A Temporary Madness: A1, P33
Title: A Temporary Madness
Summary: The story of two lives becoming one - which is easier said than done when one's divorced, the other's neurotic, and both suffer from the unfortunate malady of being friends with James T. Kirk.
Overall Rating: NC17.
Overall Warnings: strong language, explicit sexual content, moderate violence.
Chapter Specifics:
- 2,000 words.
- Rated PG13.
- No warnings.
Arc One, Part Thirty-Three
McCoy woke to the now-familiar hollow hiss of an inhaler, and followed the shifting warmth to a pair of lean shoulders, curling back against the flushed-warm skin and rubbing his stubble against one blade like a cat. The skin between those shoulders was warm and soft and felt surprisingly delicate; the run of spine under his cheek wriggled as he rubbed, and there was a faint murmur from somewhere else in the bed.
"M'nin'," he mumbled, and was answered with a second hiss and the clatter of an inhaler being dropped back on the bedside table. "'Kay?"
"Yes," Spock shifted back into his hold, and McCoy took the opportunity to lazily explore, stroking his hands up through chest hair and whipcord muscle, rubbing briefly under the collarbone, before smoothing back and playing with the sharp edges of a hip further down. "You are...particularly tactile."
"Mhmm."
"You are also incoherent."
"Mm."
Spock seemed to give up on getting a response, turning over and twisting further into McCoy's arms to press his head back into the pillows and situate himself close enough that they breathed the same air, the faint smell of medication hanging between them briefly. McCoy looped an arm over his back to drag him closer, and rubbed a foot experimentally up the back of a long calf, stroking the back of the knee with his toes. They were a tangled mess, and more or less everything could be reached somehow. They were warm, importantly, unlike the cold, slimy-wet-towel feel that had been hanging in the air since New Year's Day, and McCoy was more than simply reluctant to move.
"Day s'it?"
"It is Saturday morning."
It was official. He wasn't moving.
"G'd. N'w'rk."
McCoy could feel Spock staring at him, and grunted, tugging him a hair closer and twisting to burrow his nose into a warm neck. His pulse was barely twitching in his jugular; it was so slow as to be sleeping, relaxed and content and familiar. He might not know the numbers, but he knew the beat of Spock's resting pulse.
"G't'sleep," he yawned, rubbing his stubble against the nearest edge of collarbone and receiving an especially nice squirm for it. He'd have to remember that.
An arm curled about the bottom of his ribs, long fingers splaying themselves over his side, and he smiled, kissing the slow heartbeat and feeling the murmur of contentment through the skin rather than truly hearing it. The fingers fluttered and stilled again - after a moment, there was a ripple of movement and a pair of lips pressed a kiss into his temple, barely-there and light.
He suppressed the smile, and feigned sleep.
It was late February; it had only taken five months since discovering the asthma to persuade Spock to at least allow McCoy within a hundred yards of the clinic for his almost-monthly injections and check-up.
It had been a hell of a row, but McCoy had just barely won it.
He had to wait in the car. He wasn't allowed to come into the building with Spock, never mind the actual consultation room, but it was a lot closer than he'd been expecting to wrestle out of that battle so soon, and so he didn't mind. He took the opportunity to sneak into the clinic once Spock was definitely in with the asthma nurse and steal a handful of leaflets on home care for asthmatics, and tips on helping for friends and family. He'd have to hide them, or Spock would have kittens and refuse to let him within a hundred miles, but it was a job well done.
He laughed at the angry expression when Spock slid back into the car, though, unable to help himself, and said: "Don't like needles?"
"Needles are perfectly acceptable," Spock said frostily, rubbing his upper arm like a furious child. "The woman that wielded them on this occasion, however..."
"Slam them in like she was a javelin thrower?"
"No. She opted to do it slowly."
McCoy winced. There was no injection more painful than one done slowly. Stab it in and yank it out was a much better option. "Must have been a new nurse."
"Or a sadist," Spock grumbled.
"You'll want a sweet next for being brave," McCoy mocked, and Spock lashed out to punch him in the arm. "Ow. Sweet Jesus, alright. How about we start at the north end of the precinct and stop by the bakery for cookies?"
