Chapter Text
The first time Bones spanks him is eight months into his academy career. Jim had gone through the euphoric early stages of academy life, trying to shove the repeat offender part of genius-level repeat offender in a box under a storm of bright cheerfulness and a spate ridiculous over-compensating. Really, it’s amazing he lasts six months before he cracks and ends up face down in a gutter. Bones hauls him up, puts Jim’s arm over his shoulder, and drags him back to his dorm.
Then he cleans him up, heals the worst of his injuries from the bar fight, and puts him to bed. In the morning, he pulls him over his knees and paddles him till he’s yelling, and then keeps going till Jim’s gotten the point. After, he strong arms Jim up to lay him on his chest while Bones leans back on a couple of pillows. Bones strokes his back for a while, while Jim wonders where his usual bluster and distancing mechanisms failed him, letting Bones under his skin like this.
A long while later, Bones’ voices rumbles up through his chest and into Jim’s ear, “This self-destructive streak stops right here, Jim. I get that you’re afraid you’ll fuck up and blow your academy career, but this blow up wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t pushing yourself so damn hard. I’m not gonna let you wreck it for yourself because of some psychological bullshit where you mess things up for yourself out of misplaced guilt. So either you stop that right damn now, or you can keep landing yourself over my knee until you get it through your skull that stupid, self-harming stunts are not an acceptable coping method.”
And for a reason Jim can’t seem to figure out, he lets Bones look out for him. Eventually the impulse to throw himself headfirst into trouble lessens, and the times he ends up with a red backside courtesy of Bones become fewer and farther between. This leads to their relationship shifting a bit, and the first time Jim finds himself in Bones’ bed to do more than sleep off a drunken night, he finds himself surprised.
Bones is a bit amused by that, smiling as he works Jim over with caring and careful hands, “I don’t know why you’re surprised, darlin’. Seems like the natural progression of things to me.” And he’s right, but it hadn’t occurred to him because, well, it was Bones, and in Jim’s head there had been a firm line between the categories in his head labeled “Bones” and the one labeled “Potential Fuck Buddies.” But it’s so good, and Jim can’t stop himself. It scares him and comforts him in equal measure. He bolts from the intimacy a few times, because he should really have “fear of commitment” tattooed on his forehead, but Bones is always right there with welcoming arms and a firm hand when he bolts into danger.
After all that, he shouldn’t have been surprised when they shifted yet again into something more meaningful, but he was.
“Well, sure, sugar. You ain’t never had anybody that watches out for you, cares for you, and makes love to you.” As is becoming the usual when it comes to them, Bones is right, even if he still tips Jim over his knee when he does something stupid or reckless.
Then there was the Kobyashi Maru, and the hearing, and Vulcan, and Nero, and Spock, and becoming the Captain of the Enterprise, and Jim finds himself sliding back into old habits. In the long months on Earth waiting for the Enterprise to be repaired, the survivor’s guilt and strain of acting like Starfleet’s golden boy in public have worn on him. Jim at least has the good sense to find a bar so seedy and out of the way that no reporters would find him. The downside of this is that that the crowd the bar caters to is rougher than his usual, and when he picks the inevitable fight, it comes down on him harder than he can handle. When Bones shows up, the ribs that are newly healed from the Narada incident are cracked in three places, as is his orbital socket, and he is mildly concussed, to top off the rest of his bruises and cuts. Bones’ mouth is tight when he bundles Jim home, and in the morning that usually finds Jim howling and kicking, Jim instead finds himself on enforced bed rest. Any attempts to change this are met with a glower so filled with promise that Jim shrinks back into the bed automatically. On day two of his enforced rest, Jim takes it into his head to make a break for it and lick his wounds in private. This has the side benefit of allowing Bones to calm down a bit.
That impression lasts right up to the point where he gets caught red-handed the second he steps out of the bedroom and finds Bones sitting on the brown suede couch in the living room. Bones looks up from the paperwork he’s been doing, and his eyes darken dramatically. Before Jim can make an excuse, Bones is on him.
