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Upon Enterprise's eventual and long overdue arrival at Earth, those crewmembers who were granted officer's commissions for the mission to aid Vulcan are housed in visiting officers quarters across the bay from the Academy, despite the fact that the vast majority of them are still cadets. The noncoms are roomed in the newly emptied graduate barracks closest to Starfleet Headquarters. The injured, including a barely conscious Captain Pike, are taken directly to Starfleet Medical, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred credits.
And James T. Kirk, acting captain of the 'Fleet flagship and the man who singlehandedly (according to the newsvids) saved the known galaxy, ends up in the brig, right next to Montgomery Scott.
"What are you in for, then?" Scotty asks, not even bothering to sit up from his supine position on one of the four bunks in the room when Jim stumbles over the threshold, his obvious grace due to a security officer's helpful shove.
Jim doesn't even stop to think before rattling off the charges against him. "Insubordination, disobeying direct orders, mutiny, conduct unbecoming an officer, and something to do with ignoring my academic suspension and subsequent grounding, though I didn't quite catch that part." He pauses for a breath and throws himself facedown onto the other bottom bunk. He turns to face Scotty, his head pillowed on his folded arms. "You in for deserting your post?"
"Aye, among other things," Scotty says, turning to look at the bunk above him, "including, but not limited to, insubordination, aiding in a mutiny, and breaking the laws of physics."
Jim snorts out a laugh. "Didn't realize that last one was a crime."
"They're drafting the bylaw as we speak."
Jim's contemplating a suitably witty retort when the door opens again and Bones slouches in, looking pissy and cursing a blue streak that makes even Jim blush a little. He shoves at Jim's legs and sits in the newly vacated space.
"Get your own bunk," Jim gripes, aiming a half-hearted kick at Bones's kidneys and getting his calf pinched hard in return and shouldn't Bones be trying to avoid bruising Jim more than he already is? Damn, but that hurt.
"I'm too old to be climbing bunk beds like a goddamned five year old." He shoves at Jim again and collapses sideways next to him, his head pressed against Jim's ribs. The bunk's really too narrow to share, but the room's chilly and Bones is warm and Jim's really too lazy to make him move.
"I thought for sure you'd be released on your own recognizance," Jim tells him, squirming a little until Bones flips himself onto his stomach and throws a restraining arm over Jim's back to hold him still. Mmm, warm Bones. "You know, what with you being such an upstanding member of society and saving Pike's life and all."
"That, unfortunately, doesn't cancel out conspiracy, conduct unbecoming an officer, and smuggling your sorry ass aboard Enterprise," Bones says, his voice muffled because his face is pressed into Jim's side, which tickles some, but Jim's not about to complain because complaining would only make Bones move and Bones is like a human furnace and Jim's overtaxed muscles are already thanking him for the extra heat.
"But it's such a nice ass to smuggle." Jim wiggles his hips as best he can while face down and pressed under Bones's arm, which earns him a smack across his (quite fabulous) ass. "Who was on the docket after you?"
Bones's answer is a mumble that gets lost somewhere between his mouth and Jim's ears, probably somewhere in Jim's shirt near his ribs if his guess is right. Jim would press the issue, but he's pretty sure that Bones is trying to suffocate himself and who is Jim to stand between a man and his goals?
Everything's quiet and Jim's thinking about maybe taking a nap when the door opens again and Chekov, shoulders hunched, shuffles into the cell. Before Jim can so much as open his mouth to say hey, the door slams shut and the kid straightens and, in one smooth move, plants his foot next to Scotty's hip and effortlessly hoists himself onto the top bunk, somehow managing not to brain himself on the low ceiling.
"How the hell did you do that?" Scotty asks, twisting his body around so that he can look around the edge of the upper bunk towards the ceiling.
"It is very simple," Chekov answers, rolling onto his stomach and leaning over the side of his bunk, his head and shoulders coming awfully close to Scotty's head. Jim's almost tempted to tell Chekov to knock it off before he falls to his death, but God, wouldn't that be hypocritical? Besides, it's kind of interesting to watch the kid's face get redder and redder with every second he spends upside down. It's quite attractive, especially when paired with the gold command tunic he's still wearing. "—if you have gymnastic or acrobatic training."
"So, what? You're some sort of gymnast or something?" Scotty ask and Jim's certain the other man couldn't sound more skeptical if he tried.
"I was to follow in my father's footsteps as a trapeze performer, but I was much better at mathematics and physics and talked my parents into enrolling me in Starfleet," Chekov answers proudly, still hanging upside down like some sort of Russian monkey, and Jim promptly bursts into laughter. Of course the youngest human officer in Starfleet history used to be in the literal circus. It makes perfect sense.
