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The Support of Others’ Wings
Leonard McCoy does not believe in soulmates.
He believes in soulmarks, of course. He has to; he’s a doctor, and there’s plenty of empirical evidence showing that many humans are born with a mark that indicates some kind of potential resonance with other characters.
Like many other people in the medical field, McCoy has seen enough supposed ‘soulmates’ fall apart to know that it’s nothing more than astrology, repackaged for the modern world. A little tattoo that matches someone else’s isn’t going to tell you if someone will stay with you through cancer, or radiation sickness, or the slow recovery from a debilitating injury. He’s seen plenty of people whose soulmarks don’t match who make relationships work, and plenty of people whose soulmarks do match who trusted that little bit of ink-stained skin to carry them and forgot how to use their words. Or their manners. Or the common sense God supposedly gave all man, but which He seems to have skimped out on for far too many.
No, McCoy doesn’t believe in soulmarks as anything more than a diversion.
But he does believe in annoying neighbors and well-meaning friends and the terrible, repeated conversations that he has to have about yeah, it seemed a good relationship, but your soulmarks were never even close to matching when his marriage falls to pieces.
It’s easy enough to give her the planet, if only to escape one more conversation that makes him want to scream.
He’ll take the stars, and the thousands of alien life-forms who wouldn’t know a soulmark if one walked up and bit them on the ass.
***
“Getting a good eyeful?” James T. Kirk says, grinning up at McCoy from the medbay berth.
Kirk’s chest is a mess of blood and fine lacerations, and McCoy scowls at his friend. “If I wanted to see you with your shirt off, I could just take you swimming.”
“True enough.” Kirk’s smile doesn’t falter. Some of that might be the opiates in his bloodstream—damned if they aren’t still the best fastest analgesics this side of the Romulan Empire—but there’s also a teasing note in his eyes and his voice. “I just thought you might be studying my collection of soul marks.”
“It is an impressive one,” McCoy says. “But I don’t put much stock in them.”
“Really?” Kirk tilts his head. “I would’ve expected you to love them. Y’know, something very human, very Earth.”
“There’s lots of things that are very human that I think are very stupid, and giving a whit about soulmarks is one of them. I mean, you’ve got…” McCoy returns his attention to the ink that’s starting to be visible through the blood as the machines do their work. “Eight of them?”
“Mm-hmm.” Jim raises a hand to touch his chest, and McCoy slaps it back down. Jim gives McCoy an affronted pout for a moment before the smile returns. “Means I get to meet lots of people who are important to me.”
“I mean, you are a captain on one of the most important research and diplomatic vessels in the fleet right now.” McCoy leans against the wall as the wounds on Kirk’s chest are disinfected and covered with a gel that should lead to healing without scars in less than two days. “If you’re not meeting people and having lots of important conversations we’re doing something wrong.”
Jim waves a hand at him. “That’s different and you know it. I like the job, but these marks mean I’ll love people. And people? People and love? That’s what really matters, out here in the cold of space.”
“Uh huh.” Bones gestures towards the mark in the very center of Jim’s chest, right above his heart. “That silver one there—looks an awful lot like a ship, doesn’t it?”
Jim’s grin widens, charming, open, unashamed. “Ships are ladies, aren’t they? And a man must give his heart to his ship, or there’s really no point in taking her out among the stars.”
“Ships don’t love you back,” Bones replies acidly.
“Whoever said I needed her to?” Jim replies with what seems like honest puzzlement. “Especially since I’ll have lots of other people to love.”
Bones makes a disbelieving sound deep in his throat, but he can’t quite keep himself from touching his chest as well—from touching where two soul marks balance each other across his sternum, a deep red one that looks distressingly like another slope of a mountain that’s nestled among Jim’s menagerie.
The other mark on McCoy’s chest is the butt end of a creature that might be a turtle, colored a deep sea green. It could also match with one of the ones on Jim’s chest, but they wouldn’t slot together perfectly; would create a creature that could never survive, one with too many limbs and not enough heads.
