Title: Impromptu Bondmates

Author: Nemo the Everbeing

Rating: R

Author's Note: Warning: We're headed into some slashy territory here. Those who object, well, I'm not sure why you would even be reading this, but I advise you turn back now before your delicate sensibilities are hurt.

Having said that, it is my goal to write a S/Mc slash tale in which both boys remain completely and utterly in character. I believe it can work. Let's see it in action!

Disclaimer: They still belong to Paramount. Imagine that.

. . . .

Chapter 2

"Sweet Jesus," Leonard McCoy breathed, as he returned to consciousness and immediately wished he hadn't. He stared up at an unremarkable beige ceiling in what seemed to be a small closet-turned-cell. As feelings other than pain returned to his beleaguered body, he also noted that he seemed to be lying on some sort of hard cot.

"I tend to go by Spock."

McCoy raised his head from his hard pillow to glare at the impassive Vulcan. "Well, thank you for that," he drawled sarcastically. "My mistake."

Spock inclined his head slightly.

McCoy rolled his eyes and sighed. He attempted to sit up, but every muscle in his arm protested and gave out on him, causing him to yelp in pain before he could suppress it.

Spock was at his side in an instant. "I might note you that you were shot in the shoulder. It wouldn't be advisable to use that arm."

"Really? I would have never thought."

Spock looked mildly exasperated. "I might also note that your use of sarcasm seems to become more frequent after such an attack."

"You get shot, and tell me how your attitude fares."

"I believe my attitude is completely unaffected."

That got McCoy's attention. "What? Spock, were you shot?"

"That is what I said, yes."

"Dammit!" McCoy pushed himself up, biting back his pain as medical instincts kicked in.

"Doctor, I am completely—"

McCoy shot the Vulcan a glare. "When you become Chief Medical Officer of a starship, you can make that call. Until then, kindly shut up."

Spock arched an eyebrow at him, but did not protest as McCoy carefully pulled aside the sticky material of Spock's pale beige pants. "Why'd they change our clothes?" he wondered aloud as he inspected the emerald wound.

"I believe they were attempting to conceal our identities as Federation Officials."

McCoy snorted, but continued to work, wishing he had anything more than his hands and a certain longing for the technology he so often denounced.

"That is not the only misconception our former captors have imposed upon us, Doctor."

McCoy allowed the slightest flicker of his eyes upward to indicate his continued interest in Spock's revelation as he tore off the hem of the Vulcan's pants to create a makeshift bandage. He almost found himself smiling as that action caused both of the impassive Vulcan's eyebrows to shoot up.

"Was it necessary to use the hem of my pants for that?"

"Most definitely," McCoy replied, feeling better simply because of the reaction he had provoked. "So, Spock, you were saying something about misconceptions?"

"Indeed."

"Are you going to tell me what those happen to be, or are we going for a round of twenty questions?"

Spock stared at him quizzically. "Such a method of investigation seems highly illogical."

"Spock," McCoy snapped, his smile fading, "if I didn't know you better, I would swear that you were stalling."

Spock looked displeased at that allegation, but even so, his voice was unusually unsure as he stated, "They believe we are bondmates."

McCoy stared at Spock for several moments of incomprehension before bursting into laughter.

"I fail to perceive the humor in the situation, Doctor."

"Oh, come on, Spock!" McCoy insisted. "Even you've got to see it!"

"You find the concept of a human and Vulcan bonding humorous?" Spock demanded.

"No," McCoy insisted, knowing the subject was a touchy one, but not being able to resist adding, "though Lord knows how your mother puts up with it. I find us humorous! Can you imagine a worse pair of bondmates, Spock? We'd kill one another."

"Then you will not find our single option an appealing one."

McCoy's laughter died. "What option?"

"Our new owners will, no doubt, test the validity of their vendor's claim. If we aren't bondmates, I believe they will kill you."

McCoy gaped like a landed fish, scarcely believing what he heard. "Spock, you can't possibly . . . I mean, it's insane! We can't possibly—"

Even Spock looked deeply disturbed as he said, "It is the only logical option."

