Notes: And I'm already running late. Good sign, huh? Well, it's because I'm working on finishing my (hopefully second novel!) manuscript 'Aftertouch.' Six chapters to go on that, and then I'm finally done with it!
Arc Two, Part Two
The storm had hit not half an hour after McCoy had gotten home, and calling Spock had sent him straight to voicemail. He'd known – immediately known – that he would be out in the torrential rain (seriously, that shit made it look like India got it easy). He was supposed to be coming over for dinner and to actually talk about moving in, rather than exchanging clumsy text messages and the odd sporadic phone call in the two days since McCoy had originally asked.
And Spock simply wasn't smart enough to see the rain and think better of using the goddamn deathtrap of a motorcycle. Oh no, he'd be out in it alright – and so McCoy was waiting, and had the front door open the moment the deep grumble of the bike began to creep up the street.
The leather was drowned.
The bike was gleaming in the downpour, scrubbed clean by the force of it, and the leather was shiny and wet as Spock drew out his keys and secured the back wheel to the frame with a lock chain. It usually creaked as he moved, but it was silent as the grave, and the moment Spock stepped under the porch roof, he removed his helmet, and a good half-pint of water flooded from his hair and face. The slightly squelchy sound of his boots suggested that his feet were ankle deep in the crap too, and – well. Biking leather was heavy, but it wasn't watertight if it was older than a couple of months. Just (McCoy hoped) road-surfacing-tight.
"Damn," he whistled. The last time he'd seen Spock that wet, they'd been in the same shower. And he'd looked infinitely more impressed. Speaking of which... "Go on, get in the shower and warm up."
Spock made a noise like a discontented cat – or his own motorcycle engine, McCoy couldn't quite place it – and shimmied off his boots before even stepping foot in the hall. His black socks left damp footprints, and he stripped those off just inside, grimacing at the feel of them. McCoy took the backpack and slung it into the kitchen to drip on the tiles, and chuckled at Spock's expression.
"My bathrobe's on the back of the bathroom door," he said. "Strip off and I'll get that lot through the dryer."
"The contents of my bag..."
"Yeah, I'll put your overnight stuff through too. Go on, git. You're dripping on my floor."
Spock made another disgruntled noise, and McCoy smirked, leaning forward to kiss him quickly. His lips were fucking frozen.
"Git," he said. "Use whatever's in there, I really don't care."
"Thank you," Spock said, surprising McCoy briefly, before shucking his jacket unceremoniously onto the floor and heading upstairs without a word.
"Musta been cold," McCoy muttered to himself, picking up the sodden leather between finger and thumb and hanging it over the bottom of the stair rail to drip-dry onto the floor. It was twice as heavy as usual with the water-weight, and unreasonably cold on the outside to counteract the radiator-warmth on the inside. He left it to dry there; it wouldn't do any harm – or at least none he cared about. Rummaging through the pockets, he found a sodden wallet that he laid to dry on the side table, Spock's cell phone zipped into the inside pocket and thankfully, therefore, dry as a nun's ass-crack, and a sparse bunch of keys, onto which he surreptitiously added one of his spare house keys before dropping it into the key bowl.
They looked...at home, beside his own.
The pipes groaned upstairs, and he turned to eye the drenched backpack, sitting forlornly in its own puddle by the front door.
"It never rains in California, my ass."
McCoy switched the kettle on the moment that the pipes cranked off upstairs. The tumble dryer hummed to itself contentedly in the corner – probably literally, given that McCoy never bothered to use it ordinarily – and the weather girl was telling herself, rather unsurprisingly, that the forecast was just a little bit soggy. The dark cloud overhead, coupled with the encroaching nightfall, meant that the lights were on, gleaming off the surfaces and the cracked tile by the garage door, flooding the kitchen with a psychological warmth that wasn't really there.
The footsteps on the stairs began their quiet journey just as the kettle brought itself to boil, and by the time Spock's shadow fell in the kitchen doorway, there was a fresh mug of coffee waiting.
"Here," McCoy turned to pass it over – and paused, staring.
Spock had changed into dark sweatpants hanging a little loose around his slim frame, and a t-shirt a size too large with 'Ole Miss' in faded letters across the chest, misshapen from the ill fit until they read something closer to 'Olms.' For the first time, McCoy eyed his feet in socks that were not black (pale grey, as a matter of fact) and even as McCoy gawped, Spock pulled a faded blue hoodie, once again emblazoned with 'Ole Miss', over his head, settling into its baggy folds comfortably.
Every item was McCoy's, and something in his brain short-circuited in a tiny burst of flames at the sight of Spock wearing his clothes.
"Leonard?" Spock asked uncertainly.
McCoy then realised he was attempting to take the offered cup, and let go hastily. Spock cupped his hands around it, watching McCoy and frowning.
"If...it is an imposition..."
