Work Text:
Jennifer’s lips are soft against his, a little hesitant at first before she presses back, starts moving in a slow rhythm. Their noses bump together, and Marty turns his head slightly, seeking a better angle, eager to deepen the kiss. But Jennifer is already pulling back, her eyes raking over Marty’s bare forearms.
He can see the disappointment in her eyes and doesn’t need to check either of them for a soulmark. Their skin has to still be unblemished. A tiny part of him is disappointed. Another part of him feels relieved, though.
Jennifer’s great, she really is. Marty knows that his own opinion of soulmates is rather unconventional.
“Plenty of people are happy together without a soulmark,” he reminds her. “Just because we don’t get the universe’s stamp of approval doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know, I know,” Jennifer sighs. “It’s just, I guess I’ve always dreamed that my first kiss would be extra magical, you know?”
“You mean like my parents?” Marty says with a grimace. “You know, I’ve heard their story a million times, about how my dad fell from a tree, and my mom took pity on him so they went to that school dance together. And then he kissed her and she knew he was the one.”
“That’s so romantic!” Jennifer sighs. “Soulmates are so rare and precious and perfect .”
Marty grits his teeth. He isn’t sure when exactly he realized his parents were miserable together, but it sure has robbed him of those ridiculous notions most people his age still hold on to.
“There’s nothing perfect about my parents,” he points out, and Jennifer rolls her eyes.
“Of course you’d think that, they’re your parents . It’s their job to be embarrassing.”
Marty loves Jennifer. She’s pretty and kind and supportive of his music. It’s just that, sometimes, she doesn’t really hear him.
“I see what you mean,” Doc says that evening, shoving a cable into Marty’s hands. “Here, hold this. You know, I have a theory that soulmarks are at best a sign of potential happiness. It’s the universe saying these people can be great together . It’s not a guarantee that they will. Now plug it in there, please.”
“And if you don’t do anything with that potential, what even is the point?” Marty sighs as he plugs the cable into a movie projector and takes a step away from the single tiny spark that briefly appears. “But does that really mean Jennifer and I don’t have potential?”
“Of course not! You’ve got enough potential of your own, you don’t need a soulmate to find happiness or accomplish your goals.” Doc stops fiddling with his experiment long enough to give Marty a bright, sincere smile. “You, Marty, can accomplish anything if you just put your mind to it. Now when I tell you, flip that switch over there.”
The sheer trust Doc has in Marty makes him feel all warm and fuzzy. Trying to keep his own smile from taking over his face, he moves into position while Doc places a CD in what used to be a simple CD player. Once the disc is in, Doc turns off the garage light and signals Marty.
The film projector wires to life and as music starts to play (“The Stones, nice!”) an image takes shape on the wall, a simple clock face slowly, soundlessly ticking. When Doc pauses the music, the ticking stops. With a giddy laugh, Doc presses play again and the music and image start simultaneously.
“Yes!” Doc crows, raising both hands in the air in victory.
He’s so caught up that he doesn’t notice the not-so-tiny sparks that start flying from the contraption. Marty quickly crosses the space between them and pulls Doc away before the whole thing bursts into flame.
Fire is not a rare occurrence in Doc’s garage-turned-lab, and there are several extinguishers scattered through the space, so the flames are soon doused, leaving a gleeful Doc squeezing Marty’s shoulders.
“I knew it!” he says, way too happy for someone who almost set himself on fire. But then, this is just how Doc is, and his positive energy is contagious. “I knew it was possible to encode images alongside sounds on CDs! It’s just a matter of having the proper equipment to decode them afterwards. Mark my words Marty, soon the Compact Audio and Visual Discs will replace cassettes everywhere.”
“That’s amazing Doc!”
Marty hugs his friend, once again astonished that this mad genius who can make the impossible happen in his garage has not only somehow decided to tolerate Marty’s presence but actually welcomes it. Doc is just like his hugs: a strong, solid presence that wraps around Marty and makes him feel safe.