Spock had a surprising sweet tooth for soft-dough cookies, McCoy had discovered a week into the new year, and he ruthlessly exploited it now whenever he could. Spock didn't seem to mind, and murmured an agreement before putting the new prescription leaflet into the glove compartment.
"We'll stop at the pharmacy and fill that on the way home," McCoy offered casually.
"Which home?"
"Mine," he said. "Jim texted while you were in there. Sulu's got family coming over so he's getting kicked out and proposes pizza and a movie in my living room."
Spock looked like he was considering as McCoy put the car in the gear and peeled away from the clinic, and said, "Very well," as they joined the traffic heading into the city centre. One of the perks of McCoy's job was that he had a parking pass for one of the major parking lots just outside of their favourite shopping precinct, and he exploited that even more than Spock's cookie fetish. He hated public transport in San Francisco. He hated people in San Francisco, period. No need to add to it by using the public transport.
"I'll run you home tonight," he added. "I know you didn't bring enough pills for two days."
Spock said nothing to that, unsurprisingly, but it was a far cry from the fights that had spotted those first few weeks after McCoy had worked it out, and the peace was not such a fragile one. It was still a long uphill battle, but McCoy was beginning to think that he could maybe seen the crest of the hill at the top. Maybe.
"You're gonna get diabetes from those cookies, you know," he warned.
Spock offered a small smile. "I know."
McCoy laughed, and turned into the network that made up the downtown area, joining the queue for his favoured parking lot and reaching for the token on the dashboard.
Approaching the gate, Spock's hand curled into his elbow and squeezed lightly before letting go. He didn't say a word, and McCoy didn't ask.
He had the feeling that he already knew.
"Goddamn, it's cold," McCoy grumbled as they stepped out of the store into the shopping precinct, hunching his shoulders against the icy wind and jamming his hands into his pockets. "Damn. You still need to get that book?"
"Yes," Spock never did anything so normal as to hunch against the wind, but a faint flush was beginning to creep into his nose and cheeks against the harsh weather. It looked...kind of weird, actually. "If it is too cold, however..."
"Nah, I won't freeze in the next twenty minutes," McCoy grumbled, dodging around an obnoxious woman with a stroller. "But there's a bottle of bourbon back home with my name on it."
"If it is in your house, then metaphorically, yes."
"Do you have a degree in smartassery?"
"No," Spock said blankly. "I have a degree in biotechnology."
"Oh my God, I'm dating the most pedantic man in the universe," McCoy muttered.
"I believe that prize must go to Richard Dawkins."
"That mouthy atheist?" McCoy mused. "Nah, he's just a lippy bastard."
"Ah, I see. More like you than I, then?"
McCoy snorted. "I believe in God, thank you very much."
"No, you believe in free food to mark familial occasions, rampant blasphemy, and contravening almost all of the ten commandments. Your belief in any specific God is so loose as to be unreal."
McCoy laughed aloud at that. Most people preferred to tiptoe around politics and religion; Spock waded knee-deep and proceeded to shoot the fish in the proverbial barrel.
"I believe something created the universe."
"As do I, but not a supernatural something with any interest in my life."
"Why would he be? You're Buddhist."
"Roughly as Buddhist as you are Christian."
"You're vegetarian," McCoy pointed out, dodging around a small army of teenagers with tiny bicycles that seemed a bit pointless.
"And you celebrate Christmas; what is your point?"
"Touché," McCoy snickered, hunching his shoulders against another blast of wind through the narrow street. "As do you, may I point out."
"Of course," Spock said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the universe, and McCoy wished they were alone. That holier-than-thou voice was like a match to kindling; he wanted to grab him right now, and he'd get a slap for it in the middle of the shopping district.
"You're one of those big bang theory, evolution-toting eggheads, aren't you?"
"If you are about to confess to being a creationist, then we are over," Spock warned, probably only half-joking.
"I thought you were meant to be big on tolerance?"
"Tolerance of differing beliefs, not outright idiocy."
McCoy snickered, imagining what his momma would say to being called an idiot by a mixed-race, non-American Buddhist who worked in medical research. "What if I believed in intelligent design?" he asked, coughing when a woman sailed past in a cloud of perfume. "Jesus, she musta bathed in that. What if I - what?"