“Shut those lyin’ lips. You were about to try for the door,” he says with finality, and Jim is promptly bent over at the waist, Bones’ strong left arm around his middle, taking care with his sore ribs. A second later his pants and boxers are at his knees, and he’s yelping as Bones begins swatting and swatting hard. It doesn’t last long, maybe a couple dozen swats, but Jim definitely feels it when Bones frog marches him back to bed and shoves him back down on the bed. His jacket and shoes are confiscated and bundled up to an unknown location. Jim pouts for the rest of the afternoon.
On the third day, Bones pronounces him healed. This would be great, except that now Bones has turned the chair from the desk out to face the room, a sure sign that his spanking is imminent. By this point, Jim has stopped fighting Bones about being spanked, even grudgingly admitting that he probably deserved most of them (under the influence of a lot of alcohol, of course. It’s how Bones and he conduct all their deep conversations). McCoy slouches on the bench, spreads his legs casually, and crooks a finger at Jim. When he stands before Bones, looking up from underneath his drooping bangs, Bones pulls him into a hug.
“Now, darlin’, don’t look at me like that. You know you deserve it, and you know I ain’t gonna kill you,” he says gruffly, with a hint of amusement. And then Jim is pulled so he’s ass up, looking at the boring beige carpet from his spot over Bones’ knee and McCoy is pulling his sweat pants and boxers down around his knees. He squirms, hating this part. Bones always makes him wait, backside bared. He wants him to think about why he’s there in the first place. And just when he thinks he can’t stand it anymore, Bones’ hand is cracking down on his ass, and he wishes Bones would have made him wait a bit longer.
This part of his spanking always seems to take forever. Hell, the entire thing takes far longer than he would like, but this part is the worst, even if the other parts hurt more. While Bones steadily heats his ass up, round after round of even, predictable swats falling on his butt, Jim can still feel all the other stuff. The flip of his stomach before Bones starts what he can tell is going to be an especially hard volley. The press of Bones’ calloused hand on the small of his back, holding him in place as he squirms. The flush in his cheeks, embarrassed at his inverted position. Bones breathing, intimate and right there, watching his ass get hotter and hotter. It’s awful, terrible, and a little bit good, too, that Bones cares enough to haul him over like this. All of it balls up in his stomach and twists together, making him try to worm away more than the ever-present spanks did. Then Bones starts in on him in earnest and Jim doesn’t have to think about any of that anymore, because he’s too busy worrying about the fact that his ass seems to be catching fire, hot and stinging.
Only a few dozen swats later, Bones stops. Jim cranes around to look at him. Surely they weren’t done? Bones had never stopped this soon, and Jim had never been in this much trouble before. And then he sees Bones reaching behind him and turning back with his fucking hairbrush and Jim finds himself struggling away in panic. Oh, sure, when Bones wanted to really emphasize a point, he’d given Jim a few with more than his hand, but they were just starting! Surely Bones didn’t mean for him to take his whole spanking with that thing! But Bones was just raising an eyebrow at him, and Jim froze, abashed, and then collapsed over his lap. He groaned, hiding his face in his hands when Bones grabbed him tighter around the middle and muscles flexed when he raised his arm high.
Jim couldn’t bear to look, and just waited, muscles all flexed tight. But Bones paused, and Jim knew what he wanted. On the few occasions where he’d used the hairbrush, Bones had demanded he relax his muscles. He’d explained that tensing just made it worse, and that he wasn’t going to bruise Jim that badly. But Jim held himself tense, delaying the inevitable.
“I can wait, darlin’. You’ll get tired soon enough and you’re only making it worse for yourself by being stubborn,” Bones intoned. After another minute, then two, and when it became apparent that Jim had no intentions of giving up anytime soon, Bones rained down half a dozen swats on the tops of his thighs, where he couldn’t really clench up. It also stung like hellfire on that sensitive skin. Then Bones was shuffling him further across his knees, pressing a hand firmly to his back to shove him so far forwards that Jim had to put his hands and elbows out on the floor to catch himself. In that moment of unbalance, Bones pulled one of his legs out from under Jim and trapped his legs between his own. Now Jim was jack-knifed over Bone’s knee, sit spots pointed nearly towards the ceiling, stretched taught but unable to clench. It was then that Bones started to lay down swats, lightning fast, on those tender, taunt sit spots. And there he stayed, back and forth between the two sides, turning them hot red. And Jim hollered, tried to kick, tried to squirm, but to no avail. When he threw a hand back desperately, Bones just put it in an arm lock at the small of his back, bobbled Jim a bit to get him back where he wanted him, and kept on smacking.
