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syredronningTitle: Private Men
Author: syredronning aka Acidqueen
Series: AOS
Codes: K/Mc, S/Mc, Spock Prime
Rating: NC-17, warning: S/Mc non-con (see note)
Words: 13,000
Author's Note: Long prompt was long at: http://community.livejournal.com/st_xi_kink/4532.html?thread=10989236#t10989236 and I just noticed that I didn't meet it 100%. Sorry, anon! Also, it's written in old school style, blame me :)
Many thanks to Emme for the beta! All remaining errors and weaknesses are mine.
Summary: There's a fine difference between things being swept under the carpet and things left unsaid.
'It will be fine, Bones,' Jim had said. 'You'll get your renewed flight license and the two of you will have some time to talk to each other,' Jim had said.
'Great, that's just great,' McCoy thought as he clamped his hands around the armrests of the shuttle's pilot seat, staring at the blinking controls. Bad enough that all officers of the Enterprise were forced to renew their piloting license twice a year by absolving a small theoretic test, a flight of two hours and a manual landing on a planet or in a shuttle bay. It gave McCoy the creeps every time he had to do it.
But doing so with Spock, of all people, looking over his shoulders was just about killing him.
If he got back alive, he'd wring Jim's neck personally and with pleasure for doing this to him.
He understood Jim's reasoning; it bothered the captain that two of the three leading officers were only colleagues, lacking the fine-tuned friendship level that branded really marvelous teams. Spock and he got along, but nothing more; they acknowledged each other on a professional level, could live with Jim's demand for breakfast together every morning (if not tied up by duties), and he managed not to bitch too often about Spock's logical ice-cold advice (yes, he was proud of his restraint).
But other than that, McCoy was happy to deal with his own staff in med bay and keep the crew and their regularly beaten-up captain alive and functioning. Having Spock now only half a meter away from him, eyeing his every action with the air of an academy teacher checking out a particularly stupid student was undoing him, and he'd harped at the Vulcan over the course of the last hours more than in the last months in addition.
"We are close to the atmosphere of the planet. You should -"
"Jeeze Spock, I know it's time to initiate the landing sequence." McCoy snapped and moved forward on the seat, pressing the appropriate buttons.
The Vulcan shed him a look that spoke of disapproval. Remarkable how much emotion this guy could transmit with his stony face once you learned to interpret the details. "One manual landing is mandatory for renewing the license."
"I'll do that on the way back." McCoy said. He knew that in principle landing in a shuttle bay was a lot more difficult than landing on a planet, but on the Enterprise he had Scotty who'd already backed him last time with some slight tractor adjustments when the shuttle had been a little close to the hangar sides. Swearing under his breath, he set the landing point and controlled the computed trajectory. The planet was class M, with a median temperature of twenty degrees Celsius and no major life forms. Their mission was to meet with the local research team: Spock would collect their results and reports, and McCoy would perform their required health checks. It would've been a lot easier to just beam them over and check them on the Enterprise. The biobeds are much better equipped for diagnosis than McCoy's mobile medical set. But that would've made this shuttle trip unnecessary, and it was the captain's prerogative to decide another course of action.
He would get Jim's ass for this. For the next four weeks.
"Get the fuck away from my console." McCoy said darkly as he noticed Spock was about to interfere with his settings.
"As you may have noticed doctor, there is a lightening storm on your processed course."
"It's the computer's proposed course. Shouldn't you approve of something another machine puts out?" McCoy stated, eyeing the data with a frown. Not that he remembered all that much about the physics of planetary atmospheres, but the shuttle's computer was able to calculate the severity of storms from the differences in atmospheric pressure - as long as it didn't give a warning, the way should be safe.
A bit of sweat was breaking on the back of his neck, and he absent-mindedly rubbed the area with his left hand while staring on the read-outs. Yeah, everything looked fine from his point of view.
"Any reason why the computer should be wrong?"
Spock's features showed a ghost of a frown. "The data is conclusive for a safe journey. However, there are some irregularities in the gathered information."
McCoy checked everything: temperature, moistness, air pressure, cloud speed - all fifteen data points were accounted for. "Every fucking value is in the green range. What's that about? You've got a hunch or something?" He loved pushing Spock to show some human emotion once in a while; having seen Spock throttle Jim half to death had made it clear to him that the Vulcan harbored some damn unfinished business regarding emotional control, and in his opinion it would be a lot safer if Spock let it out just one bit at a time. But even with Uhura he never really did, as she'd told the doctor confidentially.
"Some gut feeling that something just ain't right? Is something itching in your pointed ears?" McCoy looked at Spock, eyebrow raised in challenge. If it had been Jim, McCoy would already have changed course, because Jim's hunches were gold. But Spock would've to lay down hard proof to get him press another button, and not just because McCoy only waited for him to rely on emotion - Spock himself would see anything else as failure.
"My ears do not itch." Spock replied stiffly.
They sat in silence while the shuttle drew closer to the storm. Now that McCoy could see the motion of the gathering, dark clouds and the flashes within them with his own eyes, he got a gut feeling of trouble himself. The data looked still fine - but the reality didn't, and he was suddenly very sure that something was wrong with these readings. He pushed some buttons, double-checked the readings and didn't mind when Spock joined in, doing some complicated calculations of which McCoy understood next to nothing.
"The sensors can't be right," McCoy stated. "This isn't just a little storm - it's more like a hurricane."
"There were no hurricanes reported for the planet," Spock said. "You should know that from the mission briefing."
"Oh fuck off, man," McCoy replied seriously annoyed. "You've got eyes as good as mine, or possibly better. And I'll set another course now."
Being already close to the storm and not having the energy reserve to boost the shuttle, it was hard to find a trajectory that would not hit its center. Suddenly, Spock's hand was on his, stopping him from laying in a new course.
"The data clearly shows that this storm will not endanger the shuttle."
"The data's wrong, Spock. It's really the wrong moment for you getting all contradictory. Your hunch was right. I was wrong. Let's do something." McCoy shook off Spock's hand with a glare. Damn, his shirt was soaked in sweat by now.
"There are no indications off sensor failures. All calibration subroutines were performed perfectly."
"Dammit -"
Whatever curse McCoy would've latched on his colleague, it died when with a thunder that made his ears almost rupture the shuttle was hit by lightening - 'shouldn't it be protected against that?' - and kicked off course. McCoy was thrown out of his chair and was so disoriented for a moment that he just lay there on the ground, trying to gather his wits. Then he pulled himself up and back into the seat.
"Everything alright, Spock?" he called over to the Vulcan, the noise of the alert and the whine of the engine almost drowning his voice. There was no reply from the slack figure on the ground next to the co-pilot seat, but he had no time to play doctor, now that the shuttle's automatic controls were offline and they were rocking and reeling down through the storm towards the planet's surface. If he didn't manage to get some control over the course within the next few minutes, they'd fall like a stone and be done. And they wouldn't look pretty, McCoy knew from experience.
In the end it was thinking of Jim, drawing from his memories of Jim's particular inner strength and belief that they'd make it alive, that made McCoy succeed with his endeavor. They were still too fast and it would be a rough landing, but the warnings had gone from red to yellow, from "you'll look like hacked meat" to "you'll probably get through surgery".
