Title: Curses and Cures
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Leonard doesn’t get to be normal like everyone else. Having two marked wrists testifies to that.
A/N: Soulmate Marks AU no one asked for but my brain became obsessed with for a day. Self-isolation gives me time to daydream of McSpirk.

Mystical concepts of romance should be a joke in the twenty-third century, in Leonard McCoy’s opinion. It’s impractical and idealistic to believe in soulmates in the same way it is to believe the stars are made from gods rather than organic material. Doesn’t that seem incongruous with nature, with science? Doesn’t that take away one’s choice in the matter? Does that not short-change the two people who might otherwise more fully experience the act of falling in love if they could not easily distinguish who should be their partner? Doesn’t it set a maddeningly impossible expectation for happiness?

And should he feel this angry about it, Leonard wonders one very early morning, scowling and more deliberately rubbing the undersides of his wrists together. The friction doesn’t erase the tiny shapes etched into his skin.

A laser might, though.

With a sigh, he tosses aside that harsh thought like his bedcovers and jerks on his new uniform tunic, pants, and boots. After a pause, he retrieves the two unadorned Starfleet-issued wristbands discarded on his nightstand and clicks them into place, hiding the mark on each wrist. He has worn some version of these bands since he turned twenty-six. A late-bloomer, his family had concluded with evident relief.

Since he had just signed the paperwork to finalize a painful divorce, his response to that remark had been unkind and ugly. At the time he had taken the soulmate mark’s sudden appearance as some higher power laughing in his face for trying to find his way towards love on his own. And then to really stick it to Leonard, those Powers That Be proceeded to slap him twice as hard.

Leonard is not special to have two soulmate marks. He’s a spectacle.

And he might be cursed.

The Academy director who finishes registering him for his first set of classes congratulates him on being so lucky. The idiot probably thinks two marks means twice the odds of having a happily-ever-after. As Leonard lets his expression sink fully into disgust, he replies ungratefully, “I was luckier when I had nothing.”

“Don’t say that until you’ve met at least one of your partners.”

He doesn’t like the twinkle in the guy’s eyes or the flash of a mark shaped like a sparrow below the advisor’s ear when he cocks his head. The mark being uncovered means this guy has already found his life-partner, and showing it off is a blatant statement of success.

McCoy is not jealous about that, not at all. It’s only anger at his own stupid situation that has him fleeing the office and the soft understanding behind that twinkle.

He vows he will never bare his marks to anyone.

Some people have no compunction about throwing themselves wholeheartedly into finding their soulmate. And some idiots are just shameless.

The kid with the cornflower blue eyes and the ready-for-trouble grin takes one look at McCoy’s wristbands and makes eyes at him, saying, “Hello there. Are you my soulmate?”

At first, Leonard chooses to ignore the fool. He aggressively punches his lunch order into one of the cafeteria’s food dispensers.

But when he walks away, the kid follows him, still saying nonsense like “We’ve met before. I never forget a handsome face.”

Leonard slams his tray onto the end of an empty table, startling quite a few other cadets in the vicinity, and snaps back, “Go away.”

The kid looks thoughtful at his vicious tone and, like a man who doesn’t fear danger, drops into a seat opposite McCoy. “I do know you,” he states firmly then. “McCoy, right? From the shuttle.”

Leonard has no recollection of a shuttle. He hates all contraptions that move. The last time he willingly boarded a shuttlecraft was out of necessity and his own stupidity, having imploded his carefully laid plans for a future as a hospital’s general surgeon by signing his name to the Starfleet recruitment roster shoved under his nose by a gentlemanly-looking fellow with a captain’s ranking stripes.

He squints at the cadet now carefully studying his face as if looking for more proof of their acquaintance. “I wouldn’t know,” he says eventually, sourly. “I was drunk at the time.”

And that seems to cinch it for the idiot. He beams and sticks out a hand. “Hey, Bones! Name’s Kirk. Call me Jim.”