Doc pats him on the back and they separate, but even as the scientist’s arms let go of him Marty still feels like he’s exactly where he belongs.
*
Doc is dying. Doc is dying and Marty is thirty years too early to do anything about it. His father has proven to be even more useless than he expected, and while his mother does at least surprise him, it’s not exactly in a helpful or welcome way.
As he skateboards his way towards Doc’s house, Marty prays that the one person in his life he can always count on will turn out to be true to himself. He needs Doc, he needs his Doc, and not only because he’s Marty’s best chance at getting home. Right now, he craves Doc’s reassuring presence, his unwavering faith in Marty.
Doc, who was there to pick up the pieces of Marty’s heart when Jennifer broke up with him so she could keep looking for her hypothetical soulmate. Doc, who encouraged him to record an audition tape, and even provided a space for the Pinheads to record it. Doc, who looked over Marty’s careful college applications to make sure they were as good as they could be.
He bangs on the garage door and Doc’s wonderful, beautiful face greets him from underneath a contraption that looks like such a Doc thing that Marty can feel the relief instantly flowing through him.
“Hi Doc,” he says with a dopey smile.
He lets Doc manhandle him inside and place an electrode on his head, more than familiar with the scientist’s brusque habits, lets those strong hands and rapid-fire questions sooth him as Doc attempts to read his mind.
Doc is still his Doc. Or rather, he’s already his Doc. Ridiculous failed experiments and all.
“I’m from the future,” he tells him eventually, pulling the electrode from his forehead. “I came here in a time machine that you created, and now I need your help to get back.”
And, okay, maybe it takes a little bit to convince him that this isn’t a prank, and maybe they have to fix Marty’s mess regarding his parents if he doesn’t want to get erased from existence, and maybe they’re gonna have to harness the power of a very specific bolt of lightning to send him back. But they can do this. He can do this. With Doc’s help, he really believes he can accomplish anything.
“Is it okay if I crash here?” he asks once they’ve laid out a basic plan. It has been a long day, even if he did spend most of it passed out in his mother’s bed. Which he still doesn’t want to think too closely about.
“Crash what?” Doc asks, frowning. “There’s a lot of very delicate equipment here, Future Boy, and I’m going to need most of it, so I’d rather you didn’t crash anything here.”
“I mean can I spend the night? I don’t really have anywhere I can go.”
“Oh! Of course. There’s a couple of empty bedrooms upstairs, nobody uses them.”
“Thanks Doc, you never let me down,” Marty says, wrapping his arms around his friend.
Doc freezes for a moment, and Marty wants to kick himself. Of course this man isn’t used to the easy physical contact of their friendship! He’s some stranger who just showed up at his door with a bunch of problems, not someone he’s known for years. But then Doc melts against him, his arms wrapping around Marty as he hugs him back tight.
“Sure thing Marty,” he says, putting his hands on Marty’s shoulders when they separate. “You know, it’ll probably do me some good to have some company other than Copernicus around.”
*
Marty’s never slept at Doc’s before. His mother wouldn’t allow it. Granted, she has technically forbidden him to spend any time at the “crazy old scientist’s” place, but what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. Plus, after today, any guilt Marty might have felt about lying to her is pretty much gone, thank you very much.
To be honest, Marty had kind of assumed there weren’t any bedrooms, what with the amount of times he’s found Doc asleep on the pull-out couch in his workroom. But the house indeed has two bedrooms on the second floor.
The first one hasn’t been touched in many years, judging by the layer of dust on the bookshelf against the wall. The bed is impeccably made, the books all neatly sorted on the shelf. There’s a small, feminine-looking vanity atop which rests a pretty jewelry box and a framed photo of a couple, the woman holding a baby in her arms.
This must have been Doc’s parents’ bedroom. Marty knows his friend inherited his fortune, he just didn’t know that he’d gotten his parent’s house too. He stands in the middle of the room, and the mere thought of disturbing anything in there feels wrong. Marty carefully walks out, closing the door behind him.