"Spock!" McCoy called again, but still no reaction. "And I've always thought you've got a skull made of iron," he murmured. It wasn't a good moment to learn that Vulcans could get knocked out just like any other humanoid. Fingers on the controls, adjusting every single of them by hand, he had no time to wipe the sweat from his brows. The ground was now rapidly drawing closer, and he took a deep breath.
"Well, Spock, I know you don't believe in luck, but we really could use some. So let's hope and pray." And then he didn't think of anything but holding the nose of the crashing shuttle up and steady while it was sliding over sandy ground, throwing sparks, until the ride ended in a bunch of trees. And as he was thrown against the front window, his last thought was 'I'm sorry, Jim'.
*
When McCoy woke up, he found himself lying on green, rather soft grass. Above him, something like a bird chirped; other than that, all was silent. Too silent. He slightly shook his head, as if he could get rid of his disorientation this way.
'Stupid idea', he thought as a blinding pain flashed through his head. It got down to a bearable level once he resigned himself to moving very slowly (and once the contents of his stomach found a convenient place under a close-by bush). But all in all, he was remarkably unhurt and in one piece.
Unlike the shuttle that had smashed against two large trees - and he'd been damn lucky that he'd been thrown out right between them, otherwise the rescue team could've scraped a pile of smashed bones from a tree bark.
Carefully he walked around it. The door didn't open right away, of course, and he pulled at it, drawing strength from muttering profanities until it finally gave in and fell out, hitting his knee. With a groan he sank to the ground, breathing hard.
'Get up, doctor. You've got a job to do.'
"Spock?" he tried to call, but his throat was dry and hurting and his voice didn't carry at all. He crawled into the shuttle, all sharp debris and gloomy shadows of destruction between glaring stripes of sunlight where the hull was broken. "Goddammit, Spock, answer me!" His hands met the medikit and the transportable medical diagnosis next to.
'Rule number one: self-preservation first,' McCoy thought and gave himself a shot of pain reliever. Because an incapacitated doctor wouldn't be able to help anyone else. Then he took a gulp of water before he proceeded to the front where he finally found Spock. The Vulcan was deadly, greenly pale, his heart-beat unnaturally slow and his breathing barely audible. There was a wound on his head but not too much blood. With shaking hands, McCoy waved the tricorder over Spock to get a first impression.
The data looked good, almost too good. But when he squinted at the details, he saw how the numbers were a little off. 'Oh fuck,' he thought as he compared it to an older scan of the Vulcan. This looked like some kind of nerve damage, and not as from the fall - more like done by electricity. Though why the flash should only have gone through Spock and not McCoy was something of a miracle - which the Vulcan might possibly explain at some other time. For now, he needed to stabilize the man. Choosing from his small collection of drugs, he administered a pain killer first. Then he selected a tranquilizer from the box. No telling how a nerve-damaged Vulcan would act, he thought as he readied the hypo - a second later his hand was suspended mid-air, as Spock looked at him wide-eyed.
"No!"
"Everything's okay, Spock," McCoy said in his best doctor's voice. "Just something to reduce the pain, okay?" He talked to him a little more, but when Spock's brutal grip didn't loosen one bit, McCoy finally lost it. "Dammit Spock, this hurts. Let my arm go!"
With one sharp movement Spock pulled him down on his arm, making McCoy gasp in pain. "You will never again speak to me like this," the Vulcan snarled, then pushed him away with just as much verve. McCoy was thrown against one smashed seat, the armrest knocking the air out of his lungs.
"Okay, Spock, okay," he muttered, trying to calm down himself and the obviously delirious Vulcan. Spock drew himself up from the floor, and McCoy could see that he limped but it didn't stop the man from stepping in front of him and hauling him up on his uniform shirt.
"No, doctor, this is not okay," Spock stated, murder in his eyes. "Okay is a very vague definition that nevertheless completely fails to describe this situation."
This wasn't the open rage he'd shown with Jim on the bridge that day, but it was rage nevertheless.
"Okay - I mean, yes, you're right, it's not okay, we're not okay, I'm sorry for getting on your nerves but I hate shuttle flights and it's not as if Jim didn't know that. I'm sorry." McCoy blathered along, trying to buy some time until he could maybe get a grip on the hypo not far from him and apply it, or until Spock would have a reasonable moment or maybe just break down again unconsciously.
None of those outcomes, however, turned to reality as Spock threw him into the deformed shuttle wall. With a groan McCoy slammed to the floor, seeing stars for a moment.
Spock dragged him up again. "No more insults. No more challenges." Every statement was accentuated by a punch in his stomach.
"No more you!"
"Oh, great, finally acting on your real feelings?" McCoy couldn't help snarling. He might go down, but not without resistance.
He had expected hands around his throat, but got a fist in his face instead, feeling his nose break under the impact. Pain washed over him, costing some seconds of his memory because next thing he knew Spock picked him up from the floor, now indeed his hands around McCoy's throat.
"Always insulting. Always ridiculing."
"And I always knew you were a damn control freak that would lose it some day," McCoy pressed out, fighting for air. "Just like with Jim."
It earned him another blow in his face, he tasted the blood on his tongue from the split lips and where the teeth had cut the flesh of his oral cavity. He expected to be pulled up again for the next slap, but Spock only lifted him to his knees. He groaned as his broken nose was shoved against the Vulcan's groin.
'So now we know what he really wanted to do all the time,' McCoy thought through the haze of pain.
Iron hands clamped his head as Spock rubbed his growing bulge against McCoy's battered face. The erection underneath the fabric slipped against his nose and lips and up his cheeks, again and again, hardening with every move. McCoy prayed this would be enough, but then Spock unlaced one hand from his hair and opened the fly. The erection was large, hard, green, and unceremoniously pushed against McCoy's lips.
McCoy drew away as far as he could. "Fuck you," he muttered.
There was the fist in his face again, and this time he could feel two of his teeth go. Tears started breaking against his will and damn, Spock shouldn't see him cry, but this was biology and didn't the bastard look smug when he pulled him up again, once again shoving his hard dick against McCoy's lips.
McCoy gave in.
Good thing he'd learned how to deep throat with Jim since Spock mouth-fucked him brutally and perseveringly, the inhumanly strong hands on his head holding him in position. Spock came deep in his mouth and held him until his body started shaking from asphyxiation; then he tossed McCoy against the shuttle wall again.
'Dumped like waste,' McCoy thought before he blackened out.
He awoke some unknown time later. His eyes were so swollen he could barely see a thing, and as he moved, he couldn't help groaning, 'goddamn this hurts so much.'
Spock was on him in the wink of an eye, dragging him up.
"Not done yet?" McCoy couldn't help muttering, and he knew it was stupid and it might cost him another tooth or an eye or whatever, but he just had to prove himself he still wasn't broken - not really.
The blow send him whirling into the broken console, and then the iron fingers were back, one around his neck, one at his own pants and yeah, it made sense that Spock would go for that this time. It almost didn't matter. It was surreal enough anyway. Spock took him from behind, shoving his hurting body over broken buttons and sharp metal pieces with every move, lacing those hands into his hair and smashing his face into the console once in a while. McCoy blackened out in between, but when he returned to consciousness, Spock was still upon him, had obviously waited because it wasn't the same fun to fuck dead meat as it was to rape his suffering fellow officer. When the Vulcan finally came, McCoy could feel the hot stream pumping into him, making him feel used and dirty in a way he'd never thought possible, and he blackened out again as Spock pulled out and trashed him back into the wall.