More proof that soulmarks can mean whatever one wants them to be; whatever one needs them to mean.
More proof that they mean nothing, and McCoy will just focus on keeping safe the people who have been entrusted to him.
That keeps him busier than any romantic relationship could, anyway.
***
Spock looks absolutely terrible.
He also looks… relieved in a way that McCoy would never have expected possible, sitting with loose limbs on the edge of the medbay berth. Wrung out and then stitched back together. Horrified at the idea of killing Kirk; relieved that he’s back; stewing in the morass of hormones that severe emotional whiplash unleashes on the body.
The human body, at least.
Not that Spock would admit to that emotional whiplash.
Or to having a body that might be somewhat human.
Especially not when the Vulcan part of him has clearly been dominant these last few weeks.
“So,” McCoy says. “You’ll tell me when there’s any other weird Vulcan anatomy issues we might run into, right?”
“I will tell you what I think you must know to keep me and others safe, Doctor.” Spock studies his hands. “Pon farr is a… unique situation.”
“You’re embarrassed by it,” McCoy says bluntly.
“I am not embarrassed,” Spock insists, though his cheeks flush slightly greener. “That is a useless emotion. I am just.” The tiniest frown turns the corners of Spock’s lips down. “I find myself in a unique situation, not quite Vulcan, not quite human.”
“Because you go through pon farr, but you also have soulmarks?” McCoy asks.
Spock shrugs, looking at his wrists where the marks are. They look strange against his green-tinged skin, the colors slightly off from what they would be on a human base. A jagged red triangle; something that might be the head of some bizarre sea creature, but missing any means of propulsion; no legs to guide it forward or backward.
Spock’s fingers brush over the red mountain. “I have never given much thought to if these marks could actually mean anything for me. Vulcans do not have soulmarks. And soulmarks do not have to mean a romantic bond. Perhaps they merely meant that I would have two different mates during pon farr. Given that I had not expected to find one Vulcan woman interested in me—and indeed, have found that the one who promised herself to me finds me repulsive—it seemed an impossible thing. And to bond so deeply with a human… it seems that would mean leaving my Vulcan heritage behind.”
“You’re more than your Vulcan heritage, Spock,” McCoy says, trying for gentle, not sure he manages more than acerbic. He’s fought with the Vulcan over this so many times before, though. It just… it irks him, someone trying to fit themselves into a square hole when they’re a round peg. And sure, maybe the ‘human’ hole isn’t round either, maybe it’s some convoluted star-shape—that seems most likely—but if it helps take the pressure off…
“My Vulcan heritage almost killed me, Doctor,” Spock says, studying McCoy with tired eyes. “More than that, it almost killed the finest Starfleet officer I have ever met.”
“It wasn’t your Vulcan heritage that did that.” McCoy kneels down, putting himself on more of an eye level with the Vulcan where he still sits on the edge of the berth. “It was you first not letting me know what was going on, and second not being able to just talk things over. It was the opposite of all this logic and communication, IDIC mess that is your Vulcan heritage.”
Spock’s head tilts just slightly. “If I didn’t know better, Doctor, I would say you are trying to make me feel better.”
“I’m doing my duty as a doctor to the first mate of my ship,” McCoy says stiffly.
Spock studies his wrists again. “Do you have soulmarks, Dr. McCoy? Are they—”
McCoy stands. “That’s not open for discussion. Go rest, Spock. We’ll need you back to yourself before Jim throws us into some other mess.”
Before Jim needs his officers to help him explain to Starfleet why they did what they did, disobeying orders, endangering Jim’s life to save Spock’s.
Sending Spock to bed like a recalcitrant child has nothing to do with McCoy wanting to avoid this conversation, and the too-keen awareness in Spock’s eyes.
Absolutely nothing at all.
