He should have known.
He should have sped up and hurried off as soon as he heard, "Psst."
He's the ship's chief physician, for Christ's sake. He's supposed to be running around, delivering triplets and regrowing blown-off livers. He wouldn't even need to make up an excuse.
And who the hell says 'psst' anymore, anyway?
Jim Kirk, of course.
"Bones! This way."
'This way' is in a conference room right off the Med Bay, so underutilized that McCoy has never stepped foot inside it, and he's been CMO of this space tin can for going on five years.
It doesn't bode well.
Jim's furtive, beckoning hand gesture bodes even worse.
Oh, boy.
McCoy heads for the room, making his eye-roll as visible as humanly possible. The last time Jim lead him somewhere trying to be stealthy, it was at the Academy and he was hiding a bunch of Klabnian eels in their shared bathtub. For breeding.
The conference room is, surprisingly, not deserted.
"Leonard," Uhura greets him with a large smile and an unusual twinkle in her eyes. It's stunning, of course, just like everything else about Uhura. Still, as the number of people involved in whatever shenanigans Jim has planned increases, McCoy feels his sense of dread intensify. Exponentially.
It skyrockets and reaches asymptote when he notices Spock sitting next to her, doing that thing he does professionally well, which is completely ignoring McCoy while simultaneously looking at him as if he just crawled out from under a rock smelling like feces. Seems like it should be an impossible feat, but Spock has mysterious talents.
Goddammit, he should have just hurried off.
He crosses his arms on his chest and turns to Jim. "What'd you do, Jim?"
Jim gives him his best What!? Me!? baby-blue look and claps him over the shoulder. They both remain standing, a few feet from where Spock and Uhura are seated.
"Sooo, since we have the two of you here with us…" Jim looks at Nyota, as if asking for approval, and she gives him a brief nod and small smile. It's been months, and yet it still feels new, to see them like this, to know that there is a space between them McCoy has no access to, after playing the mediator for so long back at the Academy, and sometimes even later. After years of seeing Jim get wasted and blabber on and on and on about how smart, and beautiful, and good at languages she was, and plot increasingly reckless and counterproductive ways to get her attention. "We have an announcement."
McCoy smiles. "Well, well. You don't say. Congratulations."
Jim frowns. "What? You don't even know what the announcement is."
McCoy shrugs. "Of course I do. You're getting married." He bends to kiss Nyota on the cheek. She hugs him tighter that he'd have expected, her laugh ringing pleasantly in his ears. "Pretty elementary to deduce, since I probably would have told her if she was pregnant."
Jim's eyes narrow. "It could all kinds of things. We could be… I don't know. Adopting a kid."
"Nah. You'd be needing about twelve mental health certificates from the CMO."
"We could be adopting a kitten."
"Ha. You need like thirty more for that."
Mainly to shut him up, he pulls Jim closer by the shoulder and hugs him, too. This is not half as bad as it could have turned out to be. No mortal wounds, or wild beasts, or pranks to cantankerous admirals involved, for once. No space jumps, either. Just his best friend, getting married, and yeah, marriage is nothing but its own terrible kind of space jump, but Jim and Nyota know what they're doing. They'll be fine.
McCoy's busy congratulating himself for always expecting the worst, as it tends to leave room for pleasant surprises, when he hears Spock speak for the first time since he entered the room.
"I wish to offer my congratulations, as well." He adds something in Vulcan that has Nyota tear up a bit and enfold his hand in both of hers, and Jim's grin widen. Probably something about how they make a logical couple that will live long, and prosper, and stuff.
"Wait, this is not the announcement. I mean, it's part of it, but…" When Nyota is happy, McCoy noticed a long time ago, she tends to gesticulate a lot more than usual. "It will be a very, very small affair, and we'll probably have a larger ceremony once the mission is over and we're back to Earth. But for now…" She trails off and smiles at Jim.
"Bones, Spock. Will you be our best men?" He cocks his head, suddenly glancing at Spock, looking uncharacteristically nervous. "Or, you know. Not necessarily men. Vulcan works, too. Or, half-Vulcan. Not that there is anything…" He takes one deep breath and looks at Nyota, who nods encouragingly while trying not laugh. "Will you be witnesses at our wedding?"
McCoy knew he should have fucking hurried away.
...
It's not as if he can say no.