When he woke up the next time, he tried so very hard not to groan, but it was a lost cause. There were hands clamping his shirt again, and when Spock looked into his eyes, what was left and working of them, McCoy shuddered, feeling an overwhelming panic washing over him. But suddenly, the unbelievable happened; Spock's grip loosened, and Spock sagged to the ground and onto his back. For a while, McCoy just sat there and stared with baited breath to see if Spock would get up again, but he didn't. Spock's injuries, whatever they were, had finally caught up and rendered him unconscious.
He considered just staying put and hoping for Spock to die. It seemed like a good idea.
'You're a doctor, Leonard. Now get a grip on yourself. Even after all of this, he's still your patient.'
He finally pulled himself together and crouched to the medical diagnosis unit, discarded but still working. With trembling hands, working more from memory than from the little he could see, he set some parameters and scanned Spock. The output took a moment, and he thought of moving to the bottle of water he saw in a small distance, but knew he probably wouldn't make it back. Then the unit signaled the result.
Damn.
*
When Spock woke up, it was into darkness. His body felt boneless, inactive - not under his control.
"It's the tranquilizer," he heard McCoy saying quietly, and he tried turning his head but only his eyes obeyed.
"Sorry, had to," McCoy added. Spock took a moment to stare at his colleague. The man was leaning against the wall and looked terrible - the face battered, the nose crooked in an unnatural angle. There were dark stains all over the rugged shirt and he sat curled, knees drawn up against his chest, arms tightly around them, a typical position for humans in pain.
McCoy was in pain, it radiated off of him, Spock realized. And he remembered…
"I - did this to you."
McCoy brushed his hand over his split lip. "Yeah," he said.
"I beat you and -"
"Yeah." McCoy nodded.
"But - why?"
"You've taken an electric hit that fried the Vulcan equivalent of the amygdala in your brain, the center of your emotional control. That totally set you off. No control at all, and god knows I've gotten on your nerves enough over the last hours to tick you off by snapping even once."
"There is - no excuse." Spock closed his eyes. "Brutality, a loss of control like this - is unworthy of any Vulcan."
"Good thing you're only half Vulcan, this way the statistics won't get spoiled." McCoy suddenly stopped, tilting his head to listen. "You hear? There's some shuttle above us. Rescue will soon be here."
"I will lose everything," Spock whispered. "Let me die."
"Damn if I didn't think about it, but I can't," McCoy said roughly.
"My position -"
"It was an accident. It wasn't your fault."
"I've lost control with the captain already. Now with you."
"Then go get some goddamn therapy to fix your emotional problems. Besides, in both cases you were under extreme pressure and even brain-damaged this time."
"Nyota. She will not accept this."
McCoy nodded, knowing how adamant Uhura was when it came to sexual assaults. "Yeah. If she learned about it. But she won't."
Spock opened his eyes again. "Not learn about it?" he rasped.
"Right. We're not gonna tell. Because if this comes out, you'd lose Uhura, and Jim. He'd never be able to work with you like he does now and probably never get rid of the guilt for sending us out together." 'And he might not be able to deal with that knowledge,' McCoy thought. He'd seen enough couples fall apart over one of the partners being assaulted. Realizing that there are moments where you can't protect your loved ones ticks off a lot of people. No need to make it worse for Jim than it already was due to them being posted together.
"This is illogical," Spock whispered. "And dishonorable for me."
"We crashed. We were hurt. We survived. End of story," McCoy muttered.
Spock looked at the human with the swollen face, all yellow and blue, battered by his hands, who just made him an incredible offer. "I cannot accept this -" Spock started, but McCoy pulled out a hypo.
"It's going to be my story, and you'll be in no state to say something else. So you better comply." Spock gasped as the hypo pressed into his neck, then slipped into drugged sleep.
McCoy sank back with a sigh. 'They better come soon or -' with that thought, he curled on the floor, well away from Spock, and fell asleep.
*
"Doctor McCoy?" Someone gently touched his shoulder. "Can you hear me? I'm Roberts from the expedition. We've been in contact before. We're here for your rescue."
McCoy tried to open his eyes and moaned as the pain hit him full-fledged.
"Don't move," the man said, and a bottle was pressed against McCoy's raw lips. He managed to get a few gulps of water, though most of it ran down his chin and spilled on his chest.
"Anything we should know about your injuries? I've only had some basic medical first aid courses."
"Colleague's got brain damage. Needs to be kept sedated until he can get surgery," McCoy whispered.
"And you?" Roberts asked. "Seems you got a lot more injured in the accident."
McCoy craned his neck a little and experimentally moved his limbs. "I'm in pain but nothing focused. Just give me a shot and keep me horizontal. Take the medical diagnosis unit in the back. Check me when we're out of here."
Despite the pain killer, McCoy was almost blackening out when they moved him around. Horizontal wasn't really possible, as they had neither a stretcher nor room in the small shuttle to carry four scientists and two wounded men, and so McCoy ended sitting with his back against yet another shuttle wall, feeling every broken rib in his chest as he crouched down, breathing hard.
"I'm sorry," the man said. "Should I give you another shot?"
"No, would overdose." McCoy shed a glance at Spock who lay on his back, legs folded due to the lack of space. The Vulcan looked still barely hurt, only his pale face and low breathing showing the sedation.
"What happened?" Roberts asked.
"Got into the storm. Were hit by lightening that killed the shuttle's automatic flight control. Crashed. Thought there never were hurricanes around here." Speaking was a great diversion, McCoy found.
"This is the first one in five years. They are very rare, and unusual due to an ionic atmospheric component native to this planet. Filea, our physicist, was actually very happy to be able to record a lot of new data about this rare phenomenon." McCoy briefly looked at the middle-aged woman Roberts nodded towards.
"It was a great moment for our expedition," she said gently. "But I'm so very sorry you got caught in it."
"Back luck," McCoy murmured. "Shit like that can happen in space." Danger and darkness, so true. He closed his eyes, unable to keep the lids up any longer.
He must have been out of it, because next time he opened them, he was lying in a bed, his chest wrapped in bandages, his face cooler and less hurting. Next to his head, Roberts got up from a chair and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Someone must've told him in those first aid lessons that this gesture would relax his patients.
And damn if it didn't work.
"I've taken care of your worst injuries," the man said. "I've cleaned you up and given you some of the shots you'd in your bag, then scanned you." 'Wrong order,' McCoy thought, but this way most evidence should be destroyed. Nothing to connect his injuries to Spock.
"The Vulcan is still sedated as you ordered and we've heard from the Enterprise. They'll be here in about three hours to pick you up. Your captain was pretty relieved to hear you both survived."
"He better is," McCoy muttered and sank back into sleep.
*
Next time he grew aware of his surroundings, it was to the sweet low current of noise in his own med bay. He felt like he was embedded in cotton, warm and relaxed. They'd given him the really good stuff. Thank god.
"Bones. Finally!" Jim Kirk rushed up, enfolding his right hand. "When we found out what had happened, I thought I had lost you," he added more quietly, massaging his fingers in an almost painful grip.
"Not that easy," McCoy murmured.