"No!" McCoy blurted out. "I, uh. Shit. I don't mind, just...I think you blew something in my brain."
Spock looked vaguely alarmed.
"That really shouldn't be as hot as it is, but damn," McCoy whistled, shaking his head – then removed the coffee mug again to the side, and dragged Spock into a deep kiss, crushing him close – the fabric crumpling loosely between them until his grip hit skin and muscle and bone and not a whole lot of fat – into his own lust.
Spock's fingers were immediately in his hair again – spiders, skittering across his scalp and tugging, biting, at the hair in little, spark-inducing clumps. And from here, McCoy was introduced to the second fact that Spock was not only wearing his clothes, but wearing his smell – the smell of him ingrained into his old clothes, the fresher smell of him granted by the use of his bathroom products. He smelled like McCoy's, like he downright owned him, and every pint of his blood attempted to head south at the same time, leaving him somewhat light-headed.
Before he quite knew what was going on, he'd backed Spock into the wall, and gotten his hands under Spock's – his – t-shirt and hoodie, the ribs straining against his hands. The wall and his own hips kept Spock pinned, and after a pause, those powerful thighs braced either side of his pelvis and those slender ankles locked around the back of his legs in a blatant, practically wanton display. When he tweaked a nipple with his thumb, the rhythm of Spock's breathing stuttered fractionally, and McCoy bit down on his earlobe and groaned at the shuddering gasp.
"Leonard – Leonard..."
"What?" he mumbled, licking a path down his neck.
"We must eat first."
"I'm plannin' on it."
"Food, Leonard," Spock's fingers were almost massaging his scalp, luxurious and tantalising. "If you wish for this to last any length of time, then I will need to eat."
McCoy paused, and drew back enough to scowl at him. "You haven't eaten today."
"Not...much."
McCoy groaned, and bit his neck for good measure. Or punishment, but the rock of Spock's hips suggested it was anything but. "Idiot. Alright. Food first. And then I'm taking you upstairs and unwrapping you again."
"I am not a present," Spock murmured into his mouth – for all his words, reluctant to disengage.
"Yeah y'are," McCoy returned, nipping at his lower lip and stroking his hands down the lean thighs bracketing his hips before stepping back and allowing Spock to actually put his feet to the floor again. "Present wearing my damn paper, and I'm gonna rip it off you and explore."
"You have already explored."
"Yeah, but now you're all wrapped up in my stuff."
"I do not understand."
"I don't care," McCoy replied, rubbing his hands up Spock's sides – although on the outside this time – and sucking another kiss out of his mouth. "And you don't need to understand anything except that once dinner's over, I'm takin' you upstairs and fucking you until you can't remember your own name."
Spock nosed at his stubble and pressed a kiss into the underside of his jaw. "As usual then."
"Whatever you're makin', make it fast," McCoy growled, finally releasing him (with a phenomenal exertion of willpower) and stepping back to lean against the washing machine. "I can't be held responsible for what happens otherwise."
"Very well," Spock said, and offered one more brief kiss. "Spanish omelette?"
The moment that McCoy returned to the bed, Spock curled around him, and received a huffed chuckle and a kiss as they settled around each other. Spock was exhausted, drained of any energy dinner may have granted him, and surrounded by both the smell of McCoy in the hoodie that he still wore (and he had never had sex half-clothed before, so the experience was a novel one) and the man himself, as McCoy's arms closed around him and they settled back into the mattress.
"Goddamn," McCoy murmured, his bare legs tangling with Spock's. The sweatpants had been lost on the stairs, and McCoy seemed to have had a minor aneurysm on the discovery that Spock had not bothered with underwear. "You're going to kill me."
Spock shifted against the soreness of his own body, and thought that McCoy had that the wrong way around.
"Seriously," McCoy continued, "I don't know if I can survive living with you. Not if you're going to be that damn hot every night of the week."
"I am certain you will become accustomed to it."
McCoy snorted. "I don't think so. You're sex on legs some days, you know that?"
Spock hummed and scratched lightly at a smattering of hair on McCoy's left pectoral.
"Yeah, yeah," McCoy's fingers dug into Spock's shoulder blade and smoothed the pinch away. "All days, let's face it. With that ass, you can't be anything else."
Spock settled further into the crook of McCoy's neck and watched the rise and fall of his ribs through half-lidded eyes.
"Hey," McCoy's voice dropped to little more than a murmur. "When's your contract on the apartment run down?"
"The first of September," Spock murmured, and McCoy's fingers – thickly calloused at the tips, and dry like the Nevada desert – came to rub behind his ear briefly before returning to his shoulder.
McCoy chuckled. "Happy birthday to me, then."
"Almost," Spock allowed, letting his breathing slow.
"'Night, darlin'," McCoy murmured, stroking his fingers over the back of the hand Spock still rested on his chest.
By morning, they had shifted apart in their sleep – but those hands were still loosely intertwined.