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Leonard, Leo, Doctor McCoy, but rarely ever Bones, these days, was dying. Not in the sense that he did not have long left to live – his body, as it was now, patched and re-patched with lab-grown tissue would likely last another ten years or so. Hell, if he kept treating the ailments as they came up and didn’t die in an accident, a murder, or of one of the few remaining untreatable diseases or cancers, he could probably hang on indefinitely. Leonard could cure anything, nearly – but he still couldn’t cure that rainy day. Loneliness and a crushing sense of isolation had settled on him and increased exponentially with age since his retirement from Starfleet.
He was certainly not optimistic by nature, and he had never been a particularly happy man, but he’d had his moments, times where everything had been exactly as it should be. His mind cast back, as it often did, to the days when he was truly happy; not times when he was laughing or smiling, times when he was simply and deeply contented. He’d long since reconciled with the fact that very few of these moments contained his only daughter; Joanna was grown now, with a daughter of her own who was in her early thirties and doing remarkably well; no doubt Jocelyn’s parenting had been more than good enough to equip her child in the ways of child-rearing. It had taken him years to come to terms with not having been a part of that.
Instead, his focus honed in on an evening around a campfire with his two best friends, he and Jim somehow having induced Spock to sing along with them under the guise of some deeper cultural significance. Nostalgia was a cruel mistress, but Leo longed desperately for a time when something so mundane had made him feel so alive and complete. Now, alone in his own house with all his friends literally millions of kilometres away, or worse, a mile up the road and six feet under ground, he too was dying. Maybe he was already dead. Just because Leonard could live another 10, 20, 30 years, did not mean he wanted to.
His vague suicide plans were interrupted by a ring on the old-fashioned doorbell. His (mostly original) bones creaked more than the antique wood as he pushed up out of his desk chair.
“Now why would anyone come round at a time like this?” He grouched, loud enough to be heard through the door by this unwelcome guest. “It’s eleven pm, this had better be an emerg-“ His voice faltered and his mouth immediately dried out at the familiarly unforgiving posture silhouetted in the doorway. “Spock?”
“Doctor,” Came the level reply. The porch light flicked belatedly on. Spock’s face looked older than he remembered, a little more tired and a little more lined. Four more years of exhaustion etched in skin. He wore a soft grey jumper of thick yarn and Starfleet uniform trousers and boots. “If you would like me to return at a more convenient hour…” Spock turned slightly but Bones – Bones – grabbed his elbow to stay him.
“No,” His voice was tight and dry so he swallowed and began again. “No, now’s fine. You know I’ve always got time for you Spock.”
Spock raised an eyebrow, but did nothing to resist as he was pulled inside. Even the hobgoblin must recognise loneliness when he sees it. Bones could feel the elastic strength of Vulcan muscles beneath his skin; Spock’s fitness had barely declined from its peak even as the human’s muscle had wasted with age and disuse. Suddenly he felt very self-conscious of his bare skullcap and frizzy white tufts. He was ashamed of the slight tremor in his once surgeon-steady hands.
He led the other man to his study-come-sitting room – he was too old now to do business without pleasure, and too much of an academic and a doctor to do the inverse – and offered him a drink, which as expected was declined. “Just you wait here, I wasn’t expecting anybody so you’ll have to give me a minute so I can clean up. You never did give proper notice, sneaking around on those green feet o’ yours.” He did not turn to catch Spock's slight amusement.
Stepping through into his practice, preserved mostly for old time’s sake and the occasional research interest, he locked himself in. He didn’t usually use any of the superficially regenerative techniques others in their hundreds used today, but by God did Spock make him feel the need to be young again.
He used a dusty keratin regenerator to grow his hair back, the first time he’d every used one, ignoring the itch as the white strands broke through his bare skin, and dry-dyed it to a vaguely acceptable brown.
Dermal regenerators took worst of the sag and the liver spots from his skin, and what the hell, he added a couple of years to that ten year projection by regenerating his articular cartilage and bursa, giving his aching joints a break and a relief to the dull twinge in his spine.
The man in the mirror seemed both alien and more recognisable at the same time. He still looked old, but he didn’t look old. Spock would pick up on the change, but he couldn’t face the thought of the other man seeing him in his self-enforced death mask.
Maybe Spock knew this, because when Bones returned to the study he said nothing of the radical change in appearance.
“So what brings you to this neck of the woods, Spock?”
“We are not in or even near any woods, Leonard.” Spock’s puzzlement was genuine, endearing. And Lord he’d missed it.
“I mean what are you doing around these parts, Ambassador.”
“I see.” Spock considered what he was about to say. “I am here simply to see you. I have resigned my post as of today. Ambassador is no longer my title.”
Bones smiled for the first time in months. “You came just for my company?”
The gently expressive way Spock manipulated his eyebrows, as though he were confused by Bones’ disbelief warmed him. “Of course. One is permitted to visit one’s… Friends, without the need for additional excuses.” Spock considered the word despite their shared knowledge of his use of the term.
Suddenly Bones was hopeful. “So where abouts are you going to live?”
“I have not yet decided. I do not wish to live in isolation, which leaves me confined to Earth or Vulcan unless I should choose a nomadic lifestyle.”
Leonard wanted to ask him to live with him, but their eyes locked, and he knew Spock was already aware of the depth of his need. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t compel anyone to stay with him, least of all Spock. Instead, he said, “You’re more than welcome here whilst you figure that out, there’s plenty of space here.”