"Spock, isn't this a binding sort of thing?"

Spock glanced away. "Most often, yes. There have been cases of a newly- formed bond being broken, but those were instances of forced bondings and accidents. And they were severed very quickly after they were formed by a Priestess of sufficient ability."

McCoy stared at the Vulcan. "In other words, we don't get that sort of out."

The Vulcan drew himself up. "It is either that, or our captors discover the deception, and kill you. Logic dictates that I save your life."

"Dammit, Spock, stop thinking logically and consider what you're committing yourself to! If I know my Vulcans, and I'd like to think I do, then this is a . . . sacred thing. A marriage. To tie yourself to a human, to one as emotional, as unprepared as me . . ."

Spock was watching him carefully, and McCoy felt mortified as he realized that he was shaking. Clenching his jaw, McCoy forced his body into stillness. "Take it from one who knows, Spock, a loveless marriage for any reason is Hell, and if there's no way to divorce—"

"It is an acceptable sacrifice," Spock intoned, moving closer.

McCoy scrambled away, eyes wide.

Spock regarded him with dawning comprehension. "Your motives for objecting are not entirely selfless," he concluded.

"Ten points to the clever man with the pointy ears," the doctor snapped, feeling half-hysterical.

"You are frightened of this," Spock almost asked.

McCoy looked away. "It's no secret that I've never been comfortable with the prospect of someone nosing around in my head, and the thought of someone able to do it any time they choose, and access everything . . . Don't you see, Spock? It's the ultimate invasion. I couldn't get away from it. It'd drown me."

"My mother fared well."

"I'm not your mother."

"In more ways than one way."

McCoy felt a bark of half-terrified laugher burst in his throat and push out.

Spock almost looked sympathetic as he approached McCoy again. "I do understand your concerns, Doctor McCoy, but the fact remains that the only other alternative is one that is categorically unacceptable." Hesitating, as if trying to convince himself of what he said, Spock knelt before McCoy. "We have no choice."

McCoy shook his head, forcing his fears down. There was no way in hell he would be some shrinking violet in this. If Spock could weather it, then so could Leonard McCoy, no matter how it frightened him.

Tightly, he nodded, and awkwardly copied Spock's hand positioning on the Vulcan's face, trying to achieve a level of clinical detachment that simply would not come.

Spock began to speak, and McCoy dimly heard himself mimicking the words. He hoped he was pronouncing things correctly, but, dammit, he was a doctor, not a linguist.

Suddenly, it felt like his world was imploding, and at the same time blowing outward infinitely. He was decently sure that he had mental flashes of memory, thoughts of a desert he had never seen, yet was completely sure that he had lived in for years. He saw faces, dark and austere, which were both completely alien and completely familiar.

He felt like he was falling apart.

'Doctor.' The voice broke in his head like a thunderclap. 'Doctor, you must control this.'

"Oh, Christ," he dimly heard himself breath.

'Doctor!'

"Shut up!" he shouted. "I can hear you, damn it."

'I believe it would be better if you attempted to work through this in your mind. Splitting your energies between the physical and mental is not an extremely intelligent action to take.'

"I don't. Know. How."

'Yes, you do.'

'Dammit, Spock!' he burst out, suddenly realizing that he wasn't speaking aloud. It was enough to freeze McCoy's mental processes in panic. This wasn't right. He wasn't some sort of telepath. He was human! He talked with vocal cords and respiratory system, not his mind!

'Normally, that would be a correct assumption, Doctor. However, it seems that a bonding alters your brain chemistry in some way sufficient to create a semi-telepathic ability.'

'I don't want a semi-telepathic ability!'

'Interesting. Many humans would leap at this chance as a beneficial opportunity.'

'They're idiots. We're people, not computers! We're not wired to take in this sort of upgrade!'

'I believe we have just proven that you can.'

