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“There is no need to continue observing me, Doctor. As you can see I have returned to the present in every sense of the word.”
It was a strange and emotional thing to say. Further, it was a lie. But it was only the emotional echo of a 5,000-year hence, barbarian past that allowed Spock to lie so. He clasped his hands behind his back and attempted not to wither under McCoy’s discerning gaze. It didn’t matter; the Enterprise was appearing around them.
Jim was there, a bright bundle of raw energy, eyes crinkling as he smiled. Spock could feel the dull rumble of the ship beneath his feet as they went to warp, escaping the supernova with only seconds to spare. A usual occurrence. The unusual was the echoing rumble, the burning in his gut, of the past they were escaping from just as fast. He could taste Zarabeth upon his lips.
Jim’s skin was burnished, tan. Spock recalled saying Zarabeth was beautiful. What was it McCoy had said? His life was back through the portal.
“Well, gentlemen. Looks like we made it.” Jim clapped McCoy on the back, but stopped short of doing to same to Spock. No doubt the Captain’s journey had been as harrowing as theirs.
Spock’s fingers itched. No, they were leaking. The psi-points at his fingertips were uncapped, and his mind seemed to be spilling out. He’d lied, he thought dimly. Lied to the ship’s surgeon, who was now eyeing him carefully. It occurred to Spock that he had in fact lied some time ago. Over a minute. And only now did it bother him. He clenched his fists.
“Jim,” McCoy said. “I’d like to examine both you and Spock for any residual difficulties as a result of our trip through the portal.” His eyes didn’t leave Spock.
Jim opened his mouth, but Spock interrupted him. Rude, he thought, and felt shame. “That won’t be necessary, Doctor,” he said. “I assure you I am quite fine. Furthermore, it was not long ago that you yourself were near death. I would recommend you for an examination.”
McCoy bristled. He was so easy to rile up, and Spock thrilled at the idea. The thrill of a little boy dipping a girl’s pigtails in ink--how barbaric, yet he did not desire to stop it. “Is that your medical opinion, Mr. Spock?” McCoy spat.
Jim interrupted them before the fight could get bloody. “Bones, you didn’t mention you were injured.”
McCoy glanced to him, then back to Spock, looking chagrined. His face showed such emotion that Spock could read him like a book. Perhaps better. “Well, it did get a bit chilly down there.” Then he paused, and his face shifted. He bounced on his heels, suddenly looking very pleased with himself indeed. “I’m afraid, in fact, that I’m not quite sure I can make it to the medical bay all by my lonesome. Would you accompany me there, Mr. Spock?”
Spock knew he was being lied to--and so did Jim. But the Captain was all smiles, a sort of haha, look at them bicker. His eyes were crinkling again, and Spock could imagine the shadow of old age there. Eyes in fifty years half closed, tired. Hazel spark lost. Then, in five thousand years, what?
“Well, Mr. Spock?” Jim asked. He was amused. He didn’t understand.
Spock reached out with one leaking hand and rested it on McCoy’s arm. McCoy startled at the gesture, choking on the protest that sprang up automatically. Spock brushed his thumb over the fabric there and could feel McCoy’s heart beat in his veins. Slow.
“Come along, Doctor.”
“I’ll be along later,” Jim said.
“Yes, well.” McCoy followed Spock from the transporter room, looking dumbfounded. “Don’t make me chase you down.”
Jim departed with a wave.
Spock was reeling as he escorted the Doctor. It was somewhat easier now. He didn’t know if it was the absence of Jim, or the presence of his own time. But the thoughts seemed to be waning. He no longer wanted (desired, needed) to pull Jim close. Grip his arms as he had gripped Zarabeth. He could taste her on his tongue, but he no longer needed it. Didn’t need to replace her with McCoy, pink lips slightly parted, to press their bodies together, run his own lips over the Doctor’s neck, feel him shiver, press leaking fingertips to his body and hear his mind opening up, joining, feeling, tasting, entering—
“Spock.”
Spock startled and looked up. He did not know how it had happened, but suddenly he was very close to McCoy, crowding the smaller man against the wall. He tried to reassemble his thoughts logically, but it was all a jumbled mess. Who had he even been thinking of? Zarabeth and Jim and McCoy were all together in his mind, but McCoy was closest. Right at the forefront of his thoughts, because his scent was enticingly there.
“Spock,” McCoy said again, more softly. Gently. Strange, McCoy was usually so abrasive. What had happened to him? Was he all right? “You’re hurting me.”
Spock looked down to his hand grasping tight to McCoy’s arm. He could see his own tendons stretching with effort. He released his grasp and dropped his hand to his side. “My apologies, Doctor.”