It's not as if he wants to say no. Jim's his best friend, and the biggest, fattest, longest-standing thorn in his side, and the idea of dislodging him to hand him off to Uhura is a little more heartwarming than his Georgia-spawned notions of masculinity allow him to admit. Plus, if he was there for Jim stealing Nyota's shirt and cradling it his sleep, taking four consecutive semesters of Andorian phonology, and naming his stinky gerbil Chomsky in her honor, he might as well be present for the grand finale, and pretend not to shed a tear or two since he's there.
He is tempted, though. To just say that he can't do it, that he'll be busy fixing broken arms and giving urinary tract exams for the whole two days of shore leave they plan to use for the ceremony. That he needs to do another inventory count of the Med Bay, which is actually true. That he has PTSD from his own nightmare of a marriage and just can't cope with weddings anymore. Sorry.
And really, it's all Spock's fault. Spock, with his raised eyebrow and his smug, superior attitude and his way of looking at him like he's ridiculous and… illogical, or something. Which McCoy should not be giving a shit about, because he a grown-ass man with zero tender sensibilities.
And he doesn't care. He's been a doctor for ten years, in space for about five, and he has been insulted, shot at, and bled onto more times than he can count. Some logical disdain casually thrown at him is not going to get him all put out. Besides, this is just the way Spock is, he has told himself. Repeatedly.
"It's just the way Spock is," Jim has told him, too. Repeatedly. "He doesn't really hate you or anything. It's his way of fucking with people. Vulcan-style."
Except that it's not. It's true that Spock can be argumentative, in a pedantic if not confrontational way. It's true that he's more smartass than Vulcan. And yet, within all of that, he's downright convivial with the rest of crew. He has taken Chekov and his hero worship right under his wing, goes to fencing tournaments with Sulu, has inside jokes with Scotty, and who knows what he and Jim are up to all those hours when they claim to be playing chess.
Which makes him think, the rare times he does think about it, that this is not the way Spock it. That maybe it's about McCoy. It makes him wonder what changed that make Spock start ignoring him like it's his job, since they used to have pretty epic arguments until a couple of years ago, and it was kind of their thing, comforting in an infuriating kind of way. God knows McCoy didn't mind the arguing.
But the indifference. The disregard. The poorly concealed disgust. And the dismissive way he answers to Every. Single. Thing. McCoy says. If he even bothers answering. It's easy enough not to think of it when Spock's not around him, but two days basically alone with Spock while the lovebirds are sucking face…
It's gonna be a long wedding.
...
Spock really can't stand him.
McCoy realizes it on the first day.
He has the first inkling when Jim rents a hovercar that is only marginally bigger than a matchbox. It's him and Spock in the backseat, while Jim in the front seems to only be able to let go of Nyota's hand if the alternative is crashing the car into a mountain within the next ten seconds.
McCoy wishes Jim had let him drive.
Or Spock.
Or Nyota, really.
Any combination that wouldn't require he and Spock to be in the backseat, so close that they're practically touching. Stuff that happens, when you're both six-two and your best friend rents a car purely based on his fiancée's favorite color. Because he's whipped.
McCoy doesn't think Nyota even noticed, because Nyota's clearly the brains in this power couple.
Meanwhile, Spock is getting cozy with the window, all but climbing on the car door in a very evident effort to place as many inches as possible between himself and McCoy.
Okay.
Yes, McCoy had to take Xenoculture like everyone else, and he knows about Vulcans, and touch, and Vulcans hating touch, but there are about seven layers of clothing between them, because this sure ain't a June wedding and it's snowing big, fat, lilac flakes on this planet. It feels like a bit of an overreaction.
Maybe it's his smell. McCoy tries to remember if he put on deodorant.
"How're you guys doing back there?" Nyota asks, turning to face them and handing Spock a hand warmer.
"Fine," McCoy answers, because really, everything else would be both an under and an overstatement. Because fine has variable definitions, as they all have been informed of. Time and time again.
And they probably will be again. Very soon.
Coming up.
Any second now…
Nyota smiles. "Great."
When McCoy eyes him, Spock is looking out of the window, clutching his hand warmer.
Ignoring him.
Okay, then.
The second clue comes about six hours later, after they arrive at the quaint resort where the ceremony will take place and find out that the locals' concept of indoor heating isn't quite up to par. For a human.
McCoy grudgingly worries about how miserable it can feel for a Vulcan, only to mentally chastise himself. If Spock wants to pretend that McCoy doesn't exist, two can play that game.
Except that, now that he thinks about it, he did take that Hippocratic oath thing. Which he might stretch a little when it comes to hypo-stabbing Jim, but most times it doesn't really leave him a choice, and that's how he finds himself pressing on the doorbell outside of Spock's room, three spare blankets in his hands.