"If you had died - I'm damn sorry I sent you out."
"It was just a shuttle trip, and necessary to boot." McCoy tried to smile, unwilling to let his man get drowned in any more useless self-accusation. "Hope my landing counted."
"Well, crashing isn't strictly regulations, but Sulu said you've worked wonders with the manual controls, so I'll make sure it counts." Jim sighed as he saw Chapel approaching.
"You better let him rest now, and get some rest yourself, captain," she said crisply.
"I'll be gone in a minute," Jim said. When she was gone, he bent forward and whispered in McCoy's ear, "Love you, Bones".
"Love you too," McCoy replied softly. "Sorry for scaring you."
"Yeah." Jim nodded, his characteristic grin reappearing at last. "I'll be back later. Don't run away."
"Won't. I'm not you."
Jim tugged his hand a last time, then he was gone. Chapel returned and fussed around with the med bed and the monitors.
"What about Spock?" McCoy asked.
"You have correctly diagnosed brain damage with the medical unit after your crash landing, but his brain seemed to have repaired itself over time. We've found only small traces of the original damage. He was released to his quarters two hours after your arrival and hasn't reported any side effects so far."
McCoy was surprised about the amount of hate that quickly surged through him, but then bottled it away. Self-healing was a lot better than having any of his staff doing surgery on the Vulcan, seeing as McCoy would have been the only one really qualified for that job and he was knocked out at that time. And it's not as if he wanted Spock to die in surgery, did he?
Maybe the idea of hiding what had happened wasn't as clever as he had originally thought. However, the idea of speaking about it and dealing with the fallout - the official investigation, Jim's guilt and emotional turmoil, the sympathetic words and pitying gazes of the crew once the usual mix of truths and assumptions circulated in the ship's rumor mill - was even worse. No way he wanted to deal with that. It might even be the end of Jim's command if the headquarters thought the officers of the Enterprise weren't able to deal with each other. They were still in the first year of their planned five year mission, and closely monitored for failure by many in the admiralty. A scandal like this would be a great pleasure to some of those asses, and McCoy had every intention of fucking them over by performing as formidable as he could, as officer and as Jim's friend.
He sighed and frowned as he noticed Chapel's stare.
"Everything alright?" she asked.
"Aside from being laid up in bed, everything's fine," he muttered. "Want to go to my quarters as soon as possible."
Chapel shook her head. "Now, you know that with all of your injuries, Doctor Moren can't discharge you for at least 24 hours."
"As if he knew anything," McCoy snapped, then regretted his words. Everyone of the newer team members was handpicked by him, so if anyone screwed up, it was his own fault. "Sorry," he mumbled.
"It's really a miracle nobody broke your nose during the academy years, if that's how you always behave," Chapel stated sharply, and damn if it didn't feel like being slapped in his face. He was at loss for words because she was more right than she could know, and it hurt like hell. Swallowing hard he watched her leave, kneading his fingers in thoughts.
*
McCoy was stuck in med bay for another day for some more mending and a tooth job, visited by several people though not by Spock (which he was thankful for), then he was released to his quarters. They were empty for now, but Jim had already announced that the kitchen was willing to prepare any southern specials that Bones would like to have so he'll see him later for dinner. McCoy wasn't hungry at all, but he embraced the sentiment of the offer and chose a small steak with baked beans. It was almost the end of the alpha shift, and with Jim tending to go longer and then having a shower in his own quarters, he'd probably have to wait for another hour, but he didn't mind. He removed his shoes and his uniform shirt and sank down on the bed, relaxing in his private surroundings, taking in its familiar smell, of himself and of Jim.
When the door bell rang, he barely noticed at first; then he ordered the computer to open the door more from habit than serious consideration. He rose from the bed in shock as his unexpected visitor turned out to be Spock, who stepped into the room until the door slid close behind him.
"What do you want?" he said, his body tensing, and wished he'd manage to deliver the words in his usual sarcasm, but there was too much insecurity - and fear, dammit - in them.
"I - we need to speak," Spock said.
"Don't know why we should."
Spock looked at him, emotionless - 'no, strike that, rather emotional' - eyes sweeping up and down and coming to rest on his face again. "I am pleased that no lasting damage has occurred."
"Well, no thanks to you," McCoy said sharply, feeling overly exposed with his bare feet and his tight black regulation t-shirt. "Spock - just get out, okay? Now."
"I deeply regret everything that you had to suffer under the actions mitigated from my brain damage," Spock said as if he hadn't heard McCoy's words at all. "I wanted to express my gratitude for your professional aid. But I do not condone the offer you forced me to accept."
"What do you want to do, tell them all?" McCoy laughed roughly. "Imaging how they'd react, Jim and Nyota and all the people who know us. How everything we've got here would fall apart over it." He'd hit a note, he could see it in Spock's features. Nyota was the best thing left to Spock besides his father. She was his human connection, the one person that would hold him in the night - and McCoy was pretty sure some of Spock's nights were rather long, meditation or not. Losing Nyota was as unthinkable to Spock as losing Jim was to McCoy.
"It is unethical to lie over such an important event," Spock said and drew closer.
"Stay away," McCoy snapped, feeling the sweat breaking in his neck.
"Besides, you cannot control your emotions regarding me," Spock added and stopped a mere inch away from McCoy's face.
"You wanna threaten me?" McCoy pressed out, fighting both his panic and the strong reflex to push his fist into Spock's face. "Fine. Go and tell. But there's no evidence left, and I won't testify your words."
Spock took a deep breath, then suddenly made a step back and lowered his head. "I apologize. The events have not left me unscathed. I agree that your decision was logical and I accept it in gratitude. However, I find we are both troubled by the events and I wish to ensure your future well-being. I want to make amends."
"Well, get that therapy, though preferably not on this ship," McCoy muttered. "And now get out."
Of course this had to be the moment in which Jim appeared, stopping right in the door as he saw the two of them standing so close together. Then he walked into the room and maneuvered the large tray in his hands down on the table.
"Hey, Spock," Jim said. "Haven't seen you in a while."
"Taking the gamma shift for now has doubled the time I am able to spend on science experiments," Spock stated. "I will leave you to your meal. Doctor, captain," he said and left.
McCoy drew a deep breath, gnawing his lower lip.
"Everything alright, Bones?" Jim eyed him, brows drawn together in thought. "First he's acting strange, now you. Anything I should know?"
"No, everything's fine," McCoy lied. And when they were huddled in bed together later, too exhausted for anything sexual, he still managed to pretend he was fine.
*
'Fine' ended the first time Jim wanted to fuck him, which was three days later. McCoy managed to divert him and turn the table to be the active one, but it was a tough job considering that his dick tried everything possible not to get hard. When he was finally buried deep inside his lover's body, staring down on the naked back, lacing one hand into Jim's hair, he was close to puking. He went through the act on automatic, years of knowing the body beneath him coming to his rescue. When he shot off at last, he felt so sick that he roughly pulled out of Jim and ran for the bathroom, where the evening meal found a sad end in the toilet bowl.
"Gotta be a side effect of the medication," he told Jim when he returned to the bedroom, subjected to Jim's concerned but also inquiring gaze.
He managed to avoid further sexual activity - which basically meant contact to Jim - for the following days, claiming health problems and his duties.
