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McCoy didn’t remember the dream, just the way it dumped him out of sleep like a punch to the ribs.
He sat up too fast, chest heaving, sweat cooling on the back of his neck. The room was too quiet. The hum of the Enterprise wasn’t enough to ground him tonight. He rubbed his face, fingers pressing into his eyes, hoping to wipe away the leftover panic clinging to him like a second skin.
Third night in a row.
He stood, paced. The walls felt smaller lately. Everything did. The mission on Torellus III was over—cleanly, technically—but that didn’t mean it hadn’t left its marks. Not all wounds showed up on scans. He’d told himself to let it go. Bad things happened. It was the job. But sometimes the job crawled into your head and stayed there.
He opened the door and stepped into the corridor, bare feet on cold metal. It was late. Late enough no one would be out unless they had somewhere important to be. McCoy didn’t. Not officially, anyway.
He walked with no destination, but his steps still took him somewhere specific.
Jim’s door wasn’t locked. Of course it wasn’t. Jim was stupid like that. Trusting. Open. The kind of guy who left his door cracked for a friend who might need him.
The room was dim, quiet, just the soft blue of the lights along the edge of the walls. Jim was asleep on his side, arm thrown over the pillow. Spock was next to him, face calm, hands folded like always, even in sleep.
McCoy hesitated in the doorway.
This was dumb.
He should go.
But his feet moved before his head could stop them. The room smelled like fabric and skin and something warm and human. He climbed into the bed carefully, lying down on the far edge. He didn’t expect to fall asleep.
Except he did.
***
The next morning, McCoy woke up to sunlight through artificial windows and the strange, unfamiliar comfort of someone’s arm thrown across his chest. Not Jim’s. Too light.
He turned his head and saw Spock’s face inches from his own, relaxed, almost soft.
Jim was already up. There was coffee on the nightstand. McCoy sat up slowly, trying not to disturb Spock.
Too late. One brown eye blinked open.
Spock stared at him for a second. “Good morning, Doctor.”
McCoy cleared his throat. “Uh. Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to crash here.”
Spock didn’t look away. “You were having difficulty sleeping.”
McCoy hated how easily Spock said it, like it was just an observation. Maybe for him it was.
“I didn’t want to be alone.”
“That is logical.”
McCoy blinked. “What?”
Spock sat up too, sheets rustling. “It is logical to seek proximity to those one trusts when emotionally distressed.”
“Right,” McCoy muttered. “Logical.”
***
He didn’t bring it up to Jim. Jim didn’t ask. That night, McCoy found himself back at their door again.
This time Jim opened it with a smile and handed him a cup of tea like it was nothing unusual.
“You’re a terrible sleeper,” Jim said, leading him inside.
“I’m working on it,” McCoy replied, not really looking at either of them.
They all ended up in bed again, bodies forming an awkward stack of limbs and warmth. At some point, McCoy stopped caring who touched who or where anyone’s leg was. The silence felt heavy in the right way. Anchoring.
His breath evened out without him noticing.
And then he slept.
***
By the fifth night, it was routine.
Jim didn’t even blink when McCoy walked in. Spock adjusted the covers to make space. The bed was too small, but it didn’t matter. Somehow they all fit.
McCoy stopped pretending it was temporary.
The dreams hadn’t stopped completely, but they were duller now. Further away. They couldn’t reach him through the weight of a warm arm across his middle or the rhythm of someone else’s breath against his shoulder.
It was strange. He’d never been a touchy person. He didn’t like clingy patients, didn’t do casual hugs. But this wasn’t like that. This was different. This was—
Home.
Which scared the hell out of him.
***
They didn’t talk about it during the day. No one asked why McCoy looked less like a half-dead zombie in the morning. No one mentioned that he drank his coffee a little slower, that his hands shook a little less.
It was Jim who cracked first.
They were alone in Sickbay. Spock had taken over the bridge for a few hours. McCoy was updating a file, pretending he wasn’t distracted.
Jim leaned against the wall. “You gonna keep crawling into bed with us forever?”
McCoy glanced at him. “You want me to stop?”
Jim shook his head. “Not even a little.”
McCoy set down his padd. “I don’t get it, Jim. You and Spock—you’re a thing.”
“Kind of,” Jim admitted. “We’re figuring it out.”
“Then why let me in?”
Jim crossed his arms, eyes softer than usual. “Because we want you there.”
McCoy stared. “Both of you?”
“Yeah.”
A long silence stretched between them. McCoy looked at his hands. They were steady.
He exhaled. “I don’t know what this is.”
Jim smiled. “Me neither. But I like waking up with you next to me.”
***
Spock didn’t use words like love easily. But he didn’t need to. He showed it in the quiet things—handing McCoy a glass of water before he even asked for one, adjusting the temperature controls before bed, reading next to him without speaking.
One night, McCoy rolled over and looked at him in the dark.
“You okay with this?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Spock’s eyes opened slowly. “Yes.”
“It’s not weird for you? Having me in the middle of… whatever this is?”
Spock tilted his head. “You are not in the middle. You are part of the whole.”
McCoy blinked.
Spock continued, “Affection is not a limited resource. Our feelings for each other do not lessen what we feel for you.”
That broke something open inside him. Not in a painful way. More like something tight finally letting go.
“Damn you,” McCoy whispered. “You always know the right thing to say.”
“It is not difficult when it is the truth.”
***
It stopped being about the nightmares after a while.
McCoy still had them, sure. They came and went like bad weather. But what kept bringing him back to that room, what kept him slipping between them night after night, wasn’t fear anymore.
It was warmth. It was safety. It was the way Jim always mumbled something half-asleep and reached for him without opening his eyes. The way Spock would rest a hand against McCoy’s spine like he was grounding both of them.
It was the way they all exhaled at the same time when they lay down together.
He wasn’t a guest in that bed anymore.
He belonged.
***
Weeks passed. They never labeled it. There were no speeches, no dramatic declarations. But things changed in quiet ways.
Jim kissed him one night before lights out, just a soft press of lips and fingers in his hair. Spock kissed him the night after, slow and deliberate. McCoy didn’t stop either of them. Didn’t want to.
He kissed them both back.
And it wasn’t weird. It didn’t feel wrong.
It felt like breathing.
***
They didn’t hide it from the crew, exactly. But they didn’t talk about it either. It was just… them. People could think what they wanted.
McCoy didn’t care anymore.
He wasn’t sure when that happened. Maybe the third time Spock kissed his knuckles in the hallway like it was nothing. Maybe when Jim curled up next to him in the mess hall like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He’d stopped looking over his shoulder.
Stopped waiting for someone to take it away.
***
Another bad dream hit one night. This time he remembered it—blood and broken bones and helplessness. He woke up choking on his own breath.
Jim’s hand found his. “Hey. You’re okay.”
Spock shifted beside him, hand already at the back of his neck, grounding pressure steady and sure.
McCoy sat up, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “It felt real.”
Jim leaned in, forehead touching his shoulder. “But it’s not.”
Spock moved closer, wrapping an arm around him. “You are here. With us.”
McCoy nodded, slow and tired. “Yeah. I know.”
He let himself fall back into their arms, head on Spock’s chest, Jim curled around his back.
Sleep didn’t come easy, but it came. It always did, eventually.
They were the anchor that kept him steady.
He didn’t need to be alone anymore.