He stopped when Spock's finger and thumb caught his coat sleeve at the elbow, and turned. Spock was...not frowning, but the placid expression had been replaced with something McCoy was coming to recognise as disquiet, at the very least.
"Spock?"
He shifted, glancing about the precinct, before stepping back and ducking into a small alleyway between two of the stores, slipping into the shadows as skilfully as any thief. McCoy followed, the confusion clearing when Spock hunched his upper body over his own hands and drew the still somewhat unfamiliar plastic from his pocket.
"Oh," he said, and Spock's shoulders hunched in tighter. He rubbed a hand over the closer arch as the first rasp hit his ears. "Okay. Come on, don't lean over like that. Straighten up a bit, c'mon."
Spock did as he was told, eyes closed and jaw tense, and McCoy stepped between him and the street to block the light - and the view - a little better, laying his other hand over his stomach and judging the aborted flex of exhalation.
"You think you're gonna go?"
Spock took another dose and stilled entirely for a long, long minute, before breathing out slowly and shaking his head. His ribs still felt somewhat clenched.
"I...apologise," he whispered.
"Don't," McCoy said flatly. "You're doin' the right thing. S'all I ever wanted from you."
Spock cracked a very faint smile, giving in finally to McCoy's arm and sliding into the offered embrace, tucking his face into the collar of McCoy's coat and taking very careful, measured breaths. "You often want intercourse."
"Well, not right now," McCoy agreed. "How you doin'?"
"Better," Spock murmured, and McCoy kissed the chill skin of his forehead.
"Thank you," he murmured there, and he felt the frown.
"For what?"
"Trustin' me," he said quietly. "I know you don't like doin' it in public, and I know you ain't comfortable yet - but thank you. For tryin'."
After a moment, the frown eased again, and Spock turned fully into the embrace, his arms coming up to return it - one hand still clutching the plastic under the fingers. And for the first time, McCoy was sure. They could do it.
They could do this.
Next: Arc One, Part Thirty-Four
Summary: The story of two lives becoming one - which is easier said than done when one's divorced, the other's neurotic, and both suffer from the unfortunate malady of being friends with James T. Kirk.
Overall Rating: NC17.
Overall Warnings: strong language, explicit sexual content, moderate violence.
Chapter Specifics:
- 2,000 words.
- Rated PG13.
- No warnings.
Arc One, Part Thirty-Three
McCoy woke to the now-familiar hollow hiss of an inhaler, and followed the shifting warmth to a pair of lean shoulders, curling back against the flushed-warm skin and rubbing his stubble against one blade like a cat. The skin between those shoulders was warm and soft and felt surprisingly delicate; the run of spine under his cheek wriggled as he rubbed, and there was a faint murmur from somewhere else in the bed.
"M'nin'," he mumbled, and was answered with a second hiss and the clatter of an inhaler being dropped back on the bedside table. "'Kay?"
"Yes," Spock shifted back into his hold, and McCoy took the opportunity to lazily explore, stroking his hands up through chest hair and whipcord muscle, rubbing briefly under the collarbone, before smoothing back and playing with the sharp edges of a hip further down. "You are...particularly tactile."
"Mhmm."
"You are also incoherent."
"Mm."
Spock seemed to give up on getting a response, turning over and twisting further into McCoy's arms to press his head back into the pillows and situate himself close enough that they breathed the same air, the faint smell of medication hanging between them briefly. McCoy looped an arm over his back to drag him closer, and rubbed a foot experimentally up the back of a long calf, stroking the back of the knee with his toes. They were a tangled mess, and more or less everything could be reached somehow. They were warm, importantly, unlike the cold, slimy-wet-towel feel that had been hanging in the air since New Year's Day, and McCoy was more than simply reluctant to move.
"Day s'it?"
"It is Saturday morning."
It was official. He wasn't moving.
"G'd. N'w'rk."
McCoy could feel Spock staring at him, and grunted, tugging him a hair closer and twisting to burrow his nose into a warm neck. His pulse was barely twitching in his jugular; it was so slow as to be sleeping, relaxed and content and familiar. He might not know the numbers, but he knew the beat of Spock's resting pulse.