“Who’s Bones?” Leonard asks.

Jim retracts his hand. “You are. ‘Everything but my bones.'” Then he leans forward, smirking slightly, and says with a long, salacious look at Leonard’s covered wrists. “So, show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

Leonard feels fully justified in punching the guy.

But when a bloody-nosed Kirk waves off two concerned cadets trying to assist him in getting up from the floor while laughing, Leonard has an odd suspicion he has just sealed his fate in an unexpected way.

A week later, Leonard looks on in bafflement as his dorm-mate packs up and moves out without a word and then in shock as Jim Kirk appears in his doorway an hour afterward with a steel trunk and a sweet smile.

“I heard you need a roommate,” Jim says.

“Kid,” Leonard tells him, “you’re gonna regret this.”

“Don’t think I will,” comes the rudely confident reply as Jim throws himself full-length onto the single bed on the opposite side of the room. “So, Bones, dinner? I’m starving!”

Leonard’s curse is real, and its proper name is James Tiberius Kirk.

Jim has a starburst on his right side beneath his collarbone. Leonard has a twin starburst on his left wrist. He drops his can of beer the first time Jim walks shirtless into their dorm room, toweling wet hair dry. Jim snorts and makes some remark about looking good and it’s okay, Bones, everyone reacts that way at the sight of my naked body.

Leonard turns back to his computer to gather his thoughts and breathe through his shock. He thinks about his failed marriage, of feeling like he can’t choose his own path, and how it makes no goddamn sense to love a person he doesn’t even know.

Then he picks up where he left off on his research paper, calm again, and refuses to look at that soulmate mark on Kirk again. Why should he anyway? The light in the room is terrible, and a single glance at a tiny pattern could be a nasty trick played by the eyes. Besides, the likelihood of their marks being exact replicas is so infinitesimally low, it isn’t worth considering.

After that, Leonard is careful not to remove his wristbands until Jim is asleep. And if Jim doesn’t come back to their dorm room sometimes, instead choosing someone else’s company, well, on those nights Leonard doesn’t bother to remove the bands at all.

Best friends and soulmates are not the same thing but not overly dissimilar. Leonard has a supplementary degree in psychology and he has studied how love can take many forms. He understands the characteristics of and the difference between platonic love and romantic love. What he feels for Jim is, unfortunately, somewhere in the middle. It’s a conundrum he didn’t expect to experience, and the fact that into their third year on the Academy’s San Francisco campus he cannot talk himself into landing solidly into platonic territory becomes a problem.

Leonard could blame Jim. Jim is easy to love. Jim is good, smart, and loyal. His nose for danger makes Leonard crazy at times (and frantic, naturally) but that aside Leonard could imagine Jim would be an excellent partner for anyone.

Except him, of course. He presses his thumb into the spot where his—Jim’s—mark would be if not for the wristband and blusters through a series of aggrieved sighs.

No, giving the blame to Jim is unfair when it’s Leonard himself who is the one lacking. It’s difficult to admit to himself why he feels this way and where exactly he falls short of being an equal partner to Jim; that is, he doesn’t know until he meets the person who is better suited to be Kirk’s match in every way Leonard is not.

The curse to Leonard’s curse goes by the name of Spock, and though Jim denounces Spock out of irritation at his public hearing while Leonard laughingly lauds the Vulcan instructor just to be contrary, something in McCoy recognizes an undercurrent between the two men as they stare disapprovingly at one another from behind their podiums which scares him a little bit.

It turns out Leonard’s intuition is right: Spock is a nuisance, Spock is good for Jim, and Spock is… inevitable.

After Jim secures an unprecedented promotion to captain post the Romulan Nero’s attack and wrangles everyone he wants for his crew into joining him on the ship under his command (Leonard included), this problem of McCoy’s gains a clarity he has to accept. He can be friends with Jim or not, he can be in love with Jim or not, but there’s always going to be a better choice for Jim than Leonard. Jim is already on that path to learn this truth. Leonard, who bears his mark, will let him learn it.

