Notes: First hints of steam here.

Arc One, Part Ten

The following Monday was a particularly warm one, and McCoy should not have been so surprised as he was to see Spock walk into Harry's that evening wearing nothing but slimline jeans that hugged that ridiculously perfect ass, and a black t-shirt that clung to him like a second skin.

"Someone's on the pull," Jim drawled lowly over the top of his bottle, and McCoy rolled his eyes as Spock approached.

"Do you ever keep out of other people's lives?" he asked.

"Nope," Jim said, punching him in the shoulder. "Why didn't you say you'd gone on a date?"

McCoy blinked, and cast a look between Jim and Spock, as the latter's boots hit the damp stickiness of the gaming area.

"Janice saw you," Jim said, nodding at the bar, even though the aforementioned Janice didn't work Mondays. "And you didn't tell me. I'm offended, Bones, I really am."

"Oh, shut up," McCoy felt his face heating up, and Jim crowed.

"Blushing!"

"What the hell are you, thirteen?" McCoy growled.

"His attention span is somewhat comparable to a thirteen-year-old," Spock said placidly, taking the cue from Jim's hand and almost casually sinking a stray ball, ignoring the indignant squawk Jim offered as a reply. "He was, however, rather insistent upon details of Thursday evening."

"Which you didn't give me, so – Bones..."

"No."

"Aw, c'mon," Jim smirked. "Did you kiss him?"

"Jim, shut your mouth."

"Man, you're both boring," Jim complained. "I bet you're fucking with me, and you actually screwed on the back of Spock's bike. Am I right?"

"No."

"The hell, Jim? How is that even possible?"

"Put the stand down?"

"You have given this a great deal of thought..." Spock said slowly.

"Yeah, well, you in leathers on that bike, you can't blame me," Jim shrugged. "But did you? Fuck, that's – oh, shit, hang on..."

Jim's cell phone, and suddenly McCoy's best friend even if it was an inanimate object, started blaring apparently random song lyrics (something about a woman on fire, God only knew) and he almost bounced towards the exit, fishing for it frantically with one hand. Ah, the joys of being self-employed.

"So I didn't scare you off last week?"

Spock cocked his head, pausing mid-shot. "I do not understand."

"I mean," McCoy placed his bottle on the felt and leaned over, bracing his weight on his hands, "are you amenable to going out with me again?"

Spock returned his gaze to the table and took the shot. "I am." The ball rattled into the corner pocket and sank with a heavy clunk. "Do you have a particular destination in mind?"

"Sorta," McCoy said. "You free on Saturday?"

"At what hour?"

"All day."

Spock glanced up again – surprise or inrigue or both, McCoy suspected. "I...should be, yes."

"So say I swing by at ten, eleven, pick you up and we'll take the day outta the city for a while."

"Am I permitted further detail?" Spock asked, his eyes suddenly watching. They were watching, with some dark, unreadable intensity, and McCoy could almost feel his own response, the deliberate relaxation of his stance, the smirk that blossomed on his own face – the response, the return, the retaliation.

"Nope," he said breezily, taking a long pull from his bottle and straightening to do so.

He did not fail to notice the way Spock eye's tracked his throat.

And so, Spock found himself in a...situation. For the rest of April, his reactions – not to mention Jim's – were...confusing.

It was not the first time that Spock had apparently fallen into a relationship. It was not the first time he had been drawn into one without especially wanting to be in a relationship in the general sense at all. McCoy was not even the first man to take an interest, nor the first man in whom Spock had found himself interested.

But there was something...different this time.

He could not quite place it. Perhaps it was the spark and fire between their interactions – the baiting, the arguing, the verbal fencing matches – or the sheer physicality of the man in question – and McCoy was nothing but male, in the hard lines of his physique and the scruff and blur of hair too stark to be feminine – or perhaps both, or neither. The way McCoy looked at him was likely to be a component; he tended to drag his gaze slowly, lingering, and smile almost to himself at times, following some private internal thought process.

This was not like before.

Something had changed.

Their second date, McCoy had taken Spock out to the scrublands of his favourite hiking trails, and they had spent a lazy day under a slowly burning California sun. McCoy paid for it with an outbreak of freckles, though Spock stayed icy-white as ever, and the sight of Spock in blue jeans was enough to counteract the irritation at the spreading t-shirt suntan. McCoy had been surprised at its success – Spock, it seemed, was a bit of a nature geek (which explained the combination of vegetarianism and being Jim Kirk's ass-kicker, he supposed) – and they had gotten lunch at an out of the way diner and talked, of all things, about philosophy. Religious philosophy, specifically. Spock claimed to be Buddhist, though judging by the fact that McCoy knew he drank alcohol and had a weird relationship with his bike, he was just about as Buddhist as McCoy was still Christian.

But the date-like quality was once again betrayed by the tricky slip of Spock out of McCoy's fingers at the end; the man was worse than a cat. McCoy had just about managed to hold onto his hand for the car ride home, and then he was gone again as soon as he'd pulled up in front of the building.

So when the third date rolled around, at the end of month, McCoy...wasn't entirely sure what to think.

McCoy hadn't dated since Jocelyn, over ten years ago, and didn't have the faintest clue what the traditions were in California anyway, never mind what Spock held to be typical of dating. But back home – way back, he supposed, in the nineties – there had been this thing about the third date. It was the one where you decided whether to carry on with whatever it was you were startin' up, or to part ways before anyone got hurt.