And that's what they are. Blankets. Not spider's nests or stool samples. Blankets.
Though you wouldn't be able to tell, from the look Spock gives him.
"I thank you, Doctor, but I shall not need them."
"You mean, you're just gonna freeze to death?
He's not, of course. He couldn't, conceivably, considering the temperature, and his body structure, and the slightly ridiculous amount of clothes he has put on. McCoy knows, because med school, and Spock knows, because science. And two-years-ago Spock would have pointed that out, only to have McCoy reply something like, "yeah, well, don't come crying to me when you have stalactites hanging off your nose," and two-years-ago Spock would have retorted that such "is a structural impossibility. But then, you are as talented an architect as you are a doctor," and McCoy would have narrowed his eyes and tried to choke him with the blankets.
Now-Spock, however, just stares somewhere behind McCoy shoulder, as if the sheer existence of McCoy's face were tremendously offensive to him, and repeats, "I am grateful for your concern, but I will not need your blankets, Doctor," and nods politely, closing the door in his face.
Okay.
The worst comes after the ceremony.
Which is lovely. Jim can't stop staring at Nyota with a spellbound expression, and she looks so happy that McCoy doesn't even mind that he's wearing his dress uniform, which is way too tight around his shoulders, and that it's negative three degrees Celsius. At the very highest.
Jim stumbles a bit with his vows, and swallows audibly several times, and is that his hand shaking when he puts the wedding band on Nyota's finger? McCoy thinks of his family back home, of himself and all his sisters who got married with a million guests and twelve maids of honor each, and maybe it's because here it's just the four of them, or maybe it's that these two are so nakedly, embarrassingly in love, but he feels a bit like he's intruding, and he's weirdly relieved that it's just a small affair.
He averts his eyes and catches Spock's face, which is… soft. In awe, maybe.
Months ago, when Nyota and Jim started what they initially referred to as they thing, McCoy was shocked by the fact that Nyota and Spock were still so close, touching and exchanging looks and talking intensely all the time. To be precise, he was astonished that Jim seemed to be cool with it, since they appeared to be bringing the whole 'stay friends with your ex' thing to a whole new level, and had asked him about.
"I don't think anyone wants this to work out more than Spock does," Jim had answered him.
Which McCoy had doubted, at the time, but now it actually seems possible, because the Vulcan looks as if a great wish of his has been granted. And yeah, it's hard not be touched when Jim is practically assaulting a very giggly Nyota in front of the flustered native justice, and it's impossible to be mad when, without even saying goodbye, he picks up his wife and whisks her away to their freezing room. To warm her up, presumably.
Impossible, really.
Except.
Except that this leaves McCoy alone with Spock and a wedding banquet laid out for ten or so that was apparently included in the price. Spock, who yeah, okay, doesn't like McCoy much, but there's something looking remarkably like booze and plenty of vegetables, and they can be civil for the time it'll take them to stuff their faces, right?
Wrong.
As soon the happy couple is out of the door, any trace of emotion is wiped from Spock's eyes. He turns to thank the still flushed justice in his native language (and when did he learn that?), and then makes his way for the very same door Jim carried Nyota out of.
"Hey," McCoy yells after him. "You're not going to eat? You couldn't freeze to death, so now you're starving yourself?"
Spock doesn't even turn.
"I require no nourishment at this time. Goodnight, Doctor."
Having been under phaser fire, divorced from more or less unwillingly, and even kidnapped by the Romulans, once, McCoy balks at calling this hurtful.
The fact remains that Spock's one rude son of a bitch, and McCoy's done trying.
...
If they had been on the ship, McCoy would have let it go.
Spock acting like a jerk and alternating between looks of barely contained revulsion and arctic coldness is not news. Not anymore, at least. The Enterprise's a big ship, and believe or not, there are people who actually don't mind sitting down and having a meal or a chat with McCoy, which makes it easier to dismiss Spock's eyes skirting around his face with massive contempt, or his painfully straight posture, or the fact that even though they are the exact same height, which McCoy knows because he checked the Vulcan's goddamn file, Spock always seems to manage to look down on him.
But here.
Here's just the two of them, with Jim and Nyota having marathon sex and clearly not intending to come out of their room more than twenty minutes before they absolutely need to drive back to the beam-up place. So McCoy has more free time than he wants to think about Spock being a jerk to him, and the next time he sees the Vulcan, which is right outside of their rooms, he flips a bit.
In his defense, he's provoked. Spock is clearly coming back from a run, and McCoy is heading out for a walk, and when they're in front of each other the best that Spock can muster in reply to McCoy's "Hey, Spock. How are you doing?" is a curt nod before making a beeline his door.