He hasn’t shown anyone his marks—either of them—and likely he never will.

“I told you to talk some sense into him!” Leonard is always yelling at Spock, from their first face-to-face encounter when he was a cadet to now, near to closing out their first five-year mission as colleagues. He cannot seem not to yell. And this time—oh this time especially the idiot should have done better, tried harder, and ought to know it! McCoy raises his voice another octave to which the Vulcan, damn him, doesn’t even react. “Didn’t I say he would take off after that soul-sucking scum given half the chance! Where’s your damned head at, Spock!”

“Doctor,” Spock interrupts this tirade, “you know as well as I when the Captain cannot be persuaded.”

“It’s your job to dig your heels in twice as hard if his life at stake! Instead,” Leonard rages, “you chased that bastard with him!”

“Mn.”

Leonard leans right into the officer’s personal space, on the verge of an aneurysm but uncaring. “What,” he demands, “does ‘Mn‘ mean?”

“Your examination appears completed. Am I free to leave?”

Technically Leonard can’t say no. He presses instead, “Answer my question.”

Spock slides off the medical table, retrieving his neatly folded tunic from a side tray and pulls it on. Then he turns for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Leonard snaps, ready to bar Spock’s exit so he can finish his lecture. Lecturing has always been the simplest way to express the fullness of his concern to a bonehead like Jim or Spock.

“I am needed on the bridge with Jim indisposed. It would also be the thirty-minute mark. Do you not need to check on his recovery?”

“Why you green-blooded—!”

“Good day, Dr. McCoy.”

The tricorder in Leonard’s hands gives an ominous creak when he squeezes it in lieu of the Vulcan’s neck. Spock thinks he can get away from this conversation so easily? Oh ho, there are other ways to get to him, and Leonard has become an expert in all of them over the years.

Just you wait, Spock, McCoy thinks, his temper still roiling, just you wait! He is only letting the Vulcan walk out now because he does have bigger fish to fry, namely one unconscious starship captain whom Leonard plans to scorch on both sides until the fool is extra crispy. Jim is only lucky in that he has plenty of experience at withstanding an un-tempered lecture delivered at full volume.

Now looking forward to this second round of unleashing his fury, Leonard is only half paying attention when Spock suddenly turns back upon the threshold of the doorway to stare at him.

Leonard blinks and tamps down on his scowl. “Yes, Mr. Spock?”

“It means you would have done the same thing.”

When the door whistles shut behind the first officer, McCoy sits down with a thump on his stool and harrumphs. He hates it when Spock is right.

Vulcans are one of those species that do not have soulmate marks. This appears to suit them fine; they claim not to need a mark on the skin to know how to recognize a potential mate. Leonard once read a vague comment in an interview article from a news outlet specializing in all things soulmate and sex-related about the Vulcanian way of harmonizing brainwave patterns to achieve a proper emotional bond with a marriage partner. It didn’t smack of romanticism, but in Leonard’s opinion such is to be expected of a private, practical race of telepaths. He could almost agree that their way is more logical than playing a game of let’s match magical tattoos the way humans have to.

Spock will never hear that sentiment from him, though. Never.

He downs his second shot of whiskey and shakes his empty tumbler at the bartender on duty. The woman gives him a refill with a sympathetic look. Leonard knows why.

She recently found her soulmate in newly commissioned ensign come to work aboard the Enterprise for the next six months on a ship-to-ship rotational assignment. Her perspective has changed, brightened no doubt, and so the way she looks at Leonard’s covered wrists is pitying, almost. This person is secure in knowing her partner is alive and loves her back, and poor Dr. McCoy is her senior and hasn’t had the chance to remove even one band.

If only she knew, he scoffs silently.

Leonard offers her congratulations once again because he’s not enough of a bastard to begrudge someone else their chance at happiness, and he’s long-practiced at keeping his bitterness to himself.

