Notes: So I have a huge fuck-off list of things to write. Finally, I wrote something that was on that list. So: the beginnings of a K/S/M relationship, and dedicated to Nicky. For being cracktastic and all that nice shit.

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.

It was well into the Gamma Shift when Jim crept into Sickbay, and he edged towards the private room as quietly as possible, using all the awesome ninja-skills that Sulu had taught him.

Didn't work. He was five metres from the door when it hissed open and Bones was there, arms folded and eyebrow raised in his direction.

"I wondered when you were going to show," he grumbled, before jerking his head into the room behind him. "I'm just finishing up with him, so if you wanted to talk to him..."

"No," Jim said, wincing at how abruptly he blurted that out. "No, I, um...I just...wanted to see how he's doing."

Bones' eyebrow dropped and he shrugged. "He'll be fine, but the painkillers have him as stoned as ten grams of Andorian snuff."

Jim didn't laugh.

"Come on," Bones said, sighing and retreating back into the room.

It was overly warm - but dry rather than humid - and the doors cut off any cool draft when they slid shut behind Jim. The lights were dimmed to forty percent, and it was soothing after the harsh glare of the lights in the main medical bay - but the most soothing thing of all was Spock.

Jim hadn't seen the Vulcan at all in four days, not since he'd been torn from Jim's arms, unconscious and bleeding, after a disastrous First Contact that had gone horribly, horribly wrong. For four days, Jim had been glued to his command chair, arguing and threatening and trying to smooth severely ruffled feathers; for four days, he wasn't sure Bones had left the medical bay at all.

Judging by the stubble on the doctor's face, he hadn't.

But in the quiet of the private room, with the dimmed lights and the heat and the sight of his bare, clean, healed torso, without any blood or wounds or the horrific wheezing around a lung that had been filling with blood...something in Jim's chest shifted a hair to the right and resettled.

"I was about to give him his bedbath," Bones said, pitching his voice low as he moved towards a trolley of supplies.

"Isn't that the nurses' job?"

"Yeah," Bones shrugged, "but it's more for me than it is for him. Lets me know that he's alright."

Jim hovered at the foot of the bed uncertainly, eyes shifting from that peaceful, sleeping face to the haggard one of the doctor.

"I know he talked to you before everything kicked off," Bones said quietly, wringing out a soft-looking sponge and beginning to rub it rhythmically over the bared chest. "Have you had more time to think about it?"

Jim watched the gentle care in the movements of Bones' hands, and bit his lip. "I..."

"You...what?"

"I just..." Jim gestured helplessly. "You two are...are just so...you fit. Why would you want me in there to mess things up?"

They did fit. They'd argued like an old married couple from day one, and Jim had watched - with no small amount of jealousy - as they lit each other up like firecrackers. He'd never seen Bones so...happy about someone else before. With Spock, he'd...settled, almost, like he'd found something that was worth something, and Jim wouldn't have messed with that sheer happiness for all the world.

"Because we want you," Bones said simply, lifting one of Spock's hands to rub the sponge between the fingers. They twitched in his grasp, and Jim stared as he dropped a light kiss - as natural as breathing - onto the tips before returning to his task. "And you want us. And we fit, Jim. The three of us."

"I..."

"You denying it?"

Jim flushed. He couldn't, and Bones knew it. They all knew it. Hell, if anyone was the confusing factor, it was Spock. Bones and Jim had been dancing around their attraction for a long time, and Jim had struggled with himself when their relationship hadn't removed Bones from his equation - only added Spock into it.

"We know what we want, Jim," Bones said, never raising his eyes from Spock, as he worked his way across to the other arm. "The ball's in your court. If you want this - want us - then all you have to do is say so."

"And if I don't?" Jim demanded, clenching his jaw in ferocious defiance of everything that they knew.

Bones shrugged. "Then it doesn't happen, and we forget about it. No hard feelings, no pressure. It's up to you."

"And you'd be okay with that?"

"Hell no," Bones snorted. "But I'm not going to push you into it either. I got lucky enough with him, and if I have to, I can thank whatever's out there for that and be happy enough. But you and I both know it - it's not right without you as well."

Jim opened his mouth to respond, but clamped it shut again when Spock stirred with a pained noise between them, and Bones' attention snapped down as dark, foggy eyes slitted open in a quiet uncharacteristic grimace.

"Ssh, don't move," Bones murmured, a far cry from his usual sickbay voice. "You're alright. You think you can go into a proper trance this time?"

Spock shook his head faintly, and another grimace flashed across his face; Jim found himself stepping forward without a clue of what to do.

"Jim's here," Bones said, even as he was reaching for the hypos. "I'm going to put you under so we can finish our talk in private instead of going back to my office."

Taking a step he hadn't known he would until mere moments before he did it, Jim slipped his hand into Spock's and raised them to his lips, brushing a light kiss across the back of green-grazed knuckles. Drugged near oblivion, Spock's expression was still one of muted surprise, and Jim smiled around their hands.

"We talked," he said simply, stroking his fingers around Spock's hand soothingly. "It's alright. Go back to sleep. We'll be here when you wake up. Both of us."

The hypospray hissed, and the lines in Spock's face smoothed slightly before he was gone, his hand once again relaxing to hang limply in Jim's grasp. He set it down on Spock's chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his breathing, before raising his eyes to Bones'.

"Okay," he said quietly. "I guess I'm in."

Bones cracked a smile and shook his head fondly. "Only you, Jim. Now c'mon. Help me finish up here, and come crash in our quarters."

"Why yours?" Jim asked, even as he released Spock hand and took the offered sponge.

"Because we have a double bed."