At the other end of the wall is what must be Doc’s bedroom. The bed is unmade, there are plenty of books, a set of blueprints and few articles of clothing all over the floor, the bookshelves are an unorganized mess that he’s sure Doc finds perfectly reasonable, and it instantly feels like home to Marty. It’s perfect.
Marty drops down on the bed, face-first into a plush pillow. Unlike the pull-out couch, it doesn’t smell strongly of Doc, which means the scientist’s bad sleeping habits are probably already ingrained. That can’t be good for his back. Marty isn’t sure how old Doc currently is, but when he gets home he’ll definitely make sure his friend sleeps in a proper bed every now and then.
Maybe he can force him into the habit now, and hope it keeps for the next thirty years, who knows? He’ll work on it tomorrow. For now, he lets himself fall asleep in the safety of Doc’s house.
*
“I thought you said your father asked her to the dance?” Doc says once the door is shut behind Marty’s mom.
“He did!” Marty whines, half collapsing on Doc and letting him support Marty’s weight. All he wants is to curl up in a little ball from the awkwardness of the encounter. “I was there. It was a mess, but he did ask. I left before she gave him an answer though, I had to lure Biff Tannen away.”
“Who’s Biff Tannen?” Doc asks without moving from where he’s leaning against the covered-up DeLorean, a pillar of strength beneath Marty’s misery.
“Some school bully who’ll become dad’s supervisor at some point. I did not like him in the 80’s, and I definitely don’t like him more now.”
Doc hums thoughtfully, but still doesn’t move. Marty rests his cheek against the man’s strong back, Doc’s body warmth seeping through his work clothes. It’s comforting, soon Marty can think properly again, threads of ideas coalescing into the beginning of a plan.
“I think I know how to fix things. But I’ll need dad… I’ll need George to play his part. For both our sakes.”
Marty reluctantly rights himself, taking a step back, and Doc finally turns around. He puts a hand on Marty’s shoulder, squeezes it.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Future Boy. I do not want to see you written out of existence.”
There is such sincerity, such obvious affection in Doc’s tone that, were it not for the missing lines on Doc’s face Marty could forget where he is, or rather when he is. Doc’s never let him down, not even know, when he’s barely known him for a day. So he can’t let him down either, even if planning and thinking ahead are not Marty’s strong suit.
“Sure. Don’t worry about it.” He smiles, pats the hand on his shoulder, then points at the car under its tarp. “Do you need any help with the modifications? I’m very good at handing out tools when you ask for them.”
“I can always use a second set of hands,” Doc replies with a grin, and they get to work.
*
“So, tell me about yourself, Marty,” Doc asks from where he’s welding something to the pole that will eventually hook into the flux capacitor. “Are you in college yet? What do you study?”
“Ah, I’m still in my final year of high school,” Marty says, rubbing the back of his head self-consciously. “So I’m studying the usual, you know. But um, I’ve applied to a few places, still waiting to see where I get in. And, you know, then there’s the matter of being able to afford it.”
Doc had him apply to Berkeley, and that would be amazing, but with the kind of money his dad makes he would definitely need to get a scholarship to pay for the tuition. And with Marty’s attendance records, he doubts he stands a chance.
“I might just skip college and live off my music, though. I have a band. We’re good.”
“You play an instrument?” Doc asks, before holding out his hand with a little wiggle of his fingers that Marty easily recognizes.
“The guitar, mostly.” Marty picks up the flat-headed screwdriver that rolled to the other side of the table earlier and hands it to Doc. “A little bit of bass, too, and I’m decent on a piano if I must but that’s not my jam. I love the guitar even more than I love singing.”
Doc looks up from his work to stare at Marty, something unreadable in his eyes.
“You’re a musician.”
“Yeah!” Marty grins. “Music is in my soul, I don’t know what I’d do without it. It’s been just a few days and I already miss my guitar like crazy. I miss 80’s music too. I mean, you have some decent songs in the 50’s, a few classics you know? But it’s just not the same. It’s too quiet, too nice . I gotta get back home if only just for ZZ Top, Bonnie Tyler, The Bangles, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac…”
Marty doesn’t notice he’s started excitedly gesticulating until he knocks his elbow into a shelf, causing some complicated contraption made of sharp metal and many wires to fall. He manages to catch it before it hits the floor, but something slices through his skin.