***
“I hate this planet,” McCoy mumbles to himself, stumbling through the foliage. He can’t see the creature chasing him anymore, but he’s certain that it’s there. It’s always going to be there. “You’re just a fairy tale!” he yells at the underbrush. “Just a children’s story! Just a way for people to joke about—”
He stumbles as a patch of brush gives way, sending him tumbling through a dense strand of vines, and right into Spock’s rigid back.
“Spock?” McCoy says dumbly.
“Doctor,” Spock replies, and there are fine lines of green blood on his face, but his voice is perfectly normal. “Have you seen the Captain?”
“Not recently, but—” McCoy flinches as a hoooonk echoes through the air. “Damn it all to Kentucky and back.”
Spock arches one perfectly Vulcan eyebrow. “You know what that noise is? What that… creature is?”
“I know what it’s pretending to be, but it’s… it can’t actually be…” McCoy throws his hands in the air. “This is stupid. I hate this. I refuse to accept that this is actually happening.”
Another honk, and a hiss, and Jim comes stumbling into their little clearing, a large white goose behind him, wings spread wide.
“Does anyone know how to deal with a goose that doesn’t respond to phaser fire?” Jim asks, wiping a hand across his forehead. “On stun! I’m not trying to destroy the local wildlife. Though it looks a hell of a lot like an Earth goose. A Canadian goose, specifically. We saw a lot of them after their migration patterns changed due to global warming, and—”
“I do believe the Doctor has some sense of what’s going on,” Spock intones, watching the goose as it menaces them. Spock’s face is set in a rictus of perfectly logical curiosity, with that single, perfect, annoying upturned eyebrow.
McCoy snarls out, “I do not have any idea what’s going on. This is not anything sensible. This is… this is a child’s story made real!” McCoy jabs a finger towards the goose, which snaps at him in a manner threatening enough to cause him to yank his hand back.
“What children’s story?” Jim asks, before sucking on what is probably a goose bite on his wrist.
“Do not put an injury from a strange creature in your mouth, James Tiberius Kirk,” McCoy admonishes. “And I think… I think it’s the Goose of Soulmate Enforcement.”
Spock’s other eyebrow arches up.
Jim laughs disbelievingly. “What? You mean… what, it thinks the three of us are soulmates?”
“Yes, absolutely incredulous, isn’t it?” McCoy growls out the words. “Impossible. Which is why this stupid goose—” McCoy lifts his arms and runs at the bird.
Instead of being intimidated, the goose somehow seems to grow, whacking him hard with both wings.
McCoy stumbles back. That’s going to bruise.
Both Jim and Spock are there to grab him, though he shrugs off their hands as quickly as possible. He doesn’t want the goose to get any ideas about it being right.
“You’re deeply upset about this, Doctor,” Spock intones. “More so than one should be about something that one does not believe in.”
“Bones?” Jim manages to turn his nickname into a gentle question.
“It doesn’t matter,” McCoy hisses, managing to hit the same tones as the goose without meaning to. “Even if we were soulmates, it wouldn’t mean anything. Spock is a pointy-eared Vulcan hybrid who doesn’t want to love anyone. You’re in love with half the people you meet, Jim, including your damn ship, which is good, that’s fine, that’s you, and you’re not perfect but you’re really damn great just the way you are. And soulmarks don’t matter in the first place. Do you know what’s worse than telling someone they’re dying of an alien virus, and their partner didn’t care to stick around to help them do it? Telling them that and seeing the devastation because they’re soulmates, they’re supposed to be better than that, they’re supposed to be—” McCoy has to stop, because he’s shaking too much to continue, his teeth chattering together. “People make relationships work whether they’re soulmates or not. And they let them fail whether they’re soulmates or not. And I—”
McCoy stops speaking, because Jim’s arms have wrapped around him, are holding him tight, Jim’s strength and warmth enveloping him.