Or as McCoy's eldest sister had put it one evening while preparing for her own third date with the man now McCoy's brother-in-law, "Tonight, he'll either kiss me, or give me the let's-be-friends talk."

McCoy still wasn't entirely convinced old traditional courting practices did or should apply to gays – after all, he wasn't courting a woman, with a woman's sensibilities; he was dating Spock, with, he suspected, no sensibilities whatsoever – but it was something to aim for anyway.

And more than that – he suspected Spock was aware of the significance. Because he had yet to kiss him.

He wasn't exactly jumpy about physical contact – McCoy had even successfully copped a feel or two in there somewhere – and he had kissed McCoy's cheek or held his hand of his own volition. He had even, on the hike, permitted McCoy's hand in his back pocket for a good quarter-mile, and McCoy had had a wife with far stricter rules on personal space than that. He had not, however, actually kissed him, or attempted to, and McCoy suspected that he was playing hard to get. Which just made the son-of-a-bitch even hotter...which was probably why he was doing it.

McCoy had to stop seeing smart people. They were too much trouble.

But the anticipation – hell, it worked. McCoy had every intention of wringing a kiss out of the man (and more, if possible, because that ass was sexually frustrating enough without having it accessible-but-off-limits-thanks-to-social-rules as well. He was buzzing before even meeting Spock outside the restaurant, and couldn't remember when they left what he'd eaten or what they'd talked about (although, judging by his adrenalin-high and good feeling, they'd argued again) or even where they were going.

The park between the restaurant and Spock's apartment block was quiet, empty and dimly-lit, and when he slid his arm around Spock's hip, there was a miniscule hint of Spock leaning into the touch. So as they broke onto the street and towards the door of doom that had proved to be his undoing on the previous two occasions, McCoy tightened his hand and drew Spock into the alley that ran between the apartment block and its neighbour – a narrow, dark expanse out of sight of all but the nosiest neighbours and pedestrians.

"So," he said, pushing Spock up against the wall and settling there, groin-to-groin without pressing. "Third date."

"It is," Spock said blandly, settling his hands on McCoy's shoulders loosely. His expression was calm and unreadable, but McCoy had enough light to see the dilated pupils burning out his eyes.

"So, back when I used to date, there was this tradition round our way."

"A temporary and singularly located instance does not imply tradition."

"It was, so shut it," McCoy returned easily. "On the third date, y'either kissed 'em, or gave them the 'let's be friends' talk."

Spock cocked his head. "The...talk?"

"You broke it off."

"Ah," Spock's hands slid around to McCoy's shoulder blades.

"Now I can't help but notice that you ain't kissed me yet," McCoy drawled.

Spock frowned – minutely, but he did – and leaned to press a dry kiss to McCoy's cheek, lips just barely rasping the stubble. "What is this, if not a kiss?" he asked, inches from McCoy's ear, before settling back against the wall, still pinned by McCoy's lower body and hands, expectantly.

"That was the kinda kiss I'd give my momma," McCoy said flatly. "Not," he smirked, "the kind of kiss I'd give, say, a guy pinnin' me to a brick wall in an alley who'd I like to keep on seein'."

There was a beat – perhaps four of McCoy's accelerated heartbeats – in which Spock simply stared at him, before those hands had gone from his shoulders to the back of his head, fingers winding into his hair, and his mouth – Asahi beer and spearmint – was sealed over McCoy's. He moulded himself to it, his upper body curving to slot into the lines of the doctor's, the first flicker of his tongue brief and fleeting before it returned, as though he were trying to reach beyond himself and take up residence. He was warm, his ribs and hips solid bone and shifting muscle under McCoy's kneading hands, and his teeth sharp where they caught at McCoy's lower lip to pull him back toward the wall with him, fingers clutching in his hair and demanding his move to wherever Spock wanted to go. And oh hell, would he go, would he ever go!

Spock was...a lot more responsive than McCoy had expected. His tongue moved in little darts and jabs, his head following the action like he was trying to find some secret in McCoy's mouth, or at least draw a mental map of his dental work. His hands didn't seem capable of staying still, wandering through his hair at random, tugging at clumps here and there, raking the nails behind his ears and into the hollows underneath, rubbing the pads along his jawline and back around to begin all over again at the nape of his neck. And when McCoy pressed closer, trying to get a decent impression of the body behind those jeans, Spock's left foot slid flat up the wall, bracketing McCoy's hip with his thigh. Goddamn.

A siren exploded into life a block away, and McCoy jerked away in startled, momentary fright. Spock's eyes were holes in his face, swallowed by the black of his pupils, and his mouth looked swollen.

Fuck, but he was hot.

"So, uh," McCoy croaked, shivering when ghostly fingers trailed down the back of his neck to his shoulders again. If they carried this on, they'd be fucking before he knew what hit him. "See you Monday?"

Spock blinked, looking somewhat dazed, and his fingers toyed with McCoy's collar.

"At Harry's."

"Yeah."

Spock blinked again, then peeled the collar aside and –

"Yowch," McCoy hissed through the lust as his teeth sank in and he sucked hard. He felt somewhat light-headed, and it was nothing to do with the damn arterial compression. "Holy Christ Almighty, if you get any less zen you'll explode."

"I am not concerned," Spock murmured into his skin, then let go – fully go, pushing him back slightly and regaining his footing. "I will see you on Monday."

And then he was gone, and McCoy had the worst case of wood in a long, long time.