If only everyone knew, he thinks dismally. He knows what the mark looks like for every person aboard who has one. He’s a doctor, after all, the leader of Medical, and the job falls to him to perform that initial fitness-for-duty examination for new personnel. If a soulmate mark is notated in the medical records, he knows where it will be located. If it’s not recorded, he is obligated to ask the question, to verify where it is and officially record its existence.

He knows which matches exist among the crew (there are five currently), and only patient-doctor confidentiality keeps him from speaking a word to anyone. Not that he would if he could because it’s not his place to matchmake. It’s no one’s place, really, and that might be the only damnably good thing about all the talk of destiny and partners for life. If it’s truly meant to be, everyone agrees, it will be, no interference needed.

Sometimes Leonard wants interference in his own life, which is why he is at the lounge after office hours trying to burn up that wish with alcohol. He honestly shouldn’t be as surprised or upset as he is, but he cannot stave off this feeling of hurt.

And ironically it’s not for himself.

Spock has become unlucky just like Leonard and it should not be that way. Not Spock, who already struggles with being of two worlds and fitting imperfectly in both. Who understands Leonard’s depth of caring for Jim like no one else. Who, Leonard knows in his gut, has fallen for Jim’s charms too.

Leonard had just about resigned to taking Spock aside and giving him a best friend’s permission to pursue Jim. They could be happy together without floundering about insecurely like Leonard would. They seemed perfect together. And Leonard has stupidly, impossibly forgotten what it’s like to feel platonically for them both while witnessing them discover the best qualities in each other.

Then it’s over in the blink of an eye, Leonard’s hope for them along with his courage crashing down the moment Spock walked into his office and said, “Doctor, I must report an unusual development.” Leonard had been about to insert a joke there but Spock rolled on quickly with the damning words, “I believe I have a soulmate’s mark.”

Too bad there was no other person in the room with them at the time because Leonard might have asked which of them had looked paler, him or Spock.

Probably after Leonard examined the mark, it was him. He doesn’t remember how he reacted, what he might have said, or when he completed his medical log for Spock’s official record.

The mark on the side of Spock’s knee matches the elegant swirl on Leonard’s right wrist.

The sky is falling, or the universe is collapsing, and Leonard doesn’t know what to do anymore.

The bartender hovers, holding out the whiskey decanter near his shot glass again. “Another, Dr. McCoy?” she asks.

Leonard makes a noise that sounds full of misery in his own ears. “Just give me the bottle,” he sighs.

She places it in front of him.

“Bones?”

Leonard grunts in response, maybe unhelpfully projecting some spittle at Jim in the process.

Jim looks no less concerned about his chief medical officer being cognizant of his surroundings, giving McCoy’s shoulder another slight shake. “Bones… c’mon, stand up, there you go—whoa, whoa!”

Leonard hears him vaguely saying something like Spock, take the other side, but who really cares what’s going on or who’s going where. Leonard is upright, and his stomach hates it. And his brain. Feels like his only good asset might be leaking out of his ears.

He shouldn’t have progressed from the whiskey to the Romulan ale to that rather noxious stuff he can’t even pronounce the name of properly.

And damn it, now he probably looks like a drunk fool.

Or is a drunk fool. Huh.

“Haha,” he slurs, then frowns as his sloshing brain picks up on the sound of a hypospray being discharged.

“Glad you’re having a laugh,” Kirk mutters near his ear, determinedly manhandling him forward.

“Nurse Chapel advised this prescription should ease his inebriated state in approximately twenty minutes.”

“Very good,” Leonard’s captain continues to grouse. “I want him aware of every word I have to say.”

Leonard does laugh at that, drawling, “Gonna lecture me, Jim-boy? For what? Havin’ a drink—” He pauses to hiccup. “—or two?”