ON TO PART 2
Author: syredronning aka Acidqueen
Series: AOS
Codes: K/Mc, S/Mc, Spock Prime
Rating: NC-17, warning: S/Mc non-con (see note)
Words: 13,000
Author's Note: Long prompt was long at: http://community.livejournal.com/st_xi_kink/4532.html?thread=10989236#t10989236 and I just noticed that I didn't meet it 100%. Sorry, anon! Also, it's written in old school style, blame me :)
Many thanks to Emme for the beta! All remaining errors and weaknesses are mine.
Summary: There's a fine difference between things being swept under the carpet and things left unsaid.
'It will be fine, Bones,' Jim had said. 'You'll get your renewed flight license and the two of you will have some time to talk to each other,' Jim had said.
'Great, that's just great,' McCoy thought as he clamped his hands around the armrests of the shuttle's pilot seat, staring at the blinking controls. Bad enough that all officers of the Enterprise were forced to renew their piloting license twice a year by absolving a small theoretic test, a flight of two hours and a manual landing on a planet or in a shuttle bay. It gave McCoy the creeps every time he had to do it.
But doing so with Spock, of all people, looking over his shoulders was just about killing him.
If he got back alive, he'd wring Jim's neck personally and with pleasure for doing this to him.
He understood Jim's reasoning; it bothered the captain that two of the three leading officers were only colleagues, lacking the fine-tuned friendship level that branded really marvelous teams. Spock and he got along, but nothing more; they acknowledged each other on a professional level, could live with Jim's demand for breakfast together every morning (if not tied up by duties), and he managed not to bitch too often about Spock's logical ice-cold advice (yes, he was proud of his restraint).
But other than that, McCoy was happy to deal with his own staff in med bay and keep the crew and their regularly beaten-up captain alive and functioning. Having Spock now only half a meter away from him, eyeing his every action with the air of an academy teacher checking out a particularly stupid student was undoing him, and he'd harped at the Vulcan over the course of the last hours more than in the last months in addition.
"We are close to the atmosphere of the planet. You should -"
"Jeeze Spock, I know it's time to initiate the landing sequence." McCoy snapped and moved forward on the seat, pressing the appropriate buttons.
The Vulcan shed him a look that spoke of disapproval. Remarkable how much emotion this guy could transmit with his stony face once you learned to interpret the details. "One manual landing is mandatory for renewing the license."
"I'll do that on the way back." McCoy said. He knew that in principle landing in a shuttle bay was a lot more difficult than landing on a planet, but on the Enterprise he had Scotty who'd already backed him last time with some slight tractor adjustments when the shuttle had been a little close to the hangar sides. Swearing under his breath, he set the landing point and controlled the computed trajectory. The planet was class M, with a median temperature of twenty degrees Celsius and no major life forms. Their mission was to meet with the local research team: Spock would collect their results and reports, and McCoy would perform their required health checks. It would've been a lot easier to just beam them over and check them on the Enterprise. The biobeds are much better equipped for diagnosis than McCoy's mobile medical set. But that would've made this shuttle trip unnecessary, and it was the captain's prerogative to decide another course of action.
He would get Jim's ass for this. For the next four weeks.
"Get the fuck away from my console." McCoy said darkly as he noticed Spock was about to interfere with his settings.
"As you may have noticed doctor, there is a lightening storm on your processed course."
"It's the computer's proposed course. Shouldn't you approve of something another machine puts out?" McCoy stated, eyeing the data with a frown. Not that he remembered all that much about the physics of planetary atmospheres, but the shuttle's computer was able to calculate the severity of storms from the differences in atmospheric pressure - as long as it didn't give a warning, the way should be safe.
A bit of sweat was breaking on the back of his neck, and he absent-mindedly rubbed the area with his left hand while staring on the read-outs. Yeah, everything looked fine from his point of view.
"Any reason why the computer should be wrong?"
Spock's features showed a ghost of a frown. "The data is conclusive for a safe journey. However, there are some irregularities in the gathered information."
McCoy checked everything: temperature, moistness, air pressure, cloud speed - all fifteen data points were accounted for. "Every fucking value is in the green range. What's that about? You've got a hunch or something?" He loved pushing Spock to show some human emotion once in a while; having seen Spock throttle Jim half to death had made it clear to him that the Vulcan harbored some damn unfinished business regarding emotional control, and in his opinion it would be a lot safer if Spock let it out just one bit at a time. But even with Uhura he never really did, as she'd told the doctor confidentially.
"Some gut feeling that something just ain't right? Is something itching in your pointed ears?" McCoy looked at Spock, eyebrow raised in challenge. If it had been Jim, McCoy would already have changed course, because Jim's hunches were gold. But Spock would've to lay down hard proof to get him press another button, and not just because McCoy only waited for him to rely on emotion - Spock himself would see anything else as failure.
"My ears do not itch." Spock replied stiffly.
They sat in silence while the shuttle drew closer to the storm. Now that McCoy could see the motion of the gathering, dark clouds and the flashes within them with his own eyes, he got a gut feeling of trouble himself. The data looked still fine - but the reality didn't, and he was suddenly very sure that something was wrong with these readings. He pushed some buttons, double-checked the readings and didn't mind when Spock joined in, doing some complicated calculations of which McCoy understood next to nothing.
"The sensors can't be right," McCoy stated. "This isn't just a little storm - it's more like a hurricane."
"There were no hurricanes reported for the planet," Spock said. "You should know that from the mission briefing."
"Oh fuck off, man," McCoy replied seriously annoyed. "You've got eyes as good as mine, or possibly better. And I'll set another course now."
Being already close to the storm and not having the energy reserve to boost the shuttle, it was hard to find a trajectory that would not hit its center. Suddenly, Spock's hand was on his, stopping him from laying in a new course.
"The data clearly shows that this storm will not endanger the shuttle."
"The data's wrong, Spock. It's really the wrong moment for you getting all contradictory. Your hunch was right. I was wrong. Let's do something." McCoy shook off Spock's hand with a glare. Damn, his shirt was soaked in sweat by now.
"There are no indications off sensor failures. All calibration subroutines were performed perfectly."
"Dammit -"
Whatever curse McCoy would've latched on his colleague, it died when with a thunder that made his ears almost rupture the shuttle was hit by lightening - 'shouldn't it be protected against that?' - and kicked off course. McCoy was thrown out of his chair and was so disoriented for a moment that he just lay there on the ground, trying to gather his wits. Then he pulled himself up and back into the seat.
"Everything alright, Spock?" he called over to the Vulcan, the noise of the alert and the whine of the engine almost drowning his voice. There was no reply from the slack figure on the ground next to the co-pilot seat, but he had no time to play doctor, now that the shuttle's automatic controls were offline and they were rocking and reeling down through the storm towards the planet's surface. If he didn't manage to get some control over the course within the next few minutes, they'd fall like a stone and be done. And they wouldn't look pretty, McCoy knew from experience.
In the end it was thinking of Jim, drawing from his memories of Jim's particular inner strength and belief that they'd make it alive, that made McCoy succeed with his endeavor. They were still too fast and it would be a rough landing, but the warnings had gone from red to yellow, from "you'll look like hacked meat" to "you'll probably get through surgery".