“Ouch, shit! I mean shoot! Sorry.”
He lays the whatever-it-is on the floor and looks at his hand, bites off another swear as blood trickles down towards the cuff of his jacket.
“Are you alright?” Doc asks, taking Marty’s hand in delicate fingers as Marty hurriedly pushes his sleeve down so it doesn’t get stained.
“I’m bleeding, but it doesn’t hurt too bad.” He lets Doc wipe the blood off with a handkerchief and examine the cut. “What’s the prognosis?”
“Luckily it seems pretty shallow. Just keep pressure on it while I grab the first aid kit.”
“You’re the doc, Doc.”
“I’m not that kind of doctor!” Doc calls out with his back turned.
Apparently he keeps the first aid kit in the same spot as in 1985, and he’s soon back, gently disinfecting the wound while Marty grits his teeth through the sting of it.
“Sorry about the…” Marty trails off, but gestures to the device on the floor with his free hand.
“Don’t worry about it, that thing never worked anyway,” Doc tells him. “And never apologize for being passionate about something. It suits you.”
Doc smiles at him as he applies a band-aid over the cut, and Marty can’t help smiling back.
*
It takes him until Friday night to manage to convince Doc to sleep in his own bed instead of crashing on the couch. And even then, he has to resort to a little bit of manipulation.
“I’m so nervous about tomorrow, if on top of that I have to worry about you working through the night instead of getting any rest, I’m never gonna be able to fall asleep. We both know how clumsy you can get after a sleepless night.”
“I don’t get clumsy!” Doc says, standing straight with a hand dramatically raised to his chest.
“Please.” Marty takes advantage of Doc standing tall to look up at him through his eyelashes, feinting shyness. It’s a move that used to work wonders on his parents when he was younger, and which he’s used on Doc a time or two before. “Do it for me?”
Doc stares intensely at him for several long seconds during which Marty feels himself flushing slightly. Then the scientist sighs, deflating, and Marty knows he’s won.
“Fine, a good night’s rest can’t hurt,” Doc relents. “I’m mostly done anyway, at this point there’s not much left to do until I get to the courthouse clock tower.”
Feeling victorious, Marty wraps an arm around his friend’s shoulders and stirs him through the lab and towards the stairs. He accompanies Doc to his bedroom to grab his sleeping clothes, and smiles fondly when Doc just drops on the bed, buries his face in his pillow, and falls right asleep.
“See, much more comfortable than the pull-up couch,” he murmurs as he carefully drapes a blanket over Doc.
“Oh yeah, the bed is so much better,” he says again once he’s settled onto the aforementioned couch.
There’s a spring digging into his hip and he can hear Copernicus snoring in his doggy bed against the wall. Marty’s almost tempted to go back up and sneak into Doc’s bed. Surely his friend wouldn’t mind? But the point was to make sure Doc gets a good, comfortable night’s sleep, and he’d hate to accidentally wake him up.
At least the covers smell of Doc’s cologne, which is familiar and comforting. Marty drags them up to his nose and lets the scent lull him to sleep.
*
“You know Calvin, Marty,” his mother says as she takes off her jacket, and wow that dress sits very low on her chest, she would never let Linda wear anything that…revealing. Marty looks her in the eye to avoid looking at anything else, incredibly uncomfortable. “Sometimes, soulmates can recognize each other even before their mark appears.”
“They, um, they can?” he stammers, instead of asking why she’s leaning so close to him.
“Yes. Sometimes they feel drawn to their soulmate. That person feels instantly safe to them, comfortable. Like they’ve always known them. That person feels like home .”
Marty blinks, memory flooding through him of someone who has felt right and safe from the moment they literally crashed into each other, despite the fact that Marty was trespassing at the time. He remembers the comfort of Doc’s embrace, the way he always feels at ease in the other’s presence, how in sync they always are when working on one of Doc’s projects together. The way Doc always, almost instinctively, lowers himself to be of a height with Marty. The warmth of his body when they lean on each other. The calming scent of his cologne.