Jim wasn’t crying yet, but his nose was running and his voice was shaking as he tried to plead off. By now, Bones was sending the brush cracking down all over his bottom, though he frequently revisited those hot sit spots. And soon, the rest of his bottom was just as hot, and Jim was getting desperate. Bones had never pushed him like this before. Never heated his ass till he thought he might cry and shatter all over the floor.
And then there was, mercifully, a pause, “Jim, I need you to calm down a minute for me,” Bones said, and since Jim was ready to do just anything Bones said, if only he would be done, if only he’d put that hairbrush down and never pick it up again, he tried. He took several deep, shaky breaths, his throat feeling raw from shouting and holding back tears. Bones was petting his back, gentling him, and gradually Jim could focus on more than the roaring in his ears or the flame burning his backside. He squirmed as the fire just got hotter and hotter, even though Bones had paused. Bones released his legs, pulling him back into the more comfortable position over both knees, and let his arm out of the lock, only pinning it to the small of his back, which Jim didn’t think signaled the end of his spanking, a miserable thought.
“That’s good, Jim. Now, I want to make this good and clear: there will be no more benders in seedy bars just to get into fights you can’t handle. And God help you if you ever get yourself beat up this bad again just out of some impulse to punish yourself for shit that’s not your fault. I’m the only one around here that gets to punish you, especially since you haven’t got a sense of proportion or self-preservation. Now, we’re gonna finish this up, and then you’re going to take a nap. After that, you’re going to stay here for a couple of days and let me take care of you. And if you give me trouble, or I think you’re still kicking yourself around for this, you’ll find yourself facing the carpet again before you can blink.”
And with that, Bones was laying down a sheet of fire down the backs of his thighs, all the way down to his knees, then back up the tender inner thighs. Jim shrieked when this bit of skin was paddled. And then Bones made that round again, and then once more. A few more swats to the broadest part of his ass were almost a relief. Then Bones paused again, and wrapped his arm around Jim’s waist, turning Jim’s backside to an angle and preventing Jim from reaching back. Jim’s heart beat faster at the thought of what Bones might do that he’d need to restrain Jim like that.
The brush cracked down on the peak of his left buttock. And then again. And again. In fact, Bones seemed determined that that spot get all his focus. Jim kicked, jerked, squealed, yelled, and squirmed, but nothing stopped Bones from smacking that same spot over and over and over. He paused, then switched sides. Jim was relieved until he realized that the same tactic was being employed on his right cheek this time. And nothing stopped Bones. Jim squirmed and cursed and promised to behave, and nothing stopped him. Finally, when the two spots were equally inflamed, Bones paused again, looking at Jim’s screwed up face. Nodding decisively, he turned back and started alternating sit-spots without a single pause. Jim screeched like a scalded cat, twisted, and broke down bawling.
Immediately, Bones stopped, the hairbrush dropping to the floor. Jim shook with sobs, and Bones rubbed his back soothingly. After a couple minutes, Bones scooped him up and walked over to the bed, drawing Jim up to his chest in their usual post-spanking embrace. Bones soothed him, but didn’t try to stop his tears. Jim did, however, and became a little panicked when he realized he couldn’t stop crying.
“Hush now, darlin’. You just keep on cryin’ and don’t worry about it. And if you keep trying to stop cryin’ before you’re done, I’ll just have to turn you to back over and swat you a bit more.”
It was the most comprehensively spanked Jim had ever been. Oh, that hairbrush probably hadn’t even really bruised him outside of his sit-spots, but he hurt, and felt vulnerable, and he couldn’t stop crying. Bones just held him there for a long time before turning out the light and pulling a blanket over them for a nap.