Spock doesn’t hug them. McCoy might have died if he did. But Spock’s hands do touch his hair, lightly, and from the stoic Vulcan that might as well be a benediction.
“I’m sorry,” Jim says.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” McCoy mutters.
“Sympathy sorry. Midwesterner sorry.” Jim pulls away enough to smile at McCoy. “I’m sorry I haven’t pushed harder. I thought you just didn’t want to consider soulmarks, soulmates, that kind of relationship while we’re all officers on the same ship. That can get messy, after all.”
“I can always pull medical rank on you,” McCoy says with a shrug. “On both of you.”
“But you wouldn’t unless there’s actually a medical emergency.” Jim grins. “You’re a good man, despite how gruff you try to be. And I do love you, Bones. I have for a long time, and I think I always will.”
“You are a good complement to us,” Spock says, his eyes fixed on the goose. “I have long thought that the three of us form a coherent unit. But I would not deign to weigh in on… human cultural norms and expectations.”
McCoy rubs at his eyes, studying his two friends.
His two soulmates.
The two people who are supposed to understand him.
To stay by him.
“It’s stupid,” McCoy mutters again. “The whole concept of soulmates is stupid.”
“So are many things about humanity,” Spock says, so softly Bones can barely hear him. “That does not stop humanity being wondrous, too.”
Drawing a deep breath, McCoy pulls far enough away from Jim to eye the goose again. “We’re talking, all right? We’re confronting the problem. Your duty is done.”
The goose hisses again, rising up ominously.
McCoy throws his hands in the air. “What more do you want?”
“A kiss,” Jim says knowingly.
“...you’re kidding,” McCoy scowls.
“I do not think he is, in this situation,” Spock returns, studying Jim as though he were a strange specimen in a zoo.
McCoy eyes Jim and then Spock. “I don’t—”
But he doesn’t have to, because Jim pulls him into a kiss. A long, lingering, beautiful kiss.
Jim’s got plenty of experience kissing. McCoy knows that. Just like he knows that every single kiss Jim gives is carefully thought out; that every single moment of passion means something to him.
That Jim’s lips on McCoy’s mean something; mean more than just that Jim doesn’t want to get bitten by an alien Canadian goose again.
McCoy’s breathing hard when Jim pulls away, his lips twisting into a familiar smile of delight before he leans in and kisses the tip of McCoy’s nose, too. “Love you, Bones,” Jim says, light and airy, but with all the gravity of everything they have seen together making the statement deep and dangerous as a black hole.
Then Jim’s arms aren’t around Bones anymore. They’re around Spock, and Jim is kissing Spock with the same determination; the same desperation; the same depth of love and affection.
Should McCoy be jealous? Probably he should be jealous. But this ache in his chest isn’t jealousy. It’s far too warm and deep and comfortable to be jealousy.
This is love.
He’s in love with James T. Kirk.
And Jim loves him back.
Then Jim’s breaking away from Spock, and it’s too soon. McCoy hasn’t figured out what he wants yet; hasn’t figured out what he needs.
But Jim is bowing, pointing from Spock to McCoy, his eyebrows speaking volumes.
McCoy doesn’t step forward. His legs seem to be permanently frozen in place.
Instead it’s Spock who makes the first move. Who closes the distance between them in two steps. Who leans forward, slow, steady, only his head moving, his hands clasped behind his back.
His lips coming to touch McCoy’s.
His lips still warm with Jim’s breath.
His thoughts and Jim’s still buzzing together, something McCoy can feel as he allows Spock to press their mouths together.
Spock doesn’t try to block out McCoy. Doesn’t try to silence the lingering tones of Jim’s thoughts. Instead he invites McCoy’s thoughts in among the duet, making Bones a third chord in a song he never would have imagined could exist.
The goose gives another long hoooonk, and turns to stomp away.
McCoy laughs, collapsing forward onto Spock’s chest. Without direct skin to skin contact, he can no longer hear-feel-taste that strange cord of harmony, and it leaves him feeling strangely limp and lost.