Jim doesn’t answer him but has that tense stance that means he is mad about something, all right. Leonard just shakes his head, listening to Jim command Spock, “Grab that turbolift!”

Leonard has experienced several levels of embarrassment in thirty-something years but perhaps this moment is the most awkward yet. He’s already sober enough not to be able to look either Jim or Spock in the eyes. What his meandering gaze does see instead are the neat shelves of old but well-preserved artifacts and the general tidiness that can only belong to a Vulcan’s quarters.

He stopped hiccupping somewhere around minute fifteen, about the same time as Jim’s no-nonsense stare reached its peak. That stare hasn’t abated since.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Leonard starts somewhat clumsily. “I know I overdid it.”

Kirk forms fists against the knees of his pants, as though Leonard is only making his ire worse. “Bones.”

Leonard swallows hard at that tone. He doesn’t know why Spock is sitting so unusually close to him on the couch. To make his presence more felt? His disapproval?

They’re both disappointed in him. That much is apparent to McCoy, who closes his eyes in the face of what is to come.

“Bones,” Kirk says again, softening his tone slightly, “why do you think I’m upset with you?”

Leonard chokes on a miserable chuckle. “Indulging on the job.”

“No.”

What does he mean, no? Leonard opens one eye. “Preventing you from doing something more important than dragging my drunk ass out of a bar?”

“Negative,” Spock says.

Leonard opens the other eye.

Jim looks more consternated. “That doesn’t even make sense. If we came to get you, it’s because you are most important.”

Leonard doesn’t believe that for a second, but he knows better than to argue about it. “Then enlighten me, Jim. Why are you glaring at me?”

The anger suddenly melts out of Kirk’s face, leaving behind a gut-churningly familiar expression. Jim only looks that particular mix of stubborn and fearful when he’s about to take a leap off a cliff or something equally death-defying. Leonard’s heart starts to pound.

“All this time, you—” Jim’s throat audibly clicks. “Bones—why haven’t you—?”

Spock turns his head toward Leonard, speaking coolly as Jim struggles strangely with voicing a single question. “Doctor, have you ever shown your mark to someone other than a physician?”

The breath punches out of Leonard. “Why,” he asks after fighting a rising panic, “would I answer that question?”

“You’ve seen mine,” Jim says then, softly.

“Not on purpose!” Leonard counters. He works again for some semblance of calm, of detachment. “Why are we talking about this?”

“You lost your composure today,” Spock answers, adding, “Badly. To my knowledge, that has never happened before, even when you have been under extreme pressure.”

Leonard is well on his way to having no composure at all this very moment. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“And then I receive a call from a lounge attendant,” says Jim.

“I can—I can drink without you!” Leonard argues stupidly.

“They know when to call me, Bones.”

Leonard can’t do this. He can’t. But the instant he tries to get to his feet, Spock places a firm hand on his shoulder and Jim relocates from the chair to the low table in front of the couch. They’ve pinned him in, planning to do this all along.

Jim reaches for one of Leonard’s hands but stops short of touching. Then he asks quietly, “Which one is it?” At Leonard’s lack of response, he clarifies, “The mark that matches Spock’s. Which one, Bones?”

“There’s no—”

“Don’t.”

Leonard presses his mouth flat.

Jim gently picks up his left wrist, running a hand over the wristband.

Of course, Leonard thinks, eyes welling. Naturally, Jim would go for his own mark.

He closes his eyes, says, “Stop, I’ll… do it.” And it’s not fair that Jim can look so torn-up too. He’s not the one taking the risk of exposing himself.

Except, that’s not quite right. This risk involves all three of them. It always has, from the moment Leonard discovered a starburst and a symbol in no language he knows stamped on his wrists.

He has to be certain. “Are you sure?” he asks Jim.

“I have to be,” Jim tells him. “For you.”

Leonard wishes he understood what Jim is trying to say. He says to Spock without looking at him, because eye contact with Spock is more than he can handle, “And you, are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”

It’s unfair how Spock can sound so certain. That Jim can look at him with those desperate eyes but a strong lift to his chin. There’s a coward among them, and it has never been Jim or Spock.