"Spock!" McCoy called again, but still no reaction. "And I've always thought you've got a skull made of iron," he murmured. It wasn't a good moment to learn that Vulcans could get knocked out just like any other humanoid. Fingers on the controls, adjusting every single of them by hand, he had no time to wipe the sweat from his brows. The ground was now rapidly drawing closer, and he took a deep breath.
"Well, Spock, I know you don't believe in luck, but we really could use some. So let's hope and pray." And then he didn't think of anything but holding the nose of the crashing shuttle up and steady while it was sliding over sandy ground, throwing sparks, until the ride ended in a bunch of trees. And as he was thrown against the front window, his last thought was 'I'm sorry, Jim'.
*
When McCoy woke up, he found himself lying on green, rather soft grass. Above him, something like a bird chirped; other than that, all was silent. Too silent. He slightly shook his head, as if he could get rid of his disorientation this way.
'Stupid idea', he thought as a blinding pain flashed through his head. It got down to a bearable level once he resigned himself to moving very slowly (and once the contents of his stomach found a convenient place under a close-by bush). But all in all, he was remarkably unhurt and in one piece.
Unlike the shuttle that had smashed against two large trees - and he'd been damn lucky that he'd been thrown out right between them, otherwise the rescue team could've scraped a pile of smashed bones from a tree bark.
Carefully he walked around it. The door didn't open right away, of course, and he pulled at it, drawing strength from muttering profanities until it finally gave in and fell out, hitting his knee. With a groan he sank to the ground, breathing hard.
'Get up, doctor. You've got a job to do.'
"Spock?" he tried to call, but his throat was dry and hurting and his voice didn't carry at all. He crawled into the shuttle, all sharp debris and gloomy shadows of destruction between glaring stripes of sunlight where the hull was broken. "Goddammit, Spock, answer me!" His hands met the medikit and the transportable medical diagnosis next to.
'Rule number one: self-preservation first,' McCoy thought and gave himself a shot of pain reliever. Because an incapacitated doctor wouldn't be able to help anyone else. Then he took a gulp of water before he proceeded to the front where he finally found Spock. The Vulcan was deadly, greenly pale, his heart-beat unnaturally slow and his breathing barely audible. There was a wound on his head but not too much blood. With shaking hands, McCoy waved the tricorder over Spock to get a first impression.
The data looked good, almost too good. But when he squinted at the details, he saw how the numbers were a little off. 'Oh fuck,' he thought as he compared it to an older scan of the Vulcan. This looked like some kind of nerve damage, and not as from the fall - more like done by electricity. Though why the flash should only have gone through Spock and not McCoy was something of a miracle - which the Vulcan might possibly explain at some other time. For now, he needed to stabilize the man. Choosing from his small collection of drugs, he administered a pain killer first. Then he selected a tranquilizer from the box. No telling how a nerve-damaged Vulcan would act, he thought as he readied the hypo - a second later his hand was suspended mid-air, as Spock looked at him wide-eyed.
"No!"
"Everything's okay, Spock," McCoy said in his best doctor's voice. "Just something to reduce the pain, okay?" He talked to him a little more, but when Spock's brutal grip didn't loosen one bit, McCoy finally lost it. "Dammit Spock, this hurts. Let my arm go!"
With one sharp movement Spock pulled him down on his arm, making McCoy gasp in pain. "You will never again speak to me like this," the Vulcan snarled, then pushed him away with just as much verve. McCoy was thrown against one smashed seat, the armrest knocking the air out of his lungs.
"Okay, Spock, okay," he muttered, trying to calm down himself and the obviously delirious Vulcan. Spock drew himself up from the floor, and McCoy could see that he limped but it didn't stop the man from stepping in front of him and hauling him up on his uniform shirt.
"No, doctor, this is not okay," Spock stated, murder in his eyes. "Okay is a very vague definition that nevertheless completely fails to describe this situation."
This wasn't the open rage he'd shown with Jim on the bridge that day, but it was rage nevertheless.
"Okay - I mean, yes, you're right, it's not okay, we're not okay, I'm sorry for getting on your nerves but I hate shuttle flights and it's not as if Jim didn't know that. I'm sorry." McCoy blathered along, trying to buy some time until he could maybe get a grip on the hypo not far from him and apply it, or until Spock would have a reasonable moment or maybe just break down again unconsciously.
None of those outcomes, however, turned to reality as Spock threw him into the deformed shuttle wall. With a groan McCoy slammed to the floor, seeing stars for a moment.
Spock dragged him up again. "No more insults. No more challenges." Every statement was accentuated by a punch in his stomach.
"No more you!"
"Oh, great, finally acting on your real feelings?" McCoy couldn't help snarling. He might go down, but not without resistance.
He had expected hands around his throat, but got a fist in his face instead, feeling his nose break under the impact. Pain washed over him, costing some seconds of his memory because next thing he knew Spock picked him up from the floor, now indeed his hands around McCoy's throat.
"Always insulting. Always ridiculing."
"And I always knew you were a damn control freak that would lose it some day," McCoy pressed out, fighting for air. "Just like with Jim."
It earned him another blow in his face, he tasted the blood on his tongue from the split lips and where the teeth had cut the flesh of his oral cavity. He expected to be pulled up again for the next slap, but Spock only lifted him to his knees. He groaned as his broken nose was shoved against the Vulcan's groin.
'So now we know what he really wanted to do all the time,' McCoy thought through the haze of pain.
Iron hands clamped his head as Spock rubbed his growing bulge against McCoy's battered face. The erection underneath the fabric slipped against his nose and lips and up his cheeks, again and again, hardening with every move. McCoy prayed this would be enough, but then Spock unlaced one hand from his hair and opened the fly. The erection was large, hard, green, and unceremoniously pushed against McCoy's lips.
McCoy drew away as far as he could. "Fuck you," he muttered.
There was the fist in his face again, and this time he could feel two of his teeth go. Tears started breaking against his will and damn, Spock shouldn't see him cry, but this was biology and didn't the bastard look smug when he pulled him up again, once again shoving his hard dick against McCoy's lips.
McCoy gave in.
Good thing he'd learned how to deep throat with Jim since Spock mouth-fucked him brutally and perseveringly, the inhumanly strong hands on his head holding him in position. Spock came deep in his mouth and held him until his body started shaking from asphyxiation; then he tossed McCoy against the shuttle wall again.
'Dumped like waste,' McCoy thought before he blackened out.
He awoke some unknown time later. His eyes were so swollen he could barely see a thing, and as he moved, he couldn't help groaning, 'goddamn this hurts so much.'
Spock was on him in the wink of an eye, dragging him up.
"Not done yet?" McCoy couldn't help muttering, and he knew it was stupid and it might cost him another tooth or an eye or whatever, but he just had to prove himself he still wasn't broken - not really.
The blow send him whirling into the broken console, and then the iron fingers were back, one around his neck, one at his own pants and yeah, it made sense that Spock would go for that this time. It almost didn't matter. It was surreal enough anyway. Spock took him from behind, shoving his hurting body over broken buttons and sharp metal pieces with every move, lacing those hands into his hair and smashing his face into the console once in a while. McCoy blackened out in between, but when he returned to consciousness, Spock was still upon him, had obviously waited because it wasn't the same fun to fuck dead meat as it was to rape his suffering fellow officer. When the Vulcan finally came, McCoy could feel the hot stream pumping into him, making him feel used and dirty in a way he'd never thought possible, and he blackened out again as Spock pulled out and trashed him back into the wall.