He'd be perfectly happy to keep laughing for another decade or so because that shit's never going to get old, but Bones apparently has other plans, and Jim's laughter becomes a pained whine when Bones pinches his side hard.
(And who knew Bones was so into dishing out pain? Jim never would have suspected it before this last week and his experiences with a gleeful Bones and his hyposprays of doom and pain and allergic reactions and Jim's never going to let Bones live that one down, ever.)
"Ow, dammit, Bones, what was that for?" he asks, rubbing his side with one hand and poking the top of Bones's head with the other. "That really hurt, man." And now Chekov and Scotty are laughing and even Bones's shoulders are shaking. "I'm so glad my pain is amusing," Jim whines and he knows whining isn't doing his image any good, but neither is being in jail again, so what the hell? May as well go for broke.
Chekov snorts, his whole body shaking with the force of it and, with a rather painful-sounding thump, he falls from his perch on the top bunk to the unpadded floor in a pile of gangly limbs. Jim thinks about being concerned for about two seconds, but then the kid's laughing again and, hell, he can't be hurt too badly if he's laughing about it, right?
When they've all mostly calmed down, with only Chekov occasionally letting out a giggle or two from his spot on the floor, Jim asks, "So what did they finally nail you with, kid?"
"Oh," he says, taking a deep breath, obviously trying not to send himself into another giggle-fit, "only dereliction of duty and operating the transporter without the proper certification."
"You're not even licensed and you managed to grab two people in atmospheric freefall and transport them safely to the ship?" Scotty asks, rolling himself upright and hunching his shoulders to keep his head from hitting the upper bunk. "That's amazing!"
"What dereliction of duty are you talking about?" Jim asks, talking over the tail end of Scotty's exclamation. He knows if he doesn't get his question in now, he'll have to wait several hours for the geekgasm to die down to get his answer and dammit all, he's just not patient enough for that right now.
"I left the bridge in a time of crisis to rescue you and Lieutenant Sulu, sir," Chekov says, though he quickly adds, "but I did turn over the conn before doing so."
"To who?" Jim asks, trying and failing to remember who was on the bridge at that time. He was a little busy, trying to talk Pike out of a suicide run to the Narada, but he's pretty sure he doesn't remember any other command personnel besides Chekov on the bridge when he left it.
And now Chekov looks like an abashed little puppy with his wide eyes and limp curls and he says in a pitifully small voice, "I do not exactly remember, Captain, although I am certain I did so."
Jim can't help it, though God knows he tries. Almost against his will, he feels his right eyebrow rising towards his hairline and he's cringing a little on the inside at the fact that he's absorbed Bones's instinctive reaction to bullshit and when the hell did that happen?
Before he can start freaking out too much about this freaky osmosis of Bones's mannerisms (and that has to be it because Jim's never done the eyebrow thing before and now he is and Bones is practically plastered to his side; osmosis is the only answer that makes sense), the door opens once again and Uhura walks in.
"Oh, thank God," Jim says, trying to keep his eyes on Uhura's face but failing, thanking Starfleet once again for the minidress uniform option that Uhura lives in. Girl's got fabulous legs. "You bailed us out, right?"
"No." The door clangs shut as Uhura takes a seat on the bunk next to Scotty, maintaining a proper distance between their bodies. She glances at Chekov, still on the floor, for only a moment before seeming to dismiss him.
Bones finally turns his face away from Jim's side, but he leaves his arm across Jim's back, a human heating pad that's slowly but surely warming Jim's sore back. "You're being detained?" Bones asks, the vowels all drawn out, giving Jim a little rush just like every other time Bones's usually contained drawl makes its appearance. The man's got a voice that was made for dirty talk. Jim only wishes he could get Bones to actually talk dirty. It would be awesome. "What for?"
"Coercion of a senior officer."
Jim's fairly certain he's not the only one who's confused right now, but after two minutes of no one speaking, let alone asking the obvious question, he can't hold back. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Uhura's looking at him like God, you're such a dumbass, a look with which Jim is intimately familiar after three years, but she does answer him, which Jim counts as a win. "My original assignment was the Farrugut. I convinced Spock to assign me to the Enterprise instead."
"Did you offer sexual favors or deny him sex to get your way?" The question just pops out of Jim's mouth without any input from his brain and it earns him another pinch from Bones and a glare from Uhura that could strip paint. Scotty looks absolutely gobsmacked and Chekov looks like he's terrified that there's going to be an imminent outbreak of physical violence. Jim just winces, rubbing at the new Bones-inflicted bruise on his side and mutters, feeling less and less like the man in charge here, "Sorry. Totally inappropriate. Won't happen again."