"G't'sleep," he yawned, rubbing his stubble against the nearest edge of collarbone and receiving an especially nice squirm for it. He'd have to remember that.
An arm curled about the bottom of his ribs, long fingers splaying themselves over his side, and he smiled, kissing the slow heartbeat and feeling the murmur of contentment through the skin rather than truly hearing it. The fingers fluttered and stilled again - after a moment, there was a ripple of movement and a pair of lips pressed a kiss into his temple, barely-there and light.
He suppressed the smile, and feigned sleep.
It was late February; it had only taken five months since discovering the asthma to persuade Spock to at least allow McCoy within a hundred yards of the clinic for his almost-monthly injections and check-up.
It had been a hell of a row, but McCoy had just barely won it.
He had to wait in the car. He wasn't allowed to come into the building with Spock, never mind the actual consultation room, but it was a lot closer than he'd been expecting to wrestle out of that battle so soon, and so he didn't mind. He took the opportunity to sneak into the clinic once Spock was definitely in with the asthma nurse and steal a handful of leaflets on home care for asthmatics, and tips on helping for friends and family. He'd have to hide them, or Spock would have kittens and refuse to let him within a hundred miles, but it was a job well done.
He laughed at the angry expression when Spock slid back into the car, though, unable to help himself, and said: "Don't like needles?"
"Needles are perfectly acceptable," Spock said frostily, rubbing his upper arm like a furious child. "The woman that wielded them on this occasion, however..."
"Slam them in like she was a javelin thrower?"
"No. She opted to do it slowly."
McCoy winced. There was no injection more painful than one done slowly. Stab it in and yank it out was a much better option. "Must have been a new nurse."
"Or a sadist," Spock grumbled.
"You'll want a sweet next for being brave," McCoy mocked, and Spock lashed out to punch him in the arm. "Ow. Sweet Jesus, alright. How about we start at the north end of the precinct and stop by the bakery for cookies?"
Spock had a surprising sweet tooth for soft-dough cookies, McCoy had discovered a week into the new year, and he ruthlessly exploited it now whenever he could. Spock didn't seem to mind, and murmured an agreement before putting the new prescription leaflet into the glove compartment.
"We'll stop at the pharmacy and fill that on the way home," McCoy offered casually.
"Which home?"
"Mine," he said. "Jim texted while you were in there. Sulu's got family coming over so he's getting kicked out and proposes pizza and a movie in my living room."
Spock looked like he was considering as McCoy put the car in the gear and peeled away from the clinic, and said, "Very well," as they joined the traffic heading into the city centre. One of the perks of McCoy's job was that he had a parking pass for one of the major parking lots just outside of their favourite shopping precinct, and he exploited that even more than Spock's cookie fetish. He hated public transport in San Francisco. He hated people in San Francisco, period. No need to add to it by using the public transport.
"I'll run you home tonight," he added. "I know you didn't bring enough pills for two days."
Spock said nothing to that, unsurprisingly, but it was a far cry from the fights that had spotted those first few weeks after McCoy had worked it out, and the peace was not such a fragile one. It was still a long uphill battle, but McCoy was beginning to think that he could maybe seen the crest of the hill at the top. Maybe.
"You're gonna get diabetes from those cookies, you know," he warned.
Spock offered a small smile. "I know."
McCoy laughed, and turned into the network that made up the downtown area, joining the queue for his favoured parking lot and reaching for the token on the dashboard.
Approaching the gate, Spock's hand curled into his elbow and squeezed lightly before letting go. He didn't say a word, and McCoy didn't ask.
He had the feeling that he already knew.
"Goddamn, it's cold," McCoy grumbled as they stepped out of the store into the shopping precinct, hunching his shoulders against the icy wind and jamming his hands into his pockets. "Damn. You still need to get that book?"
"Yes," Spock never did anything so normal as to hunch against the wind, but a faint flush was beginning to creep into his nose and cheeks against the harsh weather. It looked...kind of weird, actually. "If it is too cold, however..."