When he woke up the next time, he tried so very hard not to groan, but it was a lost cause. There were hands clamping his shirt again, and when Spock looked into his eyes, what was left and working of them, McCoy shuddered, feeling an overwhelming panic washing over him. But suddenly, the unbelievable happened; Spock's grip loosened, and Spock sagged to the ground and onto his back. For a while, McCoy just sat there and stared with baited breath to see if Spock would get up again, but he didn't. Spock's injuries, whatever they were, had finally caught up and rendered him unconscious.
He considered just staying put and hoping for Spock to die. It seemed like a good idea.
'You're a doctor, Leonard. Now get a grip on yourself. Even after all of this, he's still your patient.'
He finally pulled himself together and crouched to the medical diagnosis unit, discarded but still working. With trembling hands, working more from memory than from the little he could see, he set some parameters and scanned Spock. The output took a moment, and he thought of moving to the bottle of water he saw in a small distance, but knew he probably wouldn't make it back. Then the unit signaled the result.
Damn.
*
When Spock woke up, it was into darkness. His body felt boneless, inactive - not under his control.
"It's the tranquilizer," he heard McCoy saying quietly, and he tried turning his head but only his eyes obeyed.
"Sorry, had to," McCoy added. Spock took a moment to stare at his colleague. The man was leaning against the wall and looked terrible - the face battered, the nose crooked in an unnatural angle. There were dark stains all over the rugged shirt and he sat curled, knees drawn up against his chest, arms tightly around them, a typical position for humans in pain.
McCoy was in pain, it radiated off of him, Spock realized. And he remembered…
"I - did this to you."
McCoy brushed his hand over his split lip. "Yeah," he said.
"I beat you and -"
"Yeah." McCoy nodded.
"But - why?"
"You've taken an electric hit that fried the Vulcan equivalent of the amygdala in your brain, the center of your emotional control. That totally set you off. No control at all, and god knows I've gotten on your nerves enough over the last hours to tick you off by snapping even once."
"There is - no excuse." Spock closed his eyes. "Brutality, a loss of control like this - is unworthy of any Vulcan."
"Good thing you're only half Vulcan, this way the statistics won't get spoiled." McCoy suddenly stopped, tilting his head to listen. "You hear? There's some shuttle above us. Rescue will soon be here."
"I will lose everything," Spock whispered. "Let me die."
"Damn if I didn't think about it, but I can't," McCoy said roughly.
"My position -"
"It was an accident. It wasn't your fault."
"I've lost control with the captain already. Now with you."
"Then go get some goddamn therapy to fix your emotional problems. Besides, in both cases you were under extreme pressure and even brain-damaged this time."
"Nyota. She will not accept this."
McCoy nodded, knowing how adamant Uhura was when it came to sexual assaults. "Yeah. If she learned about it. But she won't."
Spock opened his eyes again. "Not learn about it?" he rasped.
"Right. We're not gonna tell. Because if this comes out, you'd lose Uhura, and Jim. He'd never be able to work with you like he does now and probably never get rid of the guilt for sending us out together." 'And he might not be able to deal with that knowledge,' McCoy thought. He'd seen enough couples fall apart over one of the partners being assaulted. Realizing that there are moments where you can't protect your loved ones ticks off a lot of people. No need to make it worse for Jim than it already was due to them being posted together.
"This is illogical," Spock whispered. "And dishonorable for me."
"We crashed. We were hurt. We survived. End of story," McCoy muttered.
Spock looked at the human with the swollen face, all yellow and blue, battered by his hands, who just made him an incredible offer. "I cannot accept this -" Spock started, but McCoy pulled out a hypo.
"It's going to be my story, and you'll be in no state to say something else. So you better comply." Spock gasped as the hypo pressed into his neck, then slipped into drugged sleep.
McCoy sank back with a sigh. 'They better come soon or -' with that thought, he curled on the floor, well away from Spock, and fell asleep.
*
"Doctor McCoy?" Someone gently touched his shoulder. "Can you hear me? I'm Roberts from the expedition. We've been in contact before. We're here for your rescue."
McCoy tried to open his eyes and moaned as the pain hit him full-fledged.
"Don't move," the man said, and a bottle was pressed against McCoy's raw lips. He managed to get a few gulps of water, though most of it ran down his chin and spilled on his chest.
"Anything we should know about your injuries? I've only had some basic medical first aid courses."
"Colleague's got brain damage. Needs to be kept sedated until he can get surgery," McCoy whispered.
"And you?" Roberts asked. "Seems you got a lot more injured in the accident."
McCoy craned his neck a little and experimentally moved his limbs. "I'm in pain but nothing focused. Just give me a shot and keep me horizontal. Take the medical diagnosis unit in the back. Check me when we're out of here."
Despite the pain killer, McCoy was almost blackening out when they moved him around. Horizontal wasn't really possible, as they had neither a stretcher nor room in the small shuttle to carry four scientists and two wounded men, and so McCoy ended sitting with his back against yet another shuttle wall, feeling every broken rib in his chest as he crouched down, breathing hard.
"I'm sorry," the man said. "Should I give you another shot?"
"No, would overdose." McCoy shed a glance at Spock who lay on his back, legs folded due to the lack of space. The Vulcan looked still barely hurt, only his pale face and low breathing showing the sedation.
"What happened?" Roberts asked.
"Got into the storm. Were hit by lightening that killed the shuttle's automatic flight control. Crashed. Thought there never were hurricanes around here." Speaking was a great diversion, McCoy found.
"This is the first one in five years. They are very rare, and unusual due to an ionic atmospheric component native to this planet. Filea, our physicist, was actually very happy to be able to record a lot of new data about this rare phenomenon." McCoy briefly looked at the middle-aged woman Roberts nodded towards.
"It was a great moment for our expedition," she said gently. "But I'm so very sorry you got caught in it."
"Back luck," McCoy murmured. "Shit like that can happen in space." Danger and darkness, so true. He closed his eyes, unable to keep the lids up any longer.
He must have been out of it, because next time he opened them, he was lying in a bed, his chest wrapped in bandages, his face cooler and less hurting. Next to his head, Roberts got up from a chair and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Someone must've told him in those first aid lessons that this gesture would relax his patients.
And damn if it didn't work.
"I've taken care of your worst injuries," the man said. "I've cleaned you up and given you some of the shots you'd in your bag, then scanned you." 'Wrong order,' McCoy thought, but this way most evidence should be destroyed. Nothing to connect his injuries to Spock.
"The Vulcan is still sedated as you ordered and we've heard from the Enterprise. They'll be here in about three hours to pick you up. Your captain was pretty relieved to hear you both survived."
"He better is," McCoy muttered and sank back into sleep.
*
Next time he grew aware of his surroundings, it was to the sweet low current of noise in his own med bay. He felt like he was embedded in cotton, warm and relaxed. They'd given him the really good stuff. Thank god.
"Bones. Finally!" Jim Kirk rushed up, enfolding his right hand. "When we found out what had happened, I thought I had lost you," he added more quietly, massaging his fingers in an almost painful grip.
"Not that easy," McCoy murmured.
