Chapter Text
“You are angry.”
McCoy’s frown deepens. “Just let me scan you.”
“You heard us.”
“Just let me scan you, Spock.”
“You should not draw conclusions about his actions.”
“For the love of every god, let me scan you.”
“Or about mine.”
McCoy flings his staff on the other bunk and throws his hands in the air. “Alright, fine! What is it you want to say so badly?”
Spock’s health is returning quickly. It’ll only be a matter of days before McCoy will clear him for assignment on one of the ship’s many interlocking functions, likely on deck where he’ll be out of sight, out of mind, and McCoy will finally have his office back in all of its cramped and sterile glory.
All Spock needs to do is to stop looking at him with that piercing gaze.
All Spock needs to do is let him keep his dignity; to not meet his eyes and say, “I want you.”
“I want you,” Spock says.
“Fuck,” McCoy replies.
Then, worse.
“I kissed Captain Kirk to show him how you feel about him,” Spock says.
“Are you fucking crazy?” McCoy replies, before he’s even processed a word. “How could you do that to me?”
The shame of admitting to those last two words nearly take him to his knees, tearing prick his eyes. It’s like having an organ he didn’t know existed ripped right out of him.
“He loves you very much,” Spock says. “In the very same way you do."
“You can’t know that,” McCoy says, almost wheezing, as if the now-faded bruises lingering on his neck have repeated just to constrict him. Even though he knows it isn’t true, he repeats himself.
“You can’t know that.”
When Spock doesn’t reply, he buries his face in his hands.
The seconds pass. When the Vulcanian finally does speak again, there’s a novel thread of emotion in his voice: uncertainty.
“I believed I was helping,” Spock says quietly. “I had hoped to make up for my prior behavior, but it seems I have done the opposite. Please understand. I want you, Leonard. Before, there was no one I wished to fulfill my ritual with, but I want you.”
“You don’t know me,” McCoy says.”
“This is true,” Spock says. “But I want to.”
He is about to say more when a thunderous clanging startles them out of their discussion — where, McCoy realizes — they had been leaning towards each other as they sat almost knee to knee.
Jim flings the office door open, shaking the blonde hair flopping over his eyes away to reveal a face alight with battle and, better yet, a plan he’s ten steps ahead on.
“Klingons!” he almost shouts.
“Now’s not the time!” McCoy barks, loud enough to briefly shake Jim from his single-minded focus.
His next words are lost when Jim strides across the room and wraps an arm tight around McCoy’s waist and back, pulling him in for a kiss so bright and passionate it leaves McCoy weak in the knees. He just might be blushing.
“I love you, Bones,” Jim says. “And I think I’m finally going to nail Kor, if you can believe it.”
He grins at McCoy, whose traitorous face slowly mirrors Jim’s. “Stay alive, and I’ll let you know whether or not I return the feeling,” he says.
“Bet on it,” Jim says, kissing Bones again.
Just like that, he’s off in the stream of redshirts heading above deck. The great ship groans and shifts around them, Boatswain Scotty surely hurling the vessel into action below them.
Put all the bells and whistles on the starship as they like, but it is still bound to its hull and rigging like any other. McCoy steadies himself on the closest wall, forcibly swallowing his lunch back down in an unfriendly reminder that there was a time he’d once counted himself among the easily seasick.
“Of course,” Spock says thoughtfully, as if nothing else were going on. “It was Klingons who attacked me. They likely believed me to be the vanguard of a larger Vulcanian force.”
“Instead, they’d actually found a lone Vulcanian trying to freeze out the horny,” McCoy says, grabbing his staff. “I have to go.”
Feeling something stay his arm, he looks back to find Spock’s ferrum fist gripping his arm.
“You should be headed down, not up,” Spock says firmly.
“The cockpit is for after, Spock,” McCoy says, tearing his sleeve to get away.
“You are not a combatant.”
“So?” McCoy spits. “When people get hurt, I go.”
“It would be safer to treat the injured below—”
“It would be safer to not be here at all, you green-blooded Vulcanian, but that’s not how this works! There are lives in danger!”
“Then I go with you,” Spock says. “I have not found you only to lose you immediately, Leonard.”
McCoy looks into those glittering eyes and finally believes him.
***
When Kirk’s eyes flutter open, McCoy sags in relief; next to him, he feels rather than sees Spock do the same. The smoke around them is clearing; swords are clattering to the ground as triumphant redshirts force the surviving Klingons to surrender, immediately disarming them before they can take more drastic measures to themselves or others.
Bones has hardly looked back before Jim is grabbing him by the back of the head and kissing him like his life depends on it. Spock watches impassively until it’s his turn, eyes widening when Jim does the same for him.
“You’ll come back to Starfleet with us. No more nonsense about dropping you back off at that desert — I mean, how were we supposed to get there, anyway? It might be called a starship, but it doesn’t literally sail them. Anyway, you’ll test right out of the exam, then you’ll join our crew.”
Spock finally smiles. “I find this satisfactory.”
“But first,” McCoy adds, feeling lighter than he has in years.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“We’ll fuck the pon farr right out of you.”
Spock’s smile only grows.
“On the contrary, Doctor. I believe it is I who shall do the fucking.”