Jim’s arms wrap around Bones again, though this time he reaches further, crushing Bones between Jim and Spock.
Holding both Bones and Spock as tightly as he can, and McCoy closes his eyes, feeling safe and wanted and everything else one is supposed to when they have a soulmate.
Which maybe explains why when the Caretaker comes to explain exactly why the entire shore leave crew has been seeing impossible things, McCoy punches him in the face.
***
“Come on, Bones,” Jim coaxes, sliding a glass of whiskey across the table. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was a planet that stole a concept I have always despised from the depths of my mind and made it real.” Bones can’t let a good whiskey go to waste, though, so he forces himself to sit upright and take the drink. “It was a deep violation that resulted in unwanted physical, psychic, and emotional experiences for all three of us.”
Jim looks hurt. “You didn’t like kissing me?”
“I did not say that,” Bones replies, licking his lips after his first sip of whiskey.
“Then you objected to kissing me?” Spock asks, his whiskey untouched in front of him.
“I didn’t say that, either,” Bones snaps. “Stop putting words in my mouth.”
“You objected to being hit by the goose.” Jim nods knowingly. “Fair; I objected to being bit by it.”
Bones slides down in his seat. “I hate every single one of you.”
“Which is not incompatible with being our soulmate, it seems.” Spock steeples his fingers in front of him, studying McCoy over them.
“All it meant was that I thought you might be my soulmates, and I thought about a stupid children’s story, and it… it manifested.” Bones gestures with his drink, wondering how half of it is already gone. “I could be wrong! We might not be soulmates.”
“Bones…” Jim touches his chest. “Want me to take off my shirt so we can compare again?”
“I do not want you taking off your shirt again, James T. Kirk.” Though Jim does look very good without a shirt on. But that is not the point of this discussion. “I just want us all to admit that what happened down on that little planet doesn’t mean anything!”
“It means as much as we allow it to,” Spock says, still infuriatingly neutral. “As with all things in the universe, if there is not an observer, not a participant, than it may not even have happened, on a quantum level. Certainly if it does not impact any participants it may as well not have happened.”
Jim puts a hand on Spock’s shoulder. “I love you, Bones. Whether we’re soulmates or not, whether you want me to kiss you again or not, I love you. And that’s what really matters, isn’t it?”
The words shouldn’t be a knife through his heart, but oh, how they hurt. And yet out of that hurt… warmth. Acceptance. “I know, Jim,” Bones whispers, because he can’t be cruel to this man who loves so much and so openly.
“And I care about both of you. More than I should, according to my cultural heritage. But I do care about you both,” Spock tells the whiskey in his glass.
Jim reaches out, laying his hand over Spock’s, a smile on his lips. “I know.”
Which makes it McCoy’s turn, of course. Not that he has to. Nobody is going to make him do this. But. The others are staring at him, waiting, and damn him back to Earth, McCoy has never been one to let people suffer if he doesn’t need to. “I care about the two of you, too. I don’t know about soulmates, but I… well… you two mean a whole damn lot to me.”
Jim’s smile grows mischievous. “You might even say—”
“I love you, all right?” McCoy finishes his own whiskey in one swift burning gulp, and steals Spock’s untouched glass. “I love the two of you, and it’s not because of some stupid mark, it’s because you’re smart and you take care of the crew and the ship and you’re clever, which is harder to be than smart, and… and…” McCoy slams back the second whiskey. “I just love you, all right?”
“More than all right,” Jim says, grin back in place.
“Perfectly acceptable,” Spock intones, and it’s only when McCoy looks at him that he sees the smile teasing just barely at the edges of Spock’s lips.
McCoy starts laughing. “Sometimes I hate you, too.”
Jim laughs, too. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Bones. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
And as Jim comes around the table and pulls him into a hug—into another kiss—McCoy decides that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have it any other way, either.