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“Be careful, doctor. It would be inadvisable to move right now”, Spock said. His tone was as calm and level as ever, but McCoy could feel the excitement he was allowing himself to feel seeping through.
“Don't you worry, Spock, I have no intentions of moving”, McCoy responded. His voice was thick with congestion, all nasal sounds blocked from being realised as themselves. He couldn't get any air through his nose, or even half way in, no matter how he tried.
Spock steadied McCoy's head with one hand and inserted a long cotton swab inside one inflamed nostril. The inside of McCoy's nose was slick with the mucus filling it, and the swab slid easily inside and around his nasal cavity. Spock wasn't trying to collect a sample (they had done that before); this was a purely recreational use of the swab.
“Don't.” Spock said as McCoy's breath hitched. The swab brushed along the sensitive walls of his nasal cavity in a teasing way, bringing forth the itch that had been plaguing him all day. Or the better part of a week, more like.
McCoy focused on his breathing to keep it under control, and to lessen the risk of accidentally letting the itch get the better of him. He could feel his nose running, the thick congestion moving sluggishly down his upper lip. The rubbed raw skin around and beneath his nostrils itched as it grew damp from the running.
McCoy managed to put up with the teasing cotton swab for several seconds before his breath hitched again and he almost lost control. His eyes were wet with irritated tears and his nose was running incessantly, and the itch in his nose was nearly unbearable. He could focus on nothing but the way Spock moved the swab, the brush of it against an especially sensitive spot, on keeping himself from drawing in a hitching breath in response and from letting his body try and rid itself of the irritant.
“S-Sp-hh-ock… I c-can't…” McCoy managed to say. He blinked his eyes, looking at Spock through the itchy tears. He could just make out the intensity with which Spock was looking at him.
“You can't..? I'm afraid I won't understand unless you speak in full sentences, doctor McCoy”, Spock said.
“I can't h-hh-old them b-bhack”, McCoy said between hitching breaths. He came so damn close to losing his control that he thought, for a second, he had lost it.
“And what are you trying to hold back?” Spock asked instead of giving him a release.
“A sneeze”, McCoy said. “Spock, p-hh-lease, I-hh… I'm g-hhoing t-hh-to s-hh..!”
The rest of his sentence was lost to his hitching breaths.
“A sneeze? Are you certain one will be enough?” Spock asked. He twirled the cotton swab, hitting a spot that, again, almost tipped McCoy over the edge. McCoy wasn't able to give an answer - he was certain he’d sneeze the moment he tried to speak.
“Fine. You can sneeze”, Spock said. He didn’t pull the swab out, though, instead sticking it further inside so that when he let go of it, it stayed in place for a moment. If McCoy's nose hadn't been filled to the brim with thick congestion that was slowly running out, it would certainly have stayed in place longer.
McCoy's breath hitched twice more before the itch completely took over and had him snapping forward with the first of several, desperate and wet sneezes. He didn’t even manage to cover properly thanks to the cotton swab, holding his hand loosely in front of his face. He sneezed again, and again, and by the time one of the sneezes finally sent the cotton swab flying out as well, it was kind of pointless to even try anymore. Even so, McCoy brought his hand to his face, doing his best to catch the thick mucus already hanging from his nose in his cupped hand before sneezing again.
McCoy blinked again to clear the tears from his eyes, taking his time to gather himself after the fit. He would certainly have felt put off by the whole display, by the warm mucus sliding from his palm towards his wrist, by the fact that he had most likely gotten some of it God knows where before he had managed to cover his sneezes as well as the fact that he had used his bare hand as cover, if not for Spock's very obvious arousal. Even so, and maybe in part because of it, McCoy felt his face heat up.
“Can I get a tissue?” he asked. Spock moved the whole box in front of him without a word. McCoy plucked one out with his clean hand, carefully moving the other one away from his face. Ropes of snot hung from his nose and connected to the mess on his hand, and he couldn't help his own disgust at the sight. Hastily, he wiped his face clean with the tissue and did his best to clean his hand as well.
Somehow, he still felt like his face had been stuffed full of wet cotton. Itchy, wet cotton.
“That wasn’t too… unpleasant, I hope”, Spock said. It was odd to get a sense of insecurity from him, as controlled as his Vulcan emotions usually were.
McCoy sniffled, or tried to, and rubbed his nose.
“No. No, it was fine”, he said. He scrunched his nose at the itch still present somewhere deep in his sinuses and again tried to sniffle. He should have blown his nose, obviously, but…
“In fact, if you wish for more, I don't think my nose is quite… satiated yet.”
Spock was still for a moment, but picked the cotton swab up again with little hesitation. This time he didn’t insert it into McCoy's nose, though; he kept it's touch light, drawing the wet, now cold tip over one reddened arch of McCoy's nostrils. It stung the raw skin, but also made the itch bloom. McCoy's nostrils flared and quivered as Spock continued the movement up one side of his septum, brushing off the bit of moisture running out of his nose as he passed the underside of McCoy's nose. There were places where the skin was especially sensitive, where McCoy's frequent wiping had worn it down until it was an angry shade of red and dry enough to be flaking, and the salty moisture of his own mucus stung especially bad when Spock brushed the swab over them. The arches of his nostrils towards the lower edges, his septum in the opposite corners, the skin right below each nostril… The moisture lingered there and itch grew with every passing second.
“You don't need to hold back”, Spock said.
McCoy gave him the slightest nod in response; the itch was strong and building in intensity, but even as his breath had grown shallow and hitched a couple of times in warning, he wasn't quite there yet. It didn't take much to change that, though, just a light stroke of the swab up one side of his septum and down the other.
Spock pressed a fresh tissue into his hands just in time as his breath hitched and he pitched forward, catching the new volley of sneezes in it instead of his plain hands. The new fit was less intense than the previous, drawn out with plenty of time between the individual sneezes, but it still managed to fill the tissue with snot. McCoy pinch-wiped his nose as he removed the tissue even though Spock had already seen it all, folded the tissue and blew his nose. He felt rather spent in the aftermath of it all, as reluctant as he was to admit it, but at least the constant buzz of an itch had finally subsided. For the time being.