“Oh.”
Marty is too preoccupied having a revelation to notice that Lorraine isn’t just close, she’s actually right there . Her lips press against his, and Marty can feel an unpleasant shiver run up his spine. He stares at her like a deer caught in headlights, and she stares right back, eyes wide and panicked, before she finally, blessedly leans back.
“This is all wrong,” she says, sounding a little lost. “I don’t… I don’t know what it is. I thought you and I were soulmates. But when I kiss you, it’s like I’m kissing my brother. I guess it doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
“Believe me, it makes perfect sense,” Marty breathes out in relief.
He slightly panics when the car door opens. He’s completely forgotten about the plan and there’s nothing for George to rescue Lorraine from! Then he panics more , because that’s not George.
With Biff’s cronies there it’s four against one, and Marty might be scrappy and know how to throw a punch but he isn’t really a fighter. That’s how he ends up locked in a car trunk while his dad finally stands up to his life-long bully.
Marty’s proud, he really is, but of course things can’t be simple. So instead of rushing back to Doc (Doc! He needs to talk to him, to tell him…) Marty ends up strumming away on a borrowed guitar to one of the most boring songs he’s ever played.
Alright, the song itself isn’t that bad, he guesses, not for the time period and for a slow song at a school dance. But it’s not exactly challenging, or fun to play. The stress probably isn’t helping either.
Because his parents (Lorraine and George, it’s easier to think about them as such) still haven’t kissed. Marty stares at them, awkwardly swaying to the music together. For a moment, their forms blurr. He blinks, misses a chord but catches himself. A quick look at the photo he stuck to the guitar tells him how urgent the situation is.
Something happens on the dance floor, some commotion that Marty can’t quite see, can’t quite hear because suddenly reality seems kind of…fuzzy. He tries to focus on the music, but it doesn’t work and everything becomes fluid, vast, far away, everywhere, nowhere. He is billions of billions of atoms scattered across the universe. He is the infernal heat of creation’s explosion, the empty cold of the end of all things. Time swirls around itself, always the same, always different, splintering into infinite pathways, converging and yet never touching.
Air in his lungs. Music in his ears. A guitar in his hands. And there, right in his line of sight, Lorraine Baines and George McFly are kissing.
Marty scrambles to his feet and resumes playing, head swirling as his brain, too small to truly comprehend what happened, holds on to reality with all its might.
Someone points at Lorraine’s bare arm. From where he is, Marty can’t make out the soulmark that now adorns it, but he doesn’t have to. He’s seen it a million times after all. Bright yellow stars encased in a sea-green bubble.
Marty’s never felt like it really fit his parents, be it as individuals or as a couple. But now that he’s met them both at this age, now that he actually knows them, it seems perfect.
Please, don’t waste your potential , he can’t help but pray as the song comes to an end.
The band gives him leave to pick the next song, an incentive for him to stay really, and while Marty should get going he also can’t resist the thought of playing something that “really cooks”. It needs to be old enough to fit in, something that the band can actually pull off with just a few directions. Something from the late 50’s ought to do.
“Alright, this is an oldie,” he says to the crowd without thinking, because his big mouth will be the death of him some day. “Well, it’s an oldie where I come from,” he adds quickly before turning to the band, hoping that if they just start playing then no one will ask too many questions. “Alright guys, this is a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes, and try and keep up, okay?”
The crowd stands still through the first few notes before suddenly exploding into movement. This is going to be their generation’s music after all, so even if they haven’t heard it yet it speaks to them. They dance, and the classic rock’n’roll moves aren’t quite there yet but the spirit definitely is. Marty grins cockily at the band, who grin right back. Their initial surprise is already fading and they’re having a blast.
So is Marty. There’s something about Johnny B. Goode that’s just special, as music goes. It’s one of these songs that defines an era’s music, that sets a trend, that opens up new paths. As Marty plays for an audience that actually enjoys his music, he finds himself thinking that he could do this forever.
