Title: Barest Bits
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Warnings: Crackish.
Summary: Jim tries to combat one of Leonard’s habits and fails.
A/N: I intended to return with fic. Instead I came back with fic and a cold. This bit of silliness is mainly to cheer me up.

Leonard McCoy has a habit of sleeping naked; to be more precise, he has a habit of sleeping in his underwear and nothing else. He doesn’t like clothes “strangling” him in the middle of the night, and enjoys the feel of his skin against pillows and bedcovers. It’s a habit he has had since his early pre-teen years, once he was allowed control over what he wore to bed (and not those awful pajamas his parents managed to dress him in). He isn’t a nudist by any means but, for Leonard, there is something deliciously freeing about sleeping nearly bare.

Yet some people do not agree with his preference. This is a tale of one of those times—and how it did not affect McCoy at all.

~~~

The resort planet was less like one of those tropical paradises and more of an arctic beauty. It was also closest to the Enterprise when shore leave came due. Jim, apparently, loved it; he somehow acquired an entirely new collection to his wardrobe, one Leonard had never seen before, that consisted of multiple scarves, sweaters that could be doubled for warmth, heavy-duty sweatpants, a knitted cap adorned by a fluffy ball, and thick socks. The first time Leonard saw him bundled up thus, he thought Jim was adorably laughable.

“‘S cold,” Kirk said as Leonard bit down hard on his own lip to keep from laughing until he ached. A scarf covered most of Jim’s mouth and nose. “Where m’gloves?”

Leonard retrieved the pair of gloves from an open bag of clothes. Since Jim could hardly bring his arms together because of the thickness of his attire, Leonard kindly shoved the fur-lined gloves onto Jim’s hands.

“Cozy enough?” McCoy asked, fighting down a grin.

Jim might have nodded. It was hard to tell, as he had lost a neck somewhere in the process of dressing for their adventurous plans of a leisurely walk around a frozen lake.

Leonard shrugged on a heavy coat, checked that his boots were tightly laced, and joined Jim at the cabin door. As they stepped into the majestic winter-land, he said, “Spock should have come with us.”

He had been slightly disappointed Spock did not wish to join them but he understood that the Vulcan’s decision had nothing to do with denying Jim and Leonard his presence and everything to do with the planet’s subzero temperatures. Being a doctor, had Spock opted to come planet-side rather than remaining on the Enterprise, it would have been Leonard’s duty to question the sensibility of that choice anyway.

Still. He kind of missed the hobgoblin. He knew Jim did, too.

Leonard linked hands with Jim as best he could and they began their trek down to the lake. Jim asked as they walked, “Aren’t you cold, Bones?”

He teased back, “If I do get chilly, it’ll be your duty to warm me up.”

The twinkling glint to Jim’s glacier-blue eyes said the man had no problem with that idea, none at all.

If Jim had ample clothes for daylight activities, he had just as many, if not more, for night-time.

“Why don’t you just wear a damned bodysuit?” Leonard said as he eyed the double layering of shirts, pants, and socks on his partner.

Jim, it seemed, missed the point of Leonard’s complaint. “Hey, not a bad idea, Bones. I wonder if Spock would beam me down some of his thermal undershirts…” Kirk lifted the covers as he slid into bed then squirmed for as long as it took to get comfortably close to Leonard’s back, where he molded himself out of habit.

It wasn’t until Jim’s hand crept out to touch Leonard’s arm that the man drew back in surprise. “Bones…”

Maybe there was something to be said for too many clothes in bed. Leonard’s bare skin liked its new and improved heat source. “Mmm,” he replied, feeling drowsiness blur the edges of his conscious thoughts.

“Bones.” Jim’s voice was cruel punishment to a man on the verge of sleep.

“What, Jim?” Leonard sighed.

“This planet is a ball of ice, and yet you plan to sleep naked. You’ll get sick.”

Wasn’t that Leonard’s line? “We’re in a temperature-controlled environment, Jim,” Leonard reminded him. “‘N I got my boxers on.” He drifted, warm, until an ice-cold hand wrapped around his upper thigh. “Damn it, Jim, stop it!”

“Stop what?” Jim moved his hand up to brush his knuckles against Leonard’s belly.

Leonard sucked in his stomach, having only scant millimeters to get away from Jim. “Holy mother of Christ, put on gloves or something, would you?”

“Only if you wear some actual clothes.”

There had to be an easy way out of this. “I didn’t bring any for sleepin’.” Don’t own any, in fact—which you know already, kid, he didn’t need to say.

But Jim offered too brightly, “Luckily I packed for both of us!”

“No,” Leonard growled. He caught at Jim’s freezing hand and tucked it between his arm and side to warm it up. “Now good-night.”

If only he had realized then Jim’s silence wasn’t a sign of acquiescence.

McCoy rose from sleep at an odd tugging on his left leg. He shifted, flipped back the covers, and lifted his head to investigate the disturbance—and stared, switching from sleepily curious to painfully alert in a heartbeat. “Jim,” he said slowly, “are you dressin’ me?“

Jim muttered something which sounded like somebody has to as he shoved Leonard’s left foot through a hole of a pair of pants. Leonard made a noise of annoyance and kicked his foot out of Jim’s hand, resulting in the setback of Jim’s diligent work. The pants flopped over to dangle from one of McCoy’s ankles (Jim had apparently gotten it as far as calf-height before McCoy woke up and shook it off); the rest of it trailed off the bed and onto the floor.

