Notes: Just a random little thing I whipped up tonight.

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.

Poolside

The first thing McCoy did that afternoon was strip off and jump into the pool. Georgia in August was baking, a heat comfortable even for Spock, and it crawled into ship-sterilised skin and warmed McCoy, truly warmed him, for the first time in months.

He hadn't had a proper leave in almost eighteen months, and hadn't been back to Georgia in six years; he'd almost forgotten the way home from the shuttleport, and they'd arrived late last night, Spock's eyes glittering like onyx in the dusk as they'd rattled up to the old house, the proverbial stranger in a strange land.

McCoy had always wanted to bring him back to Georgia – back home. Waking up this afternoon, late from jetlag and timezone adjustments, to Spock curled along his side and dead to the universe, had been the best damn feeling since their first fuck. McCoy hadn't felt this good in years.

(Didn't hurt that they hadn't left the bed for a good couple of hours after he woke up either.)

And so he jumped in the pool that afternoon. It was his house, though he usually rented it out to strangers during their months in space, and the previous tenants had kept the place well – the pool was fresh, clean, and cool, and he revelled in the delicous slide of it over his skin and through his hair. Goddamn, but he'd missed swimming. Truly being able to stretch out and swim – the ship's pool was limited, really only for training and physiotherapy purposes, and ill-advised to use in motion anyway due to the risks of a sudden speed change (screw what Jim said, if Sulu jumped from warp one to warp five, you could feel it, and the water could too).

An honest-to-God swimming pool, under the honest-to-God Georgian summer. Leave didn't get any better than this.

Then Spock stepped out onto the patio in a white t-shirt and dark shorts, and McCoy revised the opinion, sliding up to the edge to watch him.

He was barefoot, which was an odd sight in daylight. His toes flexed lightly on the hot stone, and McCoy wondered if he'd be like a cat in this heat – stretch out and soak it up. He probably wouldn't climb up on the shed roof to do it, but McCoy was willing to bet he'd utilise the hammock under the cherry trees at some point and give photosynthesis a damn good shot.

Those toes came within reach, and he flicked some water over them.

"Leonard," Spock said reproachfully, his foot darting away instinctively.

"What?" he asked, grasping one ankle solidly and using it as an anchor to haul himself out. Vulcans were good for something, he supposed; Spock didn't so much as twitch. He sat on the side, trailing a wet hand up the back of Spock's calf, and feeling the jump and twitch of the muscles there. "You gonna come down here, or do I gotta come up there?"

Spock eyed him for a moment longer, then capitulated, crouching to drop a swift kiss at the corner of McCoy's mouth. He was too slow, and McCoy caught a wet hand around the back of his neck to hold him still and wring a proper kiss out of him.

"Heat's makin' you lazy," he drawled. "C'mon in. Water's great."

"I would rather not."

"S'not even cold," McCoy pointed out, rubbing his other hand up a bare leg and pushing until Spock was sitting rather than crouching. "Sun's been on her all day."

"Regardless of the temperature, I would rather not..."

"Why not? Y'don't mind me bein' wet."

"I do mind; you simply ignore me."

"True," McCoy conceded, clasping the dark head in both hands and angling it so that he could get to an ear. After a pause, Spock's hands – surprisingly cool against the shimmering heat – came to rest on his bare shoulders. "C'mon," he murmured around the lobe. "Do it just this once, and I won't bother you again about it for the rest of leave."

"I do not believe you," Spock replied, ducking his nose against McCoy's collarbone to let him continue his work on that ear.

"I swear on all the Saurian brandy in the kitchen, that if you get in the pool with me today, I won't so much as ask you to again for the rest of leave," McCoy said, and licked a sharp stripe to the tip and back.

That...was more convincing.

"Leonard," Spock hesitated. "I do not like water."

"I had noticed," McCoy tugged on the earlobe, his fingers beginning to scratch lightly at the base of Spock's skull. "I'll be in there with you, darlin'. C'mon. Just ten minutes, s'all I'm askin' for."

He was – content, under Spock's hands. His skin hummed with a heat borne of sheer relaxation rather than the weather; he was calm and at ease in a way he could rarely be on the ship, in deep space, and with the constant lingering wait for an alarm or a bleeper or a klaxon. He was...

Humans knew nothing. This was beauty.

"C'mon, sweetheart, just ten minutes," McCoy coaxed again, hands stroking at the sides of Spock's neck as he scraped his top teeth alongside his earlobe, and Spock capitulated.

"Very well."

There was a sharp spike of complicated joy – tinged with amusement, and pride, and some kind of self-satisfaction – before McCoy backed up to kiss him and drop himself back into the pool effortlessly on impressive biceps.

"C'mon, then, shirt off and c'mon in," he said cheerfully, and Spock crushed the wave of discontent at subjecting himself to being immersed in water at the sight of the doctor so obviously pleased at his agreement.

Ten minutes. He would endure.

He abandoned his t-shirt to the safe, dry confines of a chair, and came back to sit at the pool edge, dropping his feet into the water and suppressing a shiver at the sensation. The water was not cold, but it was water, and he was not impressed at all.

His aversion to water was quite simple: water disrupted and interfered with touch telepathy. It felt rather like being drugged – his nerves were desensitised to an alarming degree, even if he were to be touched while immersed, and it was rather like being deprived of a vital and important sense, like sight in Humans or smell in Orions. It was disorienting and instinctively extremely alarming, to the point where even Vulcan elders could experience difficulty in maintaining a logical position on things. It was...not nice, as he heard his father once (rather sourly) put it to his mother.

He was not afraid – but he was certainly apprehensive.

"C'mon," and McCoy's hands were stroking up his calves again under the water. "In you get. Ten minutes don't start until you actually get in."