In the silence that follows, Chekov picks himself up off the floor and repeats his feat of agility to get to the bunk above Jim and Bones. The kid settles down pretty quickly and Jim lets his eyes drift shut, telling himself he just doesn't want to see the glare Uhura's got aimed his way, not willing to admit that he's exhausted and could use some sleep.
He's drowsing, his mind giving him the weirdest combination of images (Bones is running towards him in the transporter room, only instead of holding up Pike, Jim's holding up a man who looks a lot like Grandpa Kirk, but who has Mom's eyes; in front of him isn't the Spock who's supposed to be there, but the Spock who Jim met on and left on Delta Vega, and Scotty at the control board has a full head of dark hair) when he hears the door to their cell open and close again.
Only after Chekov's startled exclamation of "Commander Spock!" does Jim bother to crack open his eyes. And there's the man himself, standing rigidly two steps into the room, his hands behind his back. "I take it you're not here to bail us out, either?" Jim asks before he turns his face back into the mattress and closes his eyes, already knowing the answer. He did, after all, file the report that's probably the reason Spock's in here with the rest of them.
"I am not," Spock replies. Jim wonders who's going to crack first and ask Spock why he's here and eventually decides that no one'll bring it up. Jim's pretty certain he already knows (assault on a fellow officer and mistreatment of a prisoner aboard a starship are pretty harsh charges) and, if he's right, so do Bones and Uhura. Scotty might not be a hundred percent certain, but he was there when Spock lost his shit on the bridge. So was Chekov, for that matter.
So, okay, they all know why Spock's here. Awesome. Now Jim can get some more sleep.
Jim flips over so he's lying on his back and is gratified to note that the mattress feels slightly less lumpy this way. Bones grumbles, but readjusts himself accordingly, leaving his arm around Jim and turning his face back into Jim's side. One of Jim's hands comes to rest on his own stomach, just above Bones's arm, while the other makes its way to Bones's head. He can feels Bones's breathing deepen and even out and Jim can feel himself drifting off again.
This is kind of a pleasant way to end the day, he decides. He wonders if he can talk Bones into more cuddling in the future. Probably not, but that's not going to stop Jim from trying.
He's shaken awake sometime later and opens his eyes to see Sulu leaning over him, the biggest shit-eating grin Jim's ever seen on his face. Bones is still pressed against Jim's side, asleep. "Wha?" It's not the most eloquent thing Jim could have said, but he's pretty sure it gets his point across.
"I talked my parents in bailing everyone out," Sulu answers. "Your hearing is next week. If you don't show, you'd better be dead or my mom might kill you herself."
"Huh?" Really, Jim's okay with sounding like an idiot right now because he just woke up and it normally takes the better part of twenty minutes for him to work himself into coherence in the morning.
"My parents put their house up as collateral," Sulu says, finally drawing back. "If you don't show for your hearing, my parents will lose their house and then my mom will kill you. Just so you know."
"Gotcha," Jim mutters, glancing from Sulu to Bones and back again. "Why didn't you wake Bones up?"
"Spock suggested that we let you wake Dr. McCoy," Sulu answers, his shit-eating grin back in full force. "The rest of us weren't too keen on having him destroy our souls for waking him up from what looks like quite a comfortable nap."
"Bones doesn't destroy souls," Jim says offhandedly, trying to figure out the best way to wake the man beside him. "He merely crushes them."
"Well that's so much better, then," Sulu fires back, folding his arms across his chest, just watching Jim. "You gonna wake him up or not?"
Jim does his best to ignore Sulu and does what never fails to eventually get Bones's attention. He badgers.
"Bones." Jim pokes at Bones's head and shoulders and upper back with every repetition of the man's name. "Bones, Bones, Bones." He varies his tone and volume and how long he holds the vowel sound, each poke harder than the last, his tried and true method of working Bones into a state of high dudgeon. "Bo-ones."
Bones's arm tightens around Jim's stomach a moment before he mutters, his voice all deep and drawly, "Goddammit, Jim, what the hell do you want?"
"Time to get up, Sleeping Beauty. We've been sprung."
"'bout damn time." Bones levers himself upright, pushing his hair out of his face with one hand, the other braced against the bunk above them. "Thought we'd never get outta here."
"Dr. McCoy," Sulu says with a smirk. "Sleep well?"
Bones just growls and levels both Sulu and Jim with a glare before stalking through the open door.
"Don't you growl at me, you grumpy bastard!" Jim calls after him, wincing when he hits his head against the upper bunk. "I didn't do anything!" Sulu actually has the nerve to laugh and Jim scowls at him as he gets to his feet.
Bones's voice floats back as Jim steps into the corridor, "First time for everything!"
Sulu's laughter follows Jim all the way to the duty officer's desk and beyond.