No, 'How am I doing… what?'
No, 'Acceptable, thank you, Doctor.'
Nothing.
Which is why McCoy grabs him by the wrist (above his thermic short, because yes, he did take Xenoculture) and holds him back.
Spock stares at the place where McCoy's hand is gripping him and looks appalled. Almost comically.
McCoy tries not to laugh and harnesses his indignation.
"Ok Spock, let's cut the crap." Once he's reasonably sure Spock's not going to run away, he lets him go. "What's up with the avoiding and the cold shoulder?" He tries to keep is tone relaxed, mostly succeeding.
Spock looks again at that spot over McCoy's shoulder. Maybe he's sprouting antennas or something. "I do not understand your meaning, Doctor."
McCoy snorts. "Come on. You act like a have the plague. You can't have a meal with me. You don't answer my questions. Hell, we've exchanged barely fifty words in two years. During the first year of the mission we had an epic argument over the best reagent to use with hemiketal. It lasted two weeks. I read fifteen papers to back up my positions. And now you can't bring yourself to tell me good morning." He stares at Spock for a second. "What'd I do?"
Spock eyes him, expressionless. "You did nothing. I would presume that a reduction in the frequency of our arguments should be considered a positive fact."
"Not if you're avoiding me, no."
Spock inclines his head, that sardonic air of his full on. "I am not avoiding you, Doctor. I am talking with you in this very moment."
McCoy tries not to roll his eyes, and fails. "You are avoiding engaging in any type of meaningful interaction with me, for sure."
"I am not doing such th—"
"Really, Spock? Astrology is a science," he tells him, with his most goading voice.
Spock just looks a McCoy, speechless for a second.
"Well? Anything to say in response to that?"
Spock just shakes his head. He looks like he's hurting.
"Ok, then. 'Lieutenant' is spelled with three es."
Spock opens his mouth, then closes it. Keeps it closed.
"Humans only use ten percent of their brain cells."
Spock sighs, and then purses his lips. Oh, he's in pain all right.
"I fail to see what you are trying to accomplish, Doctor. Now, if you'll excuse me, it is three point seven degrees, and I must return to my quart—"
McCoy steps back in front him. Spock could easily shove him away using about one third of his little finger, of course, but McCoy's banking on the fact that he's too obviously sickened by him to touch him.
"If anyone else had told you a tenth of what I just did you'd stay and freeze your green-blooded ass out here until you've corrected them into oblivion. But it's me, so you're suddenly in a hurry to go back to your room. To watch condensation form on the window, I assume."
Spock's straightens his back. A worthy feat, considering that it was pretty straight to begin with. "Perhaps window condensation holds more appeal to me than your company."
Well, then. McCoy does not recoil. He does not. "Is that so, Mister Spock?"
Silence. With a side dish of glacial look to that special place above his shoulder. At least it matched the temperature.
"And, just out of curiosity, why is my company so distasteful to you?" he asks, hands on his hips.
Spock eyes shifts to McCoy's, and… it's not pleasant. This guy really doesn't like him. And that's the euphemism of the day. "Doctor, this conversation is as illogical as you are. Kindly allow me to leave."
Which McCoy should just do. For a lot of obvious reasons. Like the fact that he's a gentlemen, and Spock is clearly repulsed by him, and he's never been a pleaser anyway, he doesn't need to be liked, for fuck's sake, and he has a rewarding, fulfilling life on board on the Enterprise that is made of important things such as saving lives and counseling heaps of people, and he won three biomedical research awards in the past six years while publishing like crazy, once in the fucking New England Journal of Medicine, impact factor two-hundred and goddamn seventy, and he has a family who likes him back home and friends who—
But fuck this shit.
And fuck Spock.
The Vulcan is now walking around him to go back to his quarters, giving him a ridiculously wide berth even though the hallway is pretty narrow. McCoy grabs him by the wrist, this time with zero effort to keep away from skin, and maybe it's the surprise element, maybe McCoy's overwhelming his touch telepathy or some other mumbo-jumbo, but Spock actually stops in his tracks and doesn't even try to wiggle out.
And McCoy, who for all the barking, really does not see himself as a physically aggressive person, because do no harm and all that, now is totally crowding Spock until he's backed up against the wall, index finger planted obnoxiously in the Vulcan's chest. When he starts talking at him, there's probably no more an inch between their faces.
