Chapter Text
He isn't comfortable with how it starts.
Actually, he's really, really uncomfortable with it. It starts with Jim watching him with Joanna. He's aware that Jim is watching them interact, not actually watching Jo – if the latter had been the case, Jim would be gone. He loves Jim, by the time he introduces him to his little girl, really loves him – but first and foremost, he's a parent. If push comes to shove, Joanna gets Leonard and Jim gets nothing, and that's how it has to be. Jim is tense all the time, maybe because he knows this, but maybe because of something else. Not agitated. Concerned.
So no, Jim doesn't want Joanna. He wants to be her. But it takes a long time for McCoy to work this out, and until then, he's watchful; suspicious; ready to do what he has to do to protect his child.
This only makes it worse. The protection, Jim yearns for it. Unconditional and strong enough to kill. Bones has never had to kill for anyone, not yet, Joanna included. But in a heartbeat he would kill for either her or Jim; the difference was, if it was Jim's life or Joanna's, Joanna had to win, no matter how much it hurt. He would kill Jim for Joanna, and he makes sure that Jim knows it.
Jim, to his credit, does not try to detract from what Joanna gets of Bones; he just infringes upon it from the sidelines, looking on. It raises McCoy's hackles, but does nothing more. More than window shopping, less than a threat.
He works out that treating them similarly seems to alleviate the constant surveillance. If he buys Joanna a present, on a whim one day, he buys something nice for Jim as well. He gets that face splitting smile and a hug from each of them, only Jim's leaves an uneasy aftertaste, a shadow of the discomfort he feels when Jim is watching them.
One day he's late for picking Joanna up from school. He gets there and the playground is empty except for a teacher, Jo and a pair of boys who he knows from his job at the hospital; they're brothers, both in care, and the older boy is constantly getting into trouble – playing rough with teenagers, burning himself trying to use fireworks. They have that look about them - nothing suspicious of current abuse, just a general lingering air of fucked-up-by-mom-and-dad. Neglect case, he suspects.
Joanna is, to put it mildly, displeased with him. He has a good excuse – he was in surgery to repair a severely punctured lung, when he'd found a lump which had turned out to be cancer. Instead of a twenty-minute patch up job, it had been a two hour search for more tumours and another hour ensuring he found a decent oncologist and started treatment immediately. Joanna, however, is seven, and severely under appreciative of his thorough practice. She's crying when he gets there, all snot and tears – he's actually only half an hour late, but he remembers what half an hour means to a seven-year-old – so he does what he always does. He wipes her snotty nose and picks her up, telling her how sorry he was and how he would never abandon her.
He thanks the teacher and turns to go. Out of the corner of his eye, he can still see the two brothers. The elder is ignoring him, too cool for school at eleven years old. The younger one can only be a year older than Joanna, and he's just watching. A little bit of curiosity, a little bit of hope. Something twists in his gut as he realises that the little boy is watching them and seeing a family, and he's struck by a second realisation that he almost doesn't want to have.
He takes Joanna out for a conciliatory ice cream, then drops her and her things off at her mother's and heads home, troubled and not sure of what to do about it.
Since blunt honesty is the foundation of his entire personality, it's also what he falls back on when it all goes to shit.
When Jim gets home from wherever he's been, McCoy is standing anxiously by the door and has been for almost an hour.
“Shit!” Kirk swears in surprise, almost tripping over his own feet. “Are you okay?”
Leonard doesn't say anything, but apparently his face does, because Jim takes another step back until he's flat against the door. “What is it?”
McCoy sighs, frowning. His legs are tired from standing up for too long. “We need to talk.”
The look on Jim's face is one he'll hold in his heart in arguments to come. He slides down the door until he's sat on his ass on the floor. “You're breaking up with me?”
“What? No!” Bones is forced to crouch to be on Jim's level, to reach out and reassure when he's not feeling very reassured himself, but he can't stand to see Jim upset. “No. I just need to ask you something.”
Kirk looks hurt, staring back at him with round, wet eyes. He swallows loudly and waits for McCoy to speak.
When the silence between them has stretched so far that its air miles could take it to Vulcan and back, Bones takes a deep breath. “Why do you look at me and Joanna like that? Don't – don't get me wrong. I know you're not looking at her, I just... Why? What are you looking for, Jim?”
Jim swallows again and looks pointedly away at his hands. McCoy looks at them too. They're trembling. McCoy begins to worry that he's dredged up too much abuse. He knows Jim's childhood was rough.
“Jim? What is it? Tell me?”
Kirk's eyes lose focus, like he's trying to leave the conversation, but he still speaks. “No one ever loved me like that. I want what you give her.”
Even though he'd known what he might hear, Bones still feels... Awful. Confused, uncomfortable. Guilty. “What specifically?”
Jim sniffs in that way that means he's about to cry. Not that McCoy has ever seen him cry, but he knows when Jim goes off to do it alone. “All of it.”
McCoy bites his lip. “Jim... I can't be your everything.”
Jim folds in on himself even more, eyebrows drawn down. He doesn't say it, but they both know.
Bones is all he has.
Kirk takes a difficult, serrated breath, and Leonard can't leave him any longer, has to move forward and pull him into a hug. They fall down the wall until they're lying splayed out on the floor.
“It's okay, Jim. I got you.”
Daddy doesn't come till later, and he's not sure how he feels about that, either.
Jim's lying on his back, legs spread like he's been dared to do the splits in mid air, whilst McCoy squeezes a finger in next to his cock.
Jim groans and Bones thrusts, slowly pushing his finger further in and then twisting his wrist, hooking back beneath Jim's balls, and he can just, just reach Jim's prostate, even at this horrible angle. He's a surgeon though, and all good doctors know how to milk a prostate.
He fucks Jim gently and then strokes, soft, teasing touches against the spongy, slightly firm tissue, swelling as it produces the precum that's now dribbling out over Jim's stomach.
Jim is near inarticulate, but not enough to save him.
“Please, Daddy.” He whimpers, and then his eyes snap open in panic. “Sorry! Sorry sorry Bones! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to I-”
The only way to make this more awkward is to let Jim carry on talking, so he doesn't, leans in and kisses instead. If he's honest, he'd've been happier if Jim hadn't called him daddy, but it's too late now, and he's so close, can't bear to stop if he doesn't have to.
He doesn't want to have to respond, but his lack of resistance has done wonders for Kirk, who, ten seconds ago wasn't getting enough and is now clenching tight around him, so close to coming he can barely participate in the kiss. That's okay; Bones likes it sloppy and absent minded.
He makes a crooning sound, an it's-okay noise, and it's all the reassurance Jim needs to spill himself into the tight space between them.
McCoy keeps up the pressure on his prostate, milking it out of him and picking up the pace of his thrusts to finish before Jim's cum goes tacky and hard to wash out. Jim carries on squeezing him, his ass spasming at the overstimulation, and Bones buries his face in Kirk's neck as he fills him up with his own semen.
Between his lust and his orgasm, he almost forgets about it entirely, but then Jim's face is there, worried and apologetic. “I am sorry, Bones.”
McCoy is not one to overthink things. Well. He isn't one to create a problem where there doesn't need to be, so for the sake of Jim's happiness, he'd rather just not react at all. “It's okay darlin'.”
Jim smiles. He always did like pet names.