Oddly, that thought angers Leonard in a way it never did before.

“You know what, I’m done.” He tears off the band on his left wrist, then his right, and then flips both wrists over under the intent gazes of his companions. “I’m done with this,” Leonard tells them pointedly because he is just so over sorting through emotions, with pretending and always debating his place.

All-at-once the fight goes out of him, and he slumps right into Spock. Might as well give up on propriety alongside his common sense. No one ever told him trying to fight fate would be so unbearably hard. Then again, maybe he ought to have known better since Jim and Spock are his fate.

There’s little else for McCoy to do but drop his gaze, unable to take back his decision. “You figure it out. They’re your marks after all.”

No one replies to that. Leonard peeks upwards once the silence fully settles in, wondering belatedly if he made too bold a statement. Then with a funny sort of feeling in his stomach, Leonard thinks he might have worried needlessly. Jim is stroking his mark on Leonard’s left wrist with a tender look in his eyes, and Spock doesn’t seem miffed by Leonard using him as a resting spot.

What’s happening? Have they may have come to a decision already? Without saying a word?

Jim smiles. Spock shifts so that Leonard is tucked more securely to his side.

“Bones,” his best friend says, “we’ll take responsibility.”

A flush that started without Leonard’s being aware of it flares all the way up to his face. “Jim.”

Jim’s gaze fixes itself over McCoy’s shoulder. “Spock.”

And lord it does seem like they’re communicating entirely without words again because Spock goes along, saying, “I suggest we start by assisting the Doctor to his quarters. He appears in need of rest.”

“I’m not tired!” Leonard jerks forward, fully intent on removing himself from Spock’s arms to prove his point but is unsuccessful when he’s anchored in place around his middle.

Jim nods once. “I agree.” He pats Leonard’s arm before rising to his feet. “We can work out the details tomorrow.”

“Jim!” Leonard is frankly so stunned he doesn’t know how to respond when Spock immediately lifts him up into his arms with ease, except to protest, “Put me down!”

Jim tsks at him. “Bones, Bones… My personal physician likes to tell me that a decent night’s sleep makes for a clearer head in the morning. You’re not going to dismiss a doctor’s good advice, are you?”

Leonard settles on his strongest glare. It warns, In the morning the only things you will meet are your regret and my revenge. He transfers that glare over to Spock. But with a Vulcan’s skin being so thick, Spock simply offers a placid blink in return.

There’s no way Leonard is going to allow anybody to cart him anywhere, especially like this. The scandal alone that would cause! No, these two are going to compromise whether they like it or not, the bastards. It’s his body bearing both marks, not theirs! That should give him the most say in how things go!

He grits out between clenched teeth, “I’ll stay in Jim’s cabin.”

And oh but Jim isn’t supposed to look that pleased. Damn it.

“Acceptable,” decides Spock.

“Good enough,” Jim agrees and waves the Vulcan toward the bathroom that joins the first officer’s quarters to the captain’s instead of the cabin’s main entrance.

It turns out the funny feeling in McCoy’s stomach might be nervous butterflies. Somehow he has moved from despair to exasperation to… this. Nervousness. Excitement. A tentative expectation of happiness.

You’re in love, his mother would have said.

As Spock carries Leonard to Jim’s bed and gently deposits him there, as Jim finds a blanket, tucking it around his legs, and an extra pillow for him, Leonard blinks repeatedly until the slight wetness of his eyes recedes. He watches the careful, coordinated actions of both men.

Jim isn’t wrong. He does need to sleep on it, this complicated and newly evolving situation. This potential he didn’t think he could have. But, thoughtfully watching Jim and Spock, he suspects when he wakes up this feeling of loving and being loved will linger to greet him.

Leonard hopes for all their sakes that never changes.

 
-Fini

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