“Thank you.” Spock had once ridiculed him for that phrase. But then, he had turned it on Spock and picked at him until he’d made Spock the victim of it, too terrified that his own humanity might somehow peak out. Now that he’d seen what was inside Spock, seen the real disdain that had been ingrained into the half-human because of that very humanity, he couldn’t pick on it. Maybe Spock knew exactly what Bones had felt those last four years; maybe he needed his friends to be whole, also.
“You’re welcome.” He repeated, and meant it. Actually, Spock was more than welcome; he was needed, wanted, even if it had taken four years alone for Bones to realise this. Suddenly his throat was dry and his eyes prickled. He took it as a sign of age even as his limbs felt looser and his head warmer with its newly reestablished mop of brown hair.
The pause was awkward, but not uncomfortable. He relaxed into Spock’s presence and the atmosphere that reminded him of when his life still had purpose. He slumped in the sofa whilst Spock maintained a similarly slumped pose but made it seem infinitely more dignified by steepling his fingers in front of his face.
“Have you heard from Jim?” It seemed the right question to ask.
Spock nodded. “I have. He is well. Our paths intersected about two months ago on Alpha Eridani II. I believe he misses you.”
Bones snorted with bitter affection. “Yeah well, he knows where I am. Space ain’t no place for someone in their second forties!”
“I told him you would say as much. He promised me he would visit you on his next shore leave, which apparently has yet to occur.”
“Yeah well he’d better hurry up, or I’ll be dead before he damn well gets here!”
Spock gave him a strange look and then reached out to touch his arm, the way he had once done when Bones' life was in some literal peril.
“I’m fine! I just meant it could be forever!” It was only half a lie, after all. But Spock didn’t let him go, weighing his weakened limb as though it equated to a medical history. Guilt washed over him at his own fatalism and he crumpled slightly under Spock’s grip. The bastard could probably feel it through his skin. “Don’t worry about me, Spock, I’m okay.”
“Worry is a human emotion,” Spock reminded him, looking concerned all the same.
Leo’s eyes burned and he blinked rapidly, glancing away, like this offered a chance in hell of concealing his misery.
“Doctor,” Spock said softly, leaving him torn between brushing him off and ending his own desolation. Eventually he justified the latter by reasoning that Spock was the one reaching out, wanting to help him. Any other time, Bones would have shrugged things off, he knew he should do so now, but he’d been alone for so long. He leaned into Spock’s touch. The Vulcan did not hug him like Jim might have, just accepted his closeness as it was and permitted the contact. “Leonard.”
Bones closed his eyes against his own tears and hid them in the wiry muscle of Spock’s shoulder. The other man stilled for a moment before he withdrew his arm from between them and carefully lay it across the Doctor’s back. The weight of the dense Vulcan bones was comforting, and Spock’s Vulcan-human smell was familiar and especially longed for. Bones didn’t sob, just swallowed back the pint of saliva that seemed to have accumulated in his mouth.
“I have missed you, Leonard.” Spock still possessed the capacity to surprise, although his next sentence faded from sentimental to that diplomatic bemusement he’d clearly been perfecting since the age of five. “I find it unpleasant for the three of us to be so far apart, especially for myself to be so far from you when we once literally inhabited the same body. I have become quite attached.”
Bones pressed himself against Spock’s solid body as though trying to attach himself in a far less figurative capacity. “You know I’ve missed you,” he accused Spock’s clavicle, not trusting himself to look up. He was pleased to hear his voice still gruff and with an edge of reprimand.
“You did tell me once before,” Spock told him informatively, “Although I experience it from a somewhat strange perspective.”
“So I did.” He finally raised his head, confident the tears had evaporated from his eyes, surprised at how his body had curled in over the retired Ambassador, having forgotten what it was like to be even slightly flexible. Bringing his head up put it level with Spock’s and just a few inches away, to the Vulcan’s right side. “It’s good to see you. It’s really good to see you.”
Spock’s eyes held his again, remarkably warm and not as wrinkled as they’d looked in the harsh light of the porch. Bones looped his arm around his neck, stroking that glossy black hair, sifting through the grey above those pointed ears.
Ignoring the sensation of being examined by Spock’s thoughtful gaze, he pressed a kiss to the other man’s cheek, and then another, and peppered his face with them in a way designed to annoy a ten year old in public. Spock endured the playful onslaught, but then caught his face firmly between his hands.
No amount of socialising seemed to have taught Spock how long a pause could continue before becoming very uncomfortable, so he did nothing at all until Bones braced his hands against his shoulders to right himself. Spock followed him backwards and placed a kiss of his own to Leonard’s lips, the one place he’d missed out before. Bones pushed tiny chaste kisses back on the corners of his mouth, fingers splaying on the grey jumper as though trying to take handfuls of him back from the kiss. He found again that he could not look at Spock when the kiss broke. It seemed a strange progression of their relationship, but maybe an inevitable one. He bowed his head again and leant it heavily on Spock’s chest. it wasn't that they'd ever not felt this, but that they'd never been without it or needed it more.
“I do not have to leave, Leonard,” Spock told him earnestly, pulling him close. “In fact, I find I do not wish to.”
Hell. Maybe Bones could do just ten more years.