Spock rubbed his fingers over McCoy's half-dried shoulders, and decided that if he could keep his hands dry and functioning telepathically for the duration, then perhaps it would be more tolerable. He spread his fingers wide, gripping over the warm muscle and skin and bone, and slid into the water and McCoy's waiting hands.

The world was deadened, and he shivered, clutching tightly to those warm shoulders. He could feel there, at least, even if the rest of him felt unpleasantly adrift. He could feel McCoy through his hands – the faint undercurrents of pride and concern and idle affection.

"There y'are," McCoy murmured, his hands stroking – perhaps rubbing would be a better term, for the power and pressure in his fingers and palms – up Spock's back to the shoulder blades and back down again. "Alright?"

"No."

He chuckled, pushing a kiss into the hinge of Spock's jaw. "Fair enough. But y'are, you know. I gotcha."

Spock tangled one hand into McCoy's hair and kissed him. He tasted of nectarines.

"Mm," McCoy grinned, and began to walk backwards from the side, dragging Spock with him. "Hey, c'mere. Put your legs around my waist; you're probably light enough in the water."

Spock hesitated briefly, until one hand began to skate down his back to cup his ass, then did as he was prompted, locking his thighs firmly around McCoy's hips and clutching his shoulders as tightly as he could without causing damage.

"Easy, you're alright," McCoy soothed. "Goddamn, you really are light enough," he added, working an arm under Spock's thighs and hefting him slightly higher, craning his head up to kiss him briefly. "I could throw you around in here; you don't weigh a damn thing anymore."

"I would rather you didn't," Spock said sharply, and McCoy laughed. His easy relaxation was calming under Spock's hands, and the extra inch or so of Spock's skin clear of the oppressive water went, as the Humans said, a long way.

"Don't suppose I can talk you into actually swimming?"

"No."

"Damn," he said. "Alright, get off me. You're not that light."

Spock unwound his legs, though not his hands, and pressed closer when McCoy walked them an inch or so deeper.

"Leonard..."

"Alright, alright," McCoy groused, walking his fingers up Spock's spine. "How you learned to swim is beyond me."

"With great trepidation."

"No shit," he drawled. "Worse than a cat, I swear to God."

"Cats are very sensible and logical animals."

"Not when it comes to water they ain't," McCoy retorted, beginning to lick messy kisses over Spock's shoulder. The sensation was vaguely...ticklish; he hadn't shaved closely enough, as usual. "On the other hand, you get mighty clingy in water, and I guess I can't be complainin' about that."

"I am not 'clingy.'"

"Oh yeah? Then let go."

Spock paused, and resisted the urge to simply scowl at him.

"Thought not," McCoy said, returning to the messy kissing. One hand was scratching blunt nails into the pressure point beside Spock's left shoulder blade, creating a tingling sensation somewhere between pleasure and a simple oddity, and the other creeping down over a nerve-dulled hip to insinuate the fingers around his right buttock.

It would have been erotic, if Spock could have felt it properly, and he buried his face into the side of McCoy's neck, rolling his shoulder up into the wet mouth, and tangled his fingers back into his hair. He could feel him, there; he could feel his almost lazy arousal, idling in the base of his brain, and the thick, warm gusts of desire and affection.

"Spock?"

Spock made a questioning noise.

"Why do you hate the water so much?"

"I do not hate..."

"Yeah, yeah, cut it out."

"The sensation is an unpleasant one."

"Not followin' you," McCoy admitted, rubbing his stubble across the kissed shoulder.

"Immersion in water creates a barrier over the nerve endings that transmit – telepathy, for lack of a translation."

McCoy paused. "It shorts your voodoo out?"

"Essentially. I cannot...hear, in the telepathic sense, when immersed in water. It is akin to sensory deprivation."

McCoy hummed. "So, what, you're offsettin' it with me?"

"Yes."

Spock stiffened when McCoy drew back, and relaxed again when their lips were sealed together loosely, that nectarine-tang accessible again on the tip and base of McCoy's tongue, and nowhere in between. Spock kept one hand rubbing in that rumpled hair, and brought the other around to stroke kisses into the flex and work of McCoy's jaw and chin, plucking the sharp sparks of arousal and trust from sun-dried skin. McCoy's tongue was rhythmic and sure; his hands guided their movements through the thick water, and Spock clung to the burn of McCoy's emotions and ignored their surroundings as best he could until his back hit the baking stone of the poolside, and McCoy flattened them chest-to-chest, breaking the kiss to smear more over Spock's cheek, jaw and neck.

"Ten minutes," McCoy murmured, digging his teeth into the same ear as earlier, and sucking on the lobe. "You, me, towels, and bed. How's that sound?"

"Most appealing," Spock said, clutching at McCoy's hair with one hand before daringly sliding the other beneath the water – the oily feel was horrible – and cupping McCoy's groin through his trunks. "Is this a reward for entering the water?"

"You bet your pointed ears it is," McCoy growled, digging his tongue into the hollow behind Spock's ear and tightening his grip when Spock's wavered. "Get all those nerves flarin' up again until they don't know what to do with themselves."

Spock shivered, and retracted both hands to brace them on the side of the pool and lift himself free, biceps straining and water pouring from his limbs and drenched shorts. McCoy wormed a hand into said shorts as they left the water, and managed to get in a quick grope before Spock retracted his legs to the warm stone and rose out of reach.

"Ten minutes," McCoy called after him, "and then I'm comin' in there, and you damn well better be ready."

Spock paused at the doorway, mostly-naked and drenched from head to toe, and looked over his shoulder, the look unreadable but pure sex, somehow, and McCoy grinned, feeling light-headed with the lust.

Goddamn, he was going to enjoy this shore leave.