'Spock . . .' he managed, but felt so damn lost, and scared, and humiliated because he knew that Spock knew. The Vulcan could now look past all of his defenses and barriers and see the Southern gentleman in space who was completely unprepared for the vastness and alienness of it all. Before, he could hide behind a mask of gruffness, but here . . . of all the people who could have to see him so mentally naked, why did it have to be the oh-so-superior Vulcan? Any minute now, he was going to comment on it, gloat in his own unemotionally disdainful way.

Any minute now . . .

"Doctor," he heard dimly.

"Doctor, it is over. Come back. Concentrate on my hands."

Then, McCoy felt pressure. He concentrated on it, on finding its source, on fighting his way out of his own mind, which turned out to be much more labyrinthine than he had ever expected.

Suddenly, it was dark, but the darkness was a more natural seeming one than that of his mind. It was one that he had seen every day of his life: the dark that existed behind his eyelids.

Slowly, McCoy forced them open.

And Spock's face swam into focus. "Doctor, are you all right?"

McCoy stared at the Vulcan incredulously. "You can ask that with a straight face?" he demanded.

"How else would I ask it?"

The humor flickering under the comment hit McCoy like a punch under the jaw, physically knocking him back into a sprawl on the floor, even as Spock caught his head before he could crack it on the unforgiving surface. When the wave of foreign emotion ceased, McCoy sagged, muscles no longer willing to function.

Spock was staring at him in concern.

McCoy shook his head. "I can't do this," he gasped. "I don't have the first clue how. You feel the tiniest little thing, and it hits me like a ton of bricks. Your thoughts are in my head, and I can't get a word in edgewise. I can't turn the volume down and I can't switch the channel." He jerked at the wave of anxiety from Spock. "God dammit! I'm human! I have no mental training! I'm just . . . I just . . . Christ, Almighty. This is going to kill me."

Then suddenly, the thoughts were gone.

McCoy reeled now from their absence, feeling almost empty. Slowly, he raised his head, which had fallen back to lie against the ground sometime during the last attack.

Spock seemed to be concentrating. "I am blocking myself from you, Doctor. I fear that you were correct in your claim that this was unwise."

"You're admitting that you were wrong and I was right? Is the sky falling?" McCoy rasped.

"I am admitting that I was never told of the extent that my mother had to prepare before she and my father bonded. She mentioned that she had what she called 'extensive training', but I assumed . . ."

"You assumed that a few necessary mind melds here and there were good enough or us?"

"Essentially," Spock admitted, voice tight with the embarrassment of not considering all possible options.

McCoy forced his body to rise again, standing on unsteady legs. "So, I suppose the question now is how fast you can get me trained up. I mean, you can't just block indefinitely. If they test us, we're going to have to be able to talk telepathically without landing me on the floor."

"Quite."

McCoy waited for a suggestion from the Vulcan who usually possessed all the answers. "Well?" he prompted after several seconds passed.

"What?"

McCoy blew out his breath in utter exasperation. "You can't expect me to come up with the ideas in this situation, Spock! I'm the human here, as you're so fond of noting. I don't have the first clue about how we deal with this."

"Having never done this before, I am also at a loss," Spock concluded calmly.

The doctor gaped at him. "So, you're saying that there's nothing we can do, and I'll die anyway when they test us, only I'll die with you in my head quoting me my odds."

"I had not actually thought of doing that."

McCoy rubbed his temple. "Spock, you were raised on Vulcan. You have to have known something about this, something to help us out here." He wracked his brain. "What do normal Vulcan couples do?" he asked after a thought.

"I would not know."

"What, you people don't talk? No one gave you the birds and the bees?"

Spock raised his infamous eyebrow. "Why would one give me Terran fauna and insects?"

McCoy fought his quickly flagging temper. "Spock, you just bonded with me, you should know my phraseology now!"

"Doctor, in my attempts to protect you from my mind, I am blocking your thoughts from mine, as well as the other way around. I know nothing more of you than the glimpses and impressions I received during the initial bonding."