And maybe, just maybe, he could do this whenever .
He could play rock’n’roll in the 50’s, then the 60’s, then the 70’s… He could help usher a new era of music, and he could do it right here and now. He could stay by Doc’s side, and they could figure out this soulmate thing together, and Marty could be there all along to make sure the disaster with the Lybians never happens. He left Doc a letter, but it might not even be necessary.
He’s really getting into the song now, and Marty throws himself into a guitar solo, which he can really make his own. The students are dancing and loving his music and Marty wants to give them more.
So he does.
When he realizes they’re all staring at him in shock, and not the good kind, his heart silently breaks.
“I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet,” he says through a tight throat, forcing a smile to his face. They aren’t. They won’t be ready for a long time. Actually, most of them will never like the music that lives in Marty’s heart. With false cheer, he adds: “But your kids are gonna love it.”
He has to go.
*
“I refuse to take the responsibility!” Doc shouts over the storm as he tears Marty’s letter into pieces.
Marty panics. He can’t let this happen, he can’t lose him! He has to tell him, has to make him understand how important this is, how important he is to Marty. So he rushes up to Doc, wraps his hand around the one that’s about to throw out the letter.
“Doc, please,” he begs, screaming over the wind and the rain.
For once Doc is looming over him as he glares, so Marty has to lift himself onto his tiptoes, his free hand grabbing Doc’s rain-slick neck to pull him down so he can crush their lips together.
Doc is a frozen statue against him, but Marty can feel the skin of his forearm prickling and he knows . That’s his soulmate he’s kissing, his soulmate who’s going to have to wait thirty years for him, his soulmate who isn’t allowed to die .
It doesn’t take long for Doc to kiss him back, hungry, desperate. His free hand presses against Marty’s back, crushing their bodies together, and they just fit in spite of the height difference. Doc’s tongue slips into Marty’s mouth, presses against Marty’s tongue, teases and explores. Marty drinks it all in, fingers slipping into wild white hair, teeth scraping against Doc’s lips.
Thunder slams around them, so loud it shocks them apart. They stare at each other, Doc’s eyes wide in shock, Marty’s imploring. Slowly, Doc tucks the scraps of paper into his jacket’s pocket.
Marty swallows, tries to smile. He can feel how strained it is.
“You need to go!” Doc shouts over the storm. There are so many emotions in his voice that Marty can’t decipher them all.
But Doc has the letter, and lightning will strike the clock tower in only a few minutes. This is Marty’s only chance to go back. He has to.
“I love you!” he shouts, unnecessarily, before he forces himself to move.
Marty hops into the DeLorean and starts the engine. The time circuits come on, dates, hours, minutes and seconds displayed in light. There’s a small note taped next to the current date and time, with a reminder of the exact time at which he needs to start down the road on it. It’s such a Doc thing to do.
“He has the letter,” Marty says out loud as he drives to the starting point. “He’ll be careful, figure something out. He’s smart. He’s the smartest person you know, a proper genius.”
A part of him still wants to stay. It’s not even a little part of him, it’s a pretty big one. His denim jacket covers the soulmark on his arm, but his eyes are drawn to the spot where he felt it appear.
Is he being selfish, by going back? Is he robbing the both of them of thirty years together for no good reason?
But Marty would be miserable if he couldn’t play, and tonight showed him that he can’t just play music from this era without adding his own twist to it, not even the really good music. Plus, he’d have to constantly avoid his parents in fear of messing up the timeline again. He and Doc could just move away, but then Doc wouldn’t befriend young Marty and Marty would never go back in time and that would be another paradox mess wouldn’t it? For all his thoughts of staying, Marty really hasn’t thought things through. He rarely does.
He bets Doc’s already thought about all of it, in those few seconds after their kiss. He told Marty he had to go.
“He’s the smartest person I know,” Marty repeats to himself, as he presses on the gas pedal, sending the DeLorean racing down the street. “A proper genius.”