"Nah, I won't freeze in the next twenty minutes," McCoy grumbled, dodging around an obnoxious woman with a stroller. "But there's a bottle of bourbon back home with my name on it."
"If it is in your house, then metaphorically, yes."
"Do you have a degree in smartassery?"
"No," Spock said blankly. "I have a degree in biotechnology."
"Oh my God, I'm dating the most pedantic man in the universe," McCoy muttered.
"I believe that prize must go to Richard Dawkins."
"That mouthy atheist?" McCoy mused. "Nah, he's just a lippy bastard."
"Ah, I see. More like you than I, then?"
McCoy snorted. "I believe in God, thank you very much."
"No, you believe in free food to mark familial occasions, rampant blasphemy, and contravening almost all of the ten commandments. Your belief in any specific God is so loose as to be unreal."
McCoy laughed aloud at that. Most people preferred to tiptoe around politics and religion; Spock waded knee-deep and proceeded to shoot the fish in the proverbial barrel.
"I believe something created the universe."
"As do I, but not a supernatural something with any interest in my life."
"Why would he be? You're Buddhist."
"Roughly as Buddhist as you are Christian."
"You're vegetarian," McCoy pointed out, dodging around a small army of teenagers with tiny bicycles that seemed a bit pointless.
"And you celebrate Christmas; what is your point?"
"Touché," McCoy snickered, hunching his shoulders against another blast of wind through the narrow street. "As do you, may I point out."
"Of course," Spock said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the universe, and McCoy wished they were alone. That holier-than-thou voice was like a match to kindling; he wanted to grab him right now, and he'd get a slap for it in the middle of the shopping district.
"You're one of those big bang theory, evolution-toting eggheads, aren't you?"
"If you are about to confess to being a creationist, then we are over," Spock warned, probably only half-joking.
"I thought you were meant to be big on tolerance?"
"Tolerance of differing beliefs, not outright idiocy."
McCoy snickered, imagining what his momma would say to being called an idiot by a mixed-race, non-American Buddhist who worked in medical research. "What if I believed in intelligent design?" he asked, coughing when a woman sailed past in a cloud of perfume. "Jesus, she musta bathed in that. What if I - what?"
He stopped when Spock's finger and thumb caught his coat sleeve at the elbow, and turned. Spock was...not frowning, but the placid expression had been replaced with something McCoy was coming to recognise as disquiet, at the very least.
"Spock?"
He shifted, glancing about the precinct, before stepping back and ducking into a small alleyway between two of the stores, slipping into the shadows as skilfully as any thief. McCoy followed, the confusion clearing when Spock hunched his upper body over his own hands and drew the still somewhat unfamiliar plastic from his pocket.
"Oh," he said, and Spock's shoulders hunched in tighter. He rubbed a hand over the closer arch as the first rasp hit his ears. "Okay. Come on, don't lean over like that. Straighten up a bit, c'mon."
Spock did as he was told, eyes closed and jaw tense, and McCoy stepped between him and the street to block the light - and the view - a little better, laying his other hand over his stomach and judging the aborted flex of exhalation.
"You think you're gonna go?"
Spock took another dose and stilled entirely for a long, long minute, before breathing out slowly and shaking his head. His ribs still felt somewhat clenched.
"I...apologise," he whispered.
"Don't," McCoy said flatly. "You're doin' the right thing. S'all I ever wanted from you."
Spock cracked a very faint smile, giving in finally to McCoy's arm and sliding into the offered embrace, tucking his face into the collar of McCoy's coat and taking very careful, measured breaths. "You often want intercourse."
"Well, not right now," McCoy agreed. "How you doin'?"
"Better," Spock murmured, and McCoy kissed the chill skin of his forehead.
"Thank you," he murmured there, and he felt the frown.
"For what?"
"Trustin' me," he said quietly. "I know you don't like doin' it in public, and I know you ain't comfortable yet - but thank you. For tryin'."
After a moment, the frown eased again, and Spock turned fully into the embrace, his arms coming up to return it - one hand still clutching the plastic under the fingers. And for the first time, McCoy was sure. They could do it.
They could do this.
Next: Arc One, Part Thirty-Four