's laughter follows them out of the room.

+++

"Jim?" Bones asks, finally, after trying to nerve himself up to ask the question for most of the evening. Hell, for most of the past few weeks, ever since a mission where Jim managed to forge a peace agreement on a planet suffering from longstanding war, mostly by flirting outrageously with the warring factions.

"Finally," Jim sighs from where he's sitting at the desk, poring over requisition forms. "Tell me you're going to ask about whatever it is that has you so worried."

"Do you ever get… are you bored?"

There is absolute quiet from Jim's side of the room, and from his side of their connection; Jim is much better at not broadcasting his feelings, annoyingly enough, considering that it's Bones who's been the werewolf for most of his life.

"You said once that being bonded and sticking to one person had to suck, and I just…"

"See," Jim says, finally, cutting in, "I know that you know you're being exactly the same sort of asshole right now that I was being back when I said that, but you can't stop yourself, can you?"

He throws the PADD down and stands up, coming across the room to sit on the edge of the bed, not looking at Bones. "I know I have a reputation," he says, and shrugs. "But I happen to like the fact that we're stuck with each other, no matter what happens. And Christ, Bones," he says, and looks up to look him in the eye, "you're not boring. This," he says, and clearly lets down his emotional guard, because suddenly there's a maelstrom of feeling at the back of Bones's mind, "this is not boring."

There's a long silence while he tries to sort through Jim's emotions, burning at the back of his mind; there's a lot of anger and hurt, but it's not really aimed at him, or anyone for that matter.

"I know where you're coming from," Jim adds, kicking off his shoes and scooting up into the bed, sitting next to Bones with his back to the headboard. "It's the old adage of once bitten, twice shy. Someone you loved left you." He's shoving his arm behind the small of Bones's back and pulling, until Bones relents and puts his head on his shoulder, hoping he doesn't have to say anything, because what is there to say?

"You don't have to say anything," Jim says, and he's getting scarily good at this, if Bones didn't know any better he'd think Jim is half Vulcan or Betazoid or something. "Just… somebody left me, too."

There's no grief coming from him, just resigned acceptance, and it hits him suddenly that Jim is probably at least as scared as he is of this thing that they have, going to hell, and fast. "I'll try to be less of an idiot," he sighs and lets himself relax into the arm Jim has around him.

"No worries. Just remember this the next time I'm an idiot," Jim replies, and then pulls him closer to kiss him, deep and hard and fast, until they forget all about the argument because the only thing that's important is the taste of the other's skin.

+++

"The Leysingarvit have taken sixteen members of the science team hostage, many of whom have suffered wounds and need medical attention," Spock says, sounding impassive, though Bones has the practice to know he's really fucking furious – or the Vulcan version thereof, at any rate. "They have, however, consented to trade their hostages for the captain, provided we procure him in the next twenty-seven minutes."

There's a long silence.

"Seems familiar," Jim finally says, looking over at Bones. "Can Medical do without you?"

"Captain," Uhura says, "if you intend to try that again, I should be the one with you, Bones is needed in sickbay."

"No offense, Lieutenant," Jim says, taking off down the hall towards the transporter pad and forcing them all to scramble after him, "but with the bond between me and Bones, we'll work better together in a hostage situation than me and you, particularly with you in wolf form."

"Besides," Bones adds, "splitting up the two of you when we need you both at your best would be… illogical." Spock raises an eyebrow.

"Scotty," Jim says, striding through the transporter room and up onto the pad, "two to beam down. Commander Spock, you have the ship."

Bones shifts, and Jim looks down at him, smelling like excitement and determination. "Try not to get shot in the head this time," he says.

The wolf looks back at his mate and wags his tail in response.

Jim smirks back at him. "Energize," he says, and the world disappears in a flash.

-Fin

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