But he didn’t step back. Couldn’t seem to make his legs work under McCoy’s piercing blue gaze. McCoy always expressed so much emotion through his eyes, always taunted Spock with a laugh, threatened him with a harsh look, enticed him to feel.
“We’re almost there.”
It was not unusual for Spock to think of Jim this way. He knew this and accepted it. He had turned the thoughts over in his head and mediated on them many times. It was logical to develop a close, trusting relationship with one’s Captain. Surak himself had written about the close relationship he’d had with one of his disciples. Vulcans did not think it odd.
Spock took a step towards Sickbay. And another. McCoy shadowed him.
This felt different. He could not think of a time when he had wanted McCoy as much as he now burned for him. What had changed? If he closed his eyes he could remember McCoy’s stern look as Spock tried to kill him, whistling wind and snow driving in the background. Zarabeth a breath behind him, waiting to see what he would do. Spock had been foolish, he knew.
And McCoy, all emotion, yet constrained, tense. His eyes lit up in defiance, lip tense in determination. And what if Spock had killed him, what then? Or perhaps not, for truly Spock had not--could not have--desired McCoy dead. But his fingers at McCoy’s neck, pressing, feeling, as McCoy bled from the inside out, screaming his thoughts loud for everyone to hear. An open wound of feeling and caring, and if Spock had tried to hurt him, McCoy might have gone willingly. Might have allowed Spock to press him to the rock face as he had pressed him against the corridor wall. Might have allowed Spock to take, own, possess him, if that was what it took to get home.
Of course, that had not been required. But McCoy was pure thought; for a moment, he had hoped Spock would act.
The Sickbay doors shushed open for them. McCoy was all drawl and smile, politely asking the nurse to leave. Not Nurse Chapel, thankfully, for Spock didn’t think he could handle more pressure. His seams were vibrating, threatening to rupture. He was standing near a biobed as McCoy approached him, and he couldn’t quite remember how he’d gotten there.
“Well, Spock, are you going to continue to fight me even when there’s no one left to impress?” He was smiling slightly; sharing a private joke with himself. Perhaps here he meant Jim. No doubt he was perceptive enough to realize Spock’s love and adoration for their Captain.
Strange that this had not occurred to Spock before.
Spock stood still as McCoy scanned him, still muttering, talking, but the words were not important. It was no wonder early, barbaric Vulcans had remained so plentiful despite their murderous ways. Spock’s skin was singing along with McCoy’s drawl, desiring him, his touch. A pity modern medicine had made physical examination a relic of a bygone era. But oh, to imagine McCoy’s fingers on his skin. Spock wondered, did McCoy’s hands leak feeling, too?
He could see, in the hollow of McCoy’s neck, the shadow of his own hand. The shape of it was a whisper under the harsh lights of the Sickbay. Spock wondered if his logic would return to him as quickly as McCoy’s body would heal the bruise. Would Spock wake up tomorrow with his thoughts yellow and mottled, healing inside his flesh? Would the next day come with no sign of injury unless he pressed at the wound and felt the tell-tale twinge of hurt and pain? Would a day come where he was as he had been before? Would he look at McCoy and feel no impulses worth resisting?
He did not like the idea. It angered him. The anger was a flame burning bright in the dark, and he had the hysterical thought that he could have kept McCoy warm in the ice age, warm with the burning of his own rage. If only they could go back.
“Well, you’re as medically normal as you ever are.” McCoy closed up his scanner and ran his hand through his hair, showing his age for a moment. In fifty years, Spock thought, his hair would be silver. In five thousand years, he’d be with Jim as dust among the stars. “I’m still going to prescribe some bed rest for you. I want to monitor you for any signs of stress, and—” He stopped short.
Oh, Spock realized, that was because he was touching him.
It was truly his handprint on McCoy’s skin. He found the shape with his touch, gazing down at McCoy’s neck. He could feel the Doctor’s breathing quicken, a residual fear response.
“Are you aware, Doctor, that ‘kissing’ is not a custom on Vulcan?”
“I’m aware.”
McCoy was vibrating under his touch and leaking, yes, feeling. Like cool, sweet water pouring out from every inch of him. Why didn’t he pull away in revulsion?
“Nor has it ever been. And yet, when I desired Zarabeth—” her name stuck to his tongue. “I kissed her.” Tasted her, breathed her, joined her.
“Perhaps that was your human half?”
Spock pulled back and dropped his hand. He clenched his fist. “If that is a slight to me, Doctor, I assure you I am still quite tired of it.”