"Listen. If I'm too human and illogical for you that's fine, I don't care, despise me in that CPU you have inside your skull, but the least you can do is try to put a lid on it because your best friend and our best friend just got marr—"
He doesn't even finish the thought.
It was there, on the tip on the tongue a millisecond ago, and now it's gone. Disappeared. Because…yeah.
It turns out, it's not just their faces that are less than an inch apart. The rest too, because McCoy got a little belligerent and carried away, and he's really up close in Spock's personal space now. Yep. And the hard thing that's pressing against him, against his left hip to be precise, it's…
That, inside Starfleet-issued sweatpants that hide nothing, is an erection. McCoy's pretty sure. Maybe. But yes, it feels like an erection and McCoy should know, because he's a doctor. And, because he's had his fair share of them, mostly before coming into space and seemingly forgetting that sex is this thing that can be done, and deciding that sleeping and eating and publishing peer-reviewer articles and oh god, staring resentfully at his Vulcan archenemy are all activities better worth of his time.
So he's pretty sure, but if he needed any more confirmation, he would get some when he glances up from Spock's chest and into his eyes and… Spock's flushing. As in, bright green. McCoy has literally held Spock's internal organs in his hands, and rationally knows that his blood is green, but… wow.
McCoy is basically hugging Spock. Who has an erection. And is blushing. Green.
It's doesn't quite compute.
"Please, could you… step back?" Spock swallows audibly. His tone sounds strangely subdued, especially after at least two years of cold and abrasive remarks.
He sounds mortified. Or resigned. Or both.
McCoy steps back.
And now would be a really good time to say something. Something flippant, like 'what the hell was that?' or 'I didn't know Vulcans got turned on by being manhandled,' or 'do you need medical attention?' Though maybe not the latter, since… yeah.
What McCoy does say, however, is a pitiful "I…" that he's not sure how to continue from, but it's not necessary, because Spock, god bless him, interrupts him.
"I apologize."
McCoy shakes his head automatically. He's a doctor. Inappropriate erections are his bread and butter. "There is nothing to apologize for."
Spock is doing that thing McCoy has only seen him do once or twice, which is biting his lower lip without showing any teeth. "Could you... step back further?"
McCoy raises his eyebrow. It seems excessive. There's at least three feet between them now.
Spock catches McCoy's derisive expression and elaborates, somewhat hesitantly. "It is… difficult, to think clearly." He licks his lips, which are getting chapped from the cold. "When you are close," he adds, mostly studying his running shoes.
And now McCoy's blushing, probably bright red, and shuffling his feet a little as he retreats. Because he guesses that this nips his burgeoning theory in the bud, that the erection was just a coincidence, that Spock gets turned on by running or by near sub-zero temperatures or by purple snow, and that what just happened has exactly zilch to do with McCoy.
Meanwhile, the silence between them is stretching. Uncomfortably, judging from the way Spock's arms seem to be hanging uselessly on his sides, and the similarly awkward way McCoy is palming his own neck and trying not to look in front of him.
It's probably a good time to ask for clarification. Such as, 'is there a set of correlations between your erection and my presence and the fact that you've been acting like an asshole for the past two years?' or, more informative, 'is there maybe a causal relationship?' or, even better, the good old, 'what the fuck just happened?'
Curious, then, that when McCoy opens his mouth the only thing that comes out is, "So…"
Spock's eyes close for about two seconds. When he opens them, he looks straight at McCoy. "My behavior was… inappropriate. And I am not just referring to yesterday and today." He pauses. "In the future, I shall endeavor to be more—"
More… something. McCoy will never know, even though he really wants to, because Jim chooses that moment to come out of his room.
"Hey, guys," he says in a stage whisper before closing the door behind himself. He's bare-chested, and McCoy's eyes fall automatically to his skin, counting about four hickeys that he immediately wishes he could unsee. Damn professional bias. "Do you have any spare blankets? We had an, um, accident with a couple of ours and I wouldn't want Nyota to get chilly."
He ignores the whiplash that comes from witnessing Jim T. Kirk being this considerate with a woman, after years of McCoy having to show the door to his one night stands. "Sure. I'll go get them."
Though he doesn't right away. He first glances at Spock, who is still standing stiffly next to him, and he really, really wants to know what he might be telling McCoy in this moment if Jim hadn't interrupted the most awkward and unpleasant conversation in the history of social interaction.
Spock, however, just appears somewhere between relieved and impassive. He nods at McCoy, and then a Jim (a little bit more warmly, McCoy notes, if nodding warmly is even a thing) and then disappears inside his room.
McCoy fetches the blankets.