McCoy sighed. "What I meant is to ask is if your daddy ever sat you down and explained the facts of your sexual functions to you?"

Even through the block, McCoy felt Spock's shock hit him. "Is that a common practice on Earth?" he queried. "That seems rather . . . unseemly."

McCoy smiled slightly at Spock's disgust. "How else are you going to find these things out unless someone you trust gets you in the know?"

"Textbooks, one would assume."

McCoy snorted. Typical Vulcan answer. "Please. Human children barely read textbooks when they have to, let alone voluntarily."

Spock looked both faintly disparaging and pensive. "So, you are suggesting that the solution to our problem is possibly sexual in nature?"

McCoy blanched, realizing that, yes, that was what it sounded like. "No! I mean . . . I thought . . . some kind of mental . . . dammit, Spock, I didn't mean it like that!"

"Actually, the notion does have some theoretical merit."

"Oh . . . hell, no."

Spock grimaced slightly, that simple look conveying his thorough dislike of the entire situation. "It appears that we must put this theory to the test before eliminating it from our list of possibilities."

With that, Spock placed a hand on McCoy's shoulder.

McCoy glanced at the appendage in surprise. "What do you think you're—?"

Spock, with a look of resigned distaste on his face, leaned in and pressed his lips to McCoy's before the human could finish his squawk of protest.

Again, the wave of thoughts and images hit McCoy, but this time he had the oddest feeling that he could breathe underwater.

It became a tide which, once one simply let go and went with it, was amazingly intense. It was difficult to even comprehend, but an entire lifetime of thoughts and repressed emotions washed over him, and then began to intertwine with his own. Landscapes began to merge as grass grew in a desert and a swamp dried and cracked. Animals he both knew and didn't slipped in and around the corners of his mindscape, and people flitted through, speaking on topics he both understood and didn't.

And somehow, it all made a strange sort of sense.

Inch by inch, McCoy broke the surface and reemerged into the oxygen of the real world. Things solidified and flowed back into their proper places . . .

And Leonard McCoy found himself rather hopelessly entangled in Spock's arms, kissing him with a desperation that seemed like it should have died out with his divorce.

Both men realized the position they had put themselves in and pulled away, straightening their clothing fussily. McCoy was quite sure his entire face had gone bright red in embarrassment, while Spock seemed to be actually working to regain that cool efficiency he usually possessed so effortlessly.

When he was finally able to speak, McCoy found himself blurting out the first thing that came to mind, which happened to be: "Fascinating."

Spock looked up at him sharply.

Even McCoy was a bit surprised at the suddenness with which that word had sprung into being in his head.

And how natural it seemed to use it.

"It seems to have worked," Spock noted.

"You noticed that, too, huh?" McCoy asked ruefully.

Spock eyed him and said, "I believe we should attempt to fully reopen the link now."

McCoy nodded, understanding that time was of the essence. Spock closed his eyes and then breathed out long and slow.

Once again, the doctor felt that the emotions and thoughts bubbling about, trapped in Spock's mind, were suddenly unleashed upon him. Still, after the initial migraine passed in about ten seconds, he felt his mind working to accommodate the new data. Slowly, he opened his squeezed-closed eyes, and took in Spock's concerned face, and how he was not looking at it from a horizontal position.

"Well, what do you know?" McCoy drawled. "I'm still on my feet."

"I would deem that an improvement."

"I would agree."

Spock grimaced slightly as he perched on their single cot. "It appears, then, that your supposition, however unintentional, is correct. We must continue this regimen of physical contact if we wish to make this bond fully compatible with your system."

"Wonderful," grumbled McCoy, "I finally get another shot at marriage, and it's with the one person in this universe less romantic than my ex-wife."

Still, as McCoy sat down on the cot next to his dispassionate Vulcan, he noted that he did so close enough so that their knees bumped.

He simply chalked it up to the bonding finally driving him out of his ever- loving mind.

. . . . .

. . . .

. . .

. .

.

Next: Of human (and not-so-human) bondage.