McCoy collapsed into himself and leaned heavily on the biobed. He rubbed his neck where Spock had touched him. Did he still feel it? “No, no. Nothing like that. It was just an observation. Tell me, with your perfect memory, has there ever been a time when we didn’t fight?”
“Yes, of course,” Spock said instantly. And he could draw up many examples, but he provided none, for he knew that was not what McCoy meant to ask. At another time he would have said them anyway, riled McCoy up, diffused the intensity of the situation by sending McCoy stomping off in a huff. This time, he was silent.
“Yes, of course,” McCoy repeated. “It’s so easy for you to say…”
“Would you prefer that we did not…’fight’ at this time?”
McCoy looked at him. He smiled. His smiles were so different from Jim’s. There was more exhaustion there, world-weariness. Laughter, smiles, joy came at a cost for McCoy.
“I would prefer that, yes.”
“Is there something I should do instead?” Spock was leaning forward, he realized. An equation always had a set answer, and if you knew how to solve it, that was where you would arrive. Provided, of course, that you did not make a computational error along the way. At the moment, Spock felt inclined towards computational errors.
“Instead?” McCoy’s eyes fell to his lips, then flickered down.
To his hands, Spock realized. McCoy was looking at his fingers. And of course it made sense. McCoy wasn’t stupid, and he’d seen the display Spock’s Mother and Father had insisted in making of themselves. No doubt he’d done research after, and discovered what the custom was on Vulcan.
Spock twitched his fingers and watched McCoy’s gaze snap back to his face. “No,” McCoy said briskly. “Nothing at all. I’d just like a little vacation from all the back and forth.” McCoy had always been stubborn, even against himself. “I don’t see why you always insist on riling me up. You must get some sort of perverse pleasure out of the deal, deep down in that Vulcan heart of yours.” Or perhaps McCoy had always been afraid.
Spock waited for him to finish. “Then there is something I wish to do instead.” Desire you, he wanted to say. I wish to desire you and feel you and touch your stray thoughts again. The calm ones, the erratic ones, the frantic ones, the ones entwined with fear, pain, anguish, love, joy, happiness. He wanted to; but then, he already was.
“Did you just say ‘wish?’” McCoy asked, but his breath petered out at the end, stolen by Spock’s light touch at the bone of his wrist.
Spock stepped into his space and wondered at the possibilities. What would it mean not to step back, not to cram himself down, down, trapped behind a wall of logic, barbaric past so long--five thousand years--ago? He slipped his hand into McCoy’s and McCoy moved to grasp him back, tightly. What would it mean?
“Spock, are you still—”
“I believe so, Doctor,” Spock said, although he did not know quite what he was being asked.
McCoy clung to his hand, yet leaned away from him, trapped against the biobed as Spock insinuated himself into his space. One leg sliding between McCoy’s, looming over him, holding fast to his hand. Spock could taste the milieu of his emotions for they were so close they shared the same breath, and McCoy’s mouth was open, panting, and his lips looked so—
If there had been an equation for this, Spock would have failed it at any other time.
There was no home to come to in the present, but McCoy tasted of it anyway. He was a shiver and a caress, feelings falling in little bundles like the pitter patter of rain on hot Vulcan sand. He leaked thoughts and desires, and Spock drank from them greedily and did not try to prevent his own from leaking as well. Some technical part of Spock calculated that McCoy was adept at this; well-practiced, a professional, able to direct Spock although Spock was quite poor at kissing himself. He had not had time to develop the skill.
Spock took McCoy’s hand and touched him--here, at the knob of his knuckle. There, at the bone on top. Here again, at the calloused skin of his palm. His skin was dry at every point which had been frostbitten.
McCoy was not so adept at this, but he was a practiced physician, despite Spock’s former allusions to the contrary. He learned fast where to touch Spock to make him shiver and mewl, how to stroke his skin to make Spock sigh into his mouth, where to press hard to make Spock lean into him, where to caress softly to push Spock the next step.
Spock traced his lips down McCoy’s face and neck, kissing softly at the bruise he had left. He felt possessive of the mark, and of what it meant. He shifted McCoy’s legs apart and pressed his thigh flush against the Doctor’s body. He could feel McCoy getting hard and the reaction intrigued him; his own body would not react the same way.
“Spock,” McCoy said. It sounded like he wanted to be firm, but his words were breathy and uncoordinated. “What do you think you’re going to accomplish with this?”
“Must I accomplish something?”
McCoy went stiff, and then started to shove him off. “All right, now I know something is wrong. Get off of me. Go on, get!”