The car builds up speed right along Marty’s heartbeat. The flux capacitor is emitting a low-pitched whir that’s almost entirely lost beneath the sound of the roaring engine and the screeching tires. He can see the cable coming up, and he keeps going, putting his faith in Doc’s calculations.
He spots a head of wild white hair as Doc fiddles with the cable by the side of the road. Is the cable disconnected? Marty closes his eyes but keeps his foot down on the pedal. Lights dance against his closed eyelids, something twists -
And Marty crashes into the old closed-down cinema, belt-buckle violently stopping him from careening through the window. His head is spinning as he climbs out of the car to assess the damage.
It doesn’t look good, but hopefully the car will still run. One good thing about the DeLorean is that the engine is located at its rear, so driving it straight into a wall is not a death sentence for the car. Hopefully.
Marty gets back behind the wheel, vaguely thinking that he should have changed the destination time so he’d come back earlier, before Doc got shot. Just in case. Maybe if he hadn’t been freaking out about the whole soulmate thing, he would have thought of that.
He turns the key in the ignition. The engine rattles, coughs, stalls.
“Come on, come on!” Marty begs as he tries again, to no avail.
He needs to go check on Doc, to make sure he’s alright. And if he’s not, he has to grab that case of plutonium before the police arrive. And then he can travel back in time again, at some earlier point where he can actually save Doc. Not that Doc will need saving. He has Marty’s note. What did his note say, exactly, again?
A knock on his window pulls Marty out of his worry spiral. He looks up into dark brown eyes and his heart skips a beat. Doc’s face has a few more wrinkles than the last time Marty saw it, but they suit him. The scientist raises his eyebrows impatiently and Marty rushes to open the door, throwing himself into Doc’s arms and holding tight.
“Doc,” he whimpers into the man’s shoulder. “You’re okay.”
“Thanks to you,” Doc says, squeezing him back just as tightly. “It’s good to see you again, Future Boy.”
“You saw me less than twenty minutes ago,” Marty says reproachfully, taking a small step back so he can look at Doc without moving fully out of his arms.
There are bullet holes in his suit, but no blood on it, and Marty splays a hand on Doc’s chest to feel the bulletproof vest underneath. Of course Doc came up with a plan that would both save his life and make sure Marty still got sent back, fearing for Doc’s life and writing that letter. Preserving this new timeline of theirs.
“Yes, I just saw you,” Doc says, a hand trailing from Marty’s shoulder up to his neck. “But that you didn’t know yet, so I couldn’t do this.”
Doc bends down to bring their mouths together, and Marty’s lips part immediately to invite him in. Doc kisses like a man who’s finally found an oasis after being stranded in the desert for days. Their tongues dance together with both passion and ease, as if they’d done this a thousand times before, as if it were the very first time.
Marty leans against the DeLorean, pulling Doc along with him so he can be trapped between his firm body and the car’s stainless steel. Minutes pass, or maybe hours. Marty’s never had a good sense of time, and he’s too busy to care.
“Sorry for making you wait,” he breathes out when they finally part.
“For you, I’d wait until the end of the universe itself.”
*
Marty wakes up to the sound of a door shutting and excited voices drifting from further inside the house. He stretches his neck and shoulder, strained from the weird position he fell asleep in, and smiles as he looks down at his forearm.
“ Passiflora incarnata ”, Doc told him last night, as he was dropping him off at home. “Also known as passionflower. People say they look like the face of a clock, which is appropriate for us don’t you think?”
With delicate fingers, Marty traces the white outside petals, the thin purple and white inside petals, and the six pistils. Three of them are a darker color, and the other three almost seem to glow on his skin. They remind Marty of the flux capacitor.
With a smitten smile, he makes his way to the living room where he finds… his family? He stares at Dave’s suit, Linda’s fashionable clothes, his mom’s slim waist and happy smile and his dad’s… everything . It takes his brain several long seconds to recognize Biff, with his uncharacteristic hunched position and that green jogging outfit.