Nonplussed at the antics of his partner, Leonard rolled over and bundled himself into the bed sheet and went back to sleep.

When he next awoke, Jim towered over him with a shadowed, grim face and a t-shirt in his hands.

“Bones,” Jim said, “a call came in. The ship is under attack by Klingons.”

Jim might as well have been speaking Klingon for all that Leonard could make sense of the words while half-asleep. “What?”

Jim’s nostrils flared. “They just blew a hole in Medical.”

That got Leonard going. As he bolted upright with a horrified “WHAT?!”, Jim shoved the night-shirt over his head, effectively muffling Leonard’s panic. The two men wrestled for a moment, Jim trying to put one of McCoy’s arms through the shirt and Leonard fighting the constraint of the clothing.

Leonard won. He ripped the shirt back over his head and tossed it at Jim with an incredulous look. “You god-damn bastard, you tricked me!” Then, more menacingly, “What time is it?”

The cabin’s computerized chrono-system answered his question with a time that wasn’t anywhere near morning.

Jim agitatedly stretched the fabric of the t-shirt between his hands and said, “I need you to put this on, Bones.”

“And I need more sleep.” Leonard protectively drew a hand-woven coverlet over his bare chest. “Are you done molesting me?”

Jim’s eyes narrowed.

Wrapping his body tightly in the coverlet, Leonard laid back down on the bed. After some seconds, he felt Jim settle beside him stiffly. But it wasn’t an angry kind of stiffness, only born of annoyance.

Thank God, Leonard thought. Then he wished for Spock, who would be an excellent buffer between him and Jim’s craziness.

Stupid, ship-side hobgoblin.

Jim didn’t try anything else and Leonard, lulled by the lack of action, fell asleep again.

He heard Jim’s voice long before he opened his eyes.

“You have to come down here,” Jim was saying. “I can’t handle him alone.”

Leonard grunted, waking up, and stretched before turning onto his stomach. The conversation fell silent as he did this. Leonard opened his eyes. “Jim?”

The man, somewhere across the room, muttered, “Kirk out.” Then, to Leonard, “Morning, Bones.”

“You were talking to Spock?”

“Yes,” Jim said as he came over to the bed and crawled half on top of McCoy. “Just a routine check-in with the ship. Everything’s fine.”

No make-believe Klingon attack, then. Wonderful.

They shared a good morning kiss before Leonard pulled back. “Please tell me Spock isn’t working. I told him to relax.”

Jim’s eyes displayed his amusement. “Work is relaxation for a Vulcan.”

Leonard snorted, then reached out and carded his fingers through Jim’s hair. “What do you say to breakfast in bed?”

“If this were a hotel with catering service, I’d say yes. But out here? One of us has to cook it first, Bones.”

He laughed in a low rumble. “I wasn’t talking about food, Jim.”

Jim’s eyes darkened as they dropped to stare at his mouth. “Oh. Yeah, okay.”

Leonard’s reinvention of breakfast in bed was very satisfying up until the point Spock materialized inside the cabin, followed by the dry comment “Your version of ‘handling him’, Captain, appears to be effective without my aid.”

“Spock!” Jim broke away from Leonard with a grin that lit up the room and rolled out of the bed, leaving Leonard wholly unsatisfied and punching the bed with a fist.

Leonard sat up and scowled at the Vulcan. “We were in the middle of something, Spock. Don’t you know how to knock?”

Spock’s expression remained bland. “To knock would require a door. We are not presently separated by a door.”

“You smartass—”

“Bones. Spock. Do not start.” Jim shrugged into a robe. “I called Spock here on a serious matter.”

Leonard blinked and looked around as if expecting this “serious matter” to reveal itself by jumping out of a corner.

Jim continued. “Spock, Bones doesn’t understand the necessity of wearing clothes to bed when it’s cold.”

“I highly doubt wearing clothes to bed would qualify as a necessity if, ultimately, you intend to remove them and share body heat,” the Vulcan replied to Jim while observing the naked McCoy.

Leonard dragged a pillow over his lap. Spock’s eyebrow lifted as if to say illogical, I have seen it before.

“But you wear clothes to bed, Spock!” Jim argued.

“In my case, they are necessary.”

As Jim made a frustrated noise, Leonard laughed. Then he said to Spock, “C’mere, you” and lazily patted the bed. “Never mind the cockamamie reason Jim used to get you off the Enterprise, I’m glad you’re here. And it is cold out,” he added, moving into the center of the bed to make room for the Vulcan. “Let me warm you up.”

Leonard doubted the fine tremor that ran through Spock’s hands was a result of the wintry conditions of the planet.

It only took two minutes for Jim to let go of his irritation at his failed plan and join them. As Jim leaned in to steal a kiss from Leonard he warned, “This isn’t over yet, Bones.”

“Why, darlin’,” Leonard drawled, “should I cover myself up now?” He slowly reached for his discarded boxers on the floor.

“No,” Jim and Spock protested too quickly.

Smiling, Leonard abandoned all pretense of modesty and focused on showing them exactly why a naked McCoy is best in bed, no pun intended.

-Fini

Related Posts:

• Follow Me Dark – from November 30, 2023
• Say a Little Prayer – from November 10, 2021
• Twist and Take – from October 31, 2021
• Clear from the Battle (But Not the War) – from October 11, 2021
• Consider Me Accounted For – from October 3, 2021