"If you had died - I'm damn sorry I sent you out."
"It was just a shuttle trip, and necessary to boot." McCoy tried to smile, unwilling to let his man get drowned in any more useless self-accusation. "Hope my landing counted."
"Well, crashing isn't strictly regulations, but Sulu said you've worked wonders with the manual controls, so I'll make sure it counts." Jim sighed as he saw Chapel approaching.
"You better let him rest now, and get some rest yourself, captain," she said crisply.
"I'll be gone in a minute," Jim said. When she was gone, he bent forward and whispered in McCoy's ear, "Love you, Bones".
"Love you too," McCoy replied softly. "Sorry for scaring you."
"Yeah." Jim nodded, his characteristic grin reappearing at last. "I'll be back later. Don't run away."
"Won't. I'm not you."
Jim tugged his hand a last time, then he was gone. Chapel returned and fussed around with the med bed and the monitors.
"What about Spock?" McCoy asked.
"You have correctly diagnosed brain damage with the medical unit after your crash landing, but his brain seemed to have repaired itself over time. We've found only small traces of the original damage. He was released to his quarters two hours after your arrival and hasn't reported any side effects so far."
McCoy was surprised about the amount of hate that quickly surged through him, but then bottled it away. Self-healing was a lot better than having any of his staff doing surgery on the Vulcan, seeing as McCoy would have been the only one really qualified for that job and he was knocked out at that time. And it's not as if he wanted Spock to die in surgery, did he?
Maybe the idea of hiding what had happened wasn't as clever as he had originally thought. However, the idea of speaking about it and dealing with the fallout - the official investigation, Jim's guilt and emotional turmoil, the sympathetic words and pitying gazes of the crew once the usual mix of truths and assumptions circulated in the ship's rumor mill - was even worse. No way he wanted to deal with that. It might even be the end of Jim's command if the headquarters thought the officers of the Enterprise weren't able to deal with each other. They were still in the first year of their planned five year mission, and closely monitored for failure by many in the admiralty. A scandal like this would be a great pleasure to some of those asses, and McCoy had every intention of fucking them over by performing as formidable as he could, as officer and as Jim's friend.
He sighed and frowned as he noticed Chapel's stare.
"Everything alright?" she asked.
"Aside from being laid up in bed, everything's fine," he muttered. "Want to go to my quarters as soon as possible."
Chapel shook her head. "Now, you know that with all of your injuries, Doctor Moren can't discharge you for at least 24 hours."
"As if he knew anything," McCoy snapped, then regretted his words. Everyone of the newer team members was handpicked by him, so if anyone screwed up, it was his own fault. "Sorry," he mumbled.
"It's really a miracle nobody broke your nose during the academy years, if that's how you always behave," Chapel stated sharply, and damn if it didn't feel like being slapped in his face. He was at loss for words because she was more right than she could know, and it hurt like hell. Swallowing hard he watched her leave, kneading his fingers in thoughts.
*
McCoy was stuck in med bay for another day for some more mending and a tooth job, visited by several people though not by Spock (which he was thankful for), then he was released to his quarters. They were empty for now, but Jim had already announced that the kitchen was willing to prepare any southern specials that Bones would like to have so he'll see him later for dinner. McCoy wasn't hungry at all, but he embraced the sentiment of the offer and chose a small steak with baked beans. It was almost the end of the alpha shift, and with Jim tending to go longer and then having a shower in his own quarters, he'd probably have to wait for another hour, but he didn't mind. He removed his shoes and his uniform shirt and sank down on the bed, relaxing in his private surroundings, taking in its familiar smell, of himself and of Jim.
When the door bell rang, he barely noticed at first; then he ordered the computer to open the door more from habit than serious consideration. He rose from the bed in shock as his unexpected visitor turned out to be Spock, who stepped into the room until the door slid close behind him.
"What do you want?" he said, his body tensing, and wished he'd manage to deliver the words in his usual sarcasm, but there was too much insecurity - and fear, dammit - in them.
"I - we need to speak," Spock said.
"Don't know why we should."
Spock looked at him, emotionless - 'no, strike that, rather emotional' - eyes sweeping up and down and coming to rest on his face again. "I am pleased that no lasting damage has occurred."
"Well, no thanks to you," McCoy said sharply, feeling overly exposed with his bare feet and his tight black regulation t-shirt. "Spock - just get out, okay? Now."
"I deeply regret everything that you had to suffer under the actions mitigated from my brain damage," Spock said as if he hadn't heard McCoy's words at all. "I wanted to express my gratitude for your professional aid. But I do not condone the offer you forced me to accept."
"What do you want to do, tell them all?" McCoy laughed roughly. "Imaging how they'd react, Jim and Nyota and all the people who know us. How everything we've got here would fall apart over it." He'd hit a note, he could see it in Spock's features. Nyota was the best thing left to Spock besides his father. She was his human connection, the one person that would hold him in the night - and McCoy was pretty sure some of Spock's nights were rather long, meditation or not. Losing Nyota was as unthinkable to Spock as losing Jim was to McCoy.
"It is unethical to lie over such an important event," Spock said and drew closer.
"Stay away," McCoy snapped, feeling the sweat breaking in his neck.
"Besides, you cannot control your emotions regarding me," Spock added and stopped a mere inch away from McCoy's face.
"You wanna threaten me?" McCoy pressed out, fighting both his panic and the strong reflex to push his fist into Spock's face. "Fine. Go and tell. But there's no evidence left, and I won't testify your words."
Spock took a deep breath, then suddenly made a step back and lowered his head. "I apologize. The events have not left me unscathed. I agree that your decision was logical and I accept it in gratitude. However, I find we are both troubled by the events and I wish to ensure your future well-being. I want to make amends."
"Well, get that therapy, though preferably not on this ship," McCoy muttered. "And now get out."
Of course this had to be the moment in which Jim appeared, stopping right in the door as he saw the two of them standing so close together. Then he walked into the room and maneuvered the large tray in his hands down on the table.
"Hey, Spock," Jim said. "Haven't seen you in a while."
"Taking the gamma shift for now has doubled the time I am able to spend on science experiments," Spock stated. "I will leave you to your meal. Doctor, captain," he said and left.
McCoy drew a deep breath, gnawing his lower lip.
"Everything alright, Bones?" Jim eyed him, brows drawn together in thought. "First he's acting strange, now you. Anything I should know?"
"No, everything's fine," McCoy lied. And when they were huddled in bed together later, too exhausted for anything sexual, he still managed to pretend he was fine.
*
'Fine' ended the first time Jim wanted to fuck him, which was three days later. McCoy managed to divert him and turn the table to be the active one, but it was a tough job considering that his dick tried everything possible not to get hard. When he was finally buried deep inside his lover's body, staring down on the naked back, lacing one hand into Jim's hair, he was close to puking. He went through the act on automatic, years of knowing the body beneath him coming to his rescue. When he shot off at last, he felt so sick that he roughly pulled out of Jim and ran for the bathroom, where the evening meal found a sad end in the toilet bowl.
"Gotta be a side effect of the medication," he told Jim when he returned to the bedroom, subjected to Jim's concerned but also inquiring gaze.
He managed to avoid further sexual activity - which basically meant contact to Jim - for the following days, claiming health problems and his duties.
ON TO PART 2