Spock took a respectful step back, half amused at where McCoy drew the line between normal and abnormal behavior. McCoy glared at him and wriggled away; his lips were very pink.
Spock wondered what they would look like bitten. Flushed pink, teeth marks all lined up in a row, bloody, McCoy under him, moaning, pleasure-wracked, guiltless, owned, possessed, desired.
McCoy was saying something. Spock shook himself out of his reverie.
“I should have known better than to trust these readings. Damn things never seem to work right when it’s necessary.” He threw aside the medical scanner and hunted for another one. “You’re probably tripping out right now on time travel paradoxes, or something equally ridiculous. That acid blood of yours can’t handle the stress.” The back of his neck was flushed with embarrassment--a violent, visceral reaction. “We’ll just get you back to normal. Now where did I put—”
Spock pressed himself against McCoy’s back, feeling his ribs expand and contract with each frenetic breath. “It is true, Doctor,” Spock said, wrapping his arms around McCoy’s waist and feeling him go stiff, concerned, nervous under his touch. “That I still feel the residual effects of my brief contact with Vulcan’s past. But it is also clear that the indicated barbaric past does not control me. I was quite in control of my faculties as I returned to our time period with you.”
“...But you were going to stay,” McCoy protested weakly.
“I wanted to,” Spock agreed. McCoy smelled so good. Spock wondered if he always had and, yes, there was the typical doctorly-smell he sported. Antiseptic and sterile medical gear, a slight musk of sweat, the gentle cologne he wore on good days. This morning had been the start to a good day.
“But,” Spock continued, giving in to the urge to bury his nose in McCoy’s skin; the urge to breathe him. “I did not, for you would not have wanted me to. As you said, my life is here.”
“I said my life was here.” McCoy stood very still, and spoke very quietly.
“And our life is the same one. It exists in the same place.” He kissed the back of McCoy’s neck, and that was good, and so he did it again.
McCoy stood silently for a moment as Spock kissed his neck, the space behind his ear, his shoulders, what skin he could reach. “...You’re talking about Jim.”
Spock felt deeply affronted, although he could not place why. He recognized that it was a feeling he wouldn’t have had under normal circumstances, and somehow that made it worse. He was already recovering, yet he did not want these feelings to go away.
“Why would you assume such a thing?”
“Do you remember the jail cell on that parallel-Rome planet? Jim was separated from us and you tried to break the bars sixteen times.”
“I believe it was fifteen, Doctor.”
“And I said,” McCoy was not really talking to him anymore, was he? “Well, I was angry. And I said you wouldn’t know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling. And you looked at me like—” He turned in Spock’s arms.
Spock kept his hands on McCoy. He could recall the incident; he had been the one against a wall then, low to the ground, McCoy’s shear force of will towering over him.
“Well, like that,” McCoy said, eyes scanning Spock’s face. “And you said—”
“‘Really, Doctor?’” Spock recalled.
“And I…” McCoy took a deep breath. “Said that I missed Jim, too.”
“I believe you said you were worried about him.”
“I guess I did.” McCoy looked thoughtful. “Funny, I always remember myself saying I missed him. Strange how the mind plays tricks on you.”
“Perhaps because that was the true meaning of your words. And of my actions.”
McCoy nodded, just once, short and startled.
“What is the purpose of your recollection, Doctor?” Spock asked.
“Oh, well,” McCoy said, smiling an ethereal ghost of a smile. “I suppose I’m just an old man prattling on. After all, does every memory have to have a purpose?”
Spock could tell when his own words were being thrown back at him. It stung, but only slightly. “No,” he said. He dropped his hands. “It does not.”
“You’re fine, Spock.” McCoy turned away and began tidying up nothing at all. “Go back to your quarters and rest. You should leave, anyway, before the Captain gets here.”
Spock was quite certain Jim would not be arriving anytime soon. He was also quite certain that he knew what Jim would do if he walked in on his first officer and chief medical officer entwined. There would be no surprise; in fact, the result could be good. Spock could imagine Jim’s hand in his own, McCoy’s lips against his, Jim’s tan skin against McCoy’s pale body. Jim would be amenable, perhaps even eager.
Which was precisely why Spock nodded curtly and folded himself back up. He was, after all, not a barbarian. He would never hurt McCoy with that.
“Very well, Doctor. Thank you for your time.”
He was certain he had never thanked McCoy in quite that way before. He didn’t dwell on it. McCoy stood stiffly in the center of the room as he left, eyes downcast. His hair was in disarray. The door shushed open for Spock and closed just as easily.
Spock carried with him the taste of McCoy on his lips.