His frozen silence would have been awkward were it not for the way they’re all staring at him too. And Marty… Marty panics. Because his family looks so different and he can’t help but wonder how much he screwed up the timeline and if he didn’t somehow end up erasing himself after all.
“Marty, sweetheart,” Lorraine says (because she looks more like young Lorraine than like his mom, and that’s gonna take a while to stop being weird). She smiles at him, and it’s soft and warm and okay, that’s the way his mom’s always smiled at him. “Is there something you want to tell us?”
She looks pointedly at his arm, and Marty blushes.
“Oh, um, yeah I guess.” Marty rubs the back of his head nervously. “I figured out who my soulmate is?”
“No duh,” Linda snickers. “That’s pretty obvious. Come on, tell us who it is! That’s even more exciting than dad’s book!”
“Hey!” George half-heartedly complains, but he too looks at Marty expectantly.
“So, um, you know Doc, right?”
Dave and Linda go wild. They bombard him with questions, half of which Marty really can’t answer without spilling the beans about time travel. Fortunately his siblings are too busy trying to talk over each other to really mind that Marty isn’t saying much. Eventually they start bickering about Linda’s boyfriend (since when does she have one?) and Marty finally gets to talk to his parents.
“You two don’t seem very surprised.”
His mom looks sheepish, while his dad just grins.
“Darth Vador from the planet Vulcan?” he asks, and Marty gulps. “I suspected time travel ever since the first episode of Star Trek aired. It took me a while to mention it to your mother, but when I did she dragged me to Doctor Brown’s place and we managed to get a partial explanation out of him. He was vague on the details, but he did rub his forearm every time he talked about you.”
“We do have a few questions, but it can wait,” his mom adds. “You’re home, and if I’m not mistaken this is a very new development?”
“Yeah,” Marty admits, and he can’t help smiling and looking down at his arm. “I wouldn’t have figured it out without you, actually.”
“Me?”
“What you said about soulmates, in the car. Before you…”
He trails off, embarrassed, and his mom looks just as mortified as he feels.
“I, um, don’t really remember what I said,” she admits. “But I’m glad it helped? Also, can we never mention this whole thing ever again?”
“Yes. Please.”
“What happened?” George asks, eyebrows furrowed. “Does this have anything to do with…” his eyes trail off towards Biff, who’s currently showing off some matchbox to Dave.
“It’s nothing Dad,” Marty hurries to say. “Just some, um, miscommunication before he showed up. Everything turned out well anyway.” Marty really doesn’t want to think about that kiss, so he quickly adds: “Anyway, I was gonna go see him, if that’s alright with you? We didn’t have much time to talk when I, um, came back. Okay, see you later, love you!”
Marty flees from the conversation, hoping that his dad will have dropped the matter by the time he comes back home. He has no idea if this version of George McFly is the type to let this kind of thing lie or not.
It’s a quick skate from his place to Doc’s, especially hitching rides on various cars. Marty smiles as he grabs the key under the mat and lets himself in. Doc is fiddling with the DeLorean, since he can’t exactly bring it to a garage to have it fixed, but he looks up from his work the moment Marty comes in.
“Hello, Future Boy,” he says with a smile.
“Hi Doc.”
Marty closes the door behind him, quickly pets Einstein’s head as he makes his way to his soulmate. Doc is leaning down a little, one hand on the car’s hood. He’s at the perfect height for Marty to effortlessly kiss him.
“I could get used to that,” Doc says afterwards.
“Yeah, me too,” Marty smiles, before looking at the time machine that brought them together. “So, what’s the verdict? Does it still work?”
“It should!” Doc says excitedly, grinning as he gestures towards the car. “I’ve had to undo some of my modifications from 1955, since we do have more plutonium and I doubt we’ll need any more lightning strikes, and the hood will take me a bit longer to fix up, but once that’s done… How do you fancy a little trip to the future?”
“Sounds like fun!” Marty grins back.
And it’s true. Because they’ll do this together this time. And anything he gets to do with his Doc, with his soulmate, will be great. He just knows it.