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“I ain't happy about this,” McCoy says, like anybody this side of the galaxy needs telling that.
He scrawls his name at the bottom of the document and seals it with a long, hard press of his thumb. The PADD accepts his fingerprint with a cheerful little dingle, just like it had the first time. Who'd've thought he’d be going through this again so soon, goddamn.
He knew it was coming, obviously, not just by and by but imminently, the date decided, calendars crossed, inevitability known.
He wasn't expecting it when Kirk summoned him down to Vortha that first time, weeks ago now, Jesus, and long weeks they have been. McCoy signed the preliminary paperwork in a daze. He had not liked the way Kirk's eyes had shone in the Scholar's moonlit hall: starlight, always, but distant. Thinking beyond the here and now.
They have not spoken about it. Oh, McCoy is sure Kirk and Spock have spoken of it plenty, both of them tormented by the Vorthan hospitality: great feasts and summer gardens, tours of towering libraries and the goldsmith's abode, free rein of a beautiful city and grand halls of vine-wrapped stone. They must be bored out of their minds.
Sporadic texts are all McCoy has gotten. Something something Vorthan technology, something something directive or whatnot; he threw his communicator at the model skeleton in his office on the second day and it is still lying there, buried in bones.
At least the Vorthas allow him to beam in and out. God forbid he be important enough to the negotiations or, say, two very specific people to stay.
He hands the PADD to Spock, clockwise at the table. McCoy bets his knees don’t ache sitting on these silly little cushions.
Spock takes the PADD without so much as a thank you. Apparently it would kill his stone-cold heart to be polite. He is probably being polite all up in that voodoo bond he shares with Jim right now. Star-told lovers or whatever they are, two sides of a coin, fated. The Vorthas can’t take that away from them.
McCoy is not a part of that daisy chain. They were working on it, all right? Kirk and Spock may have been all too happy living in each other’s pockets from day one, but McCoy is too old to be rushing. He did all that in his twenties with Jocelyn, and out popped Joanna. Nothing’s gonna be popping out of this relationship except the cork of the Federation’s celebratory champagne when the trade deal goes through.
Well, good for them. Let the Vorthas be happy! Let the Federation rake in the gold! Kirk and Spock can go on doing their Vulcan-approved mind-snogging; McCoy can go back to pottering around the ship while all else is down here grinding his life into grits.
McCoy has heard a lot of phony trade deals in his time aboard the Enterprise. This isn’t even the worst of them, although it is bad. He understands the Federation is insistent on getting its fingers into his particular pie, at least on some level. On a more personal level, he liked to think Kirk was better at saying no to this kind of nonsense by now, but if he was, he wouldn't have involved McCoy in this work-around.
Some work-around it is. The Enterprise has been in orbit for weeks. Negotiations haven't even started. Scotty has been keeping the ship running while McCoy fought off a breakdown in Sickbay.
Spock’s signature is last: the last chance to stop this. He doesn’t. He passes the PADD back to Kirk, who inflicts it with a tight sort of look – ever the professional, that Captain Kirk – and then sends it off to the court with another merry be-beep-beep!
Damn him. Damn both of them. And damn the Vorthan witness still standing in the doorway, her long shadow bisecting the room. It swings impatiently like the pendulum McCoy always knew was ticking; this was inevitable, like a sword coming down on his throat.
He tugs at his collar, expecting the sword but feeling a noose. He tied the knot himself, dammit. He tied it the day he stepped foot onto the Enterprise and tried to kid himself into thinking this job would just be a job, and this crew just a crew.
It sure feels that way now, don’t it? McCoy tries to focus on something else – not Spock in his silence, or Kirk’s diplomatic plays. Anything else. The sweat on his hands, the dull pain in his knees. The wood top of the table, swirling this way and that. The rustle of leaf chimes in the windows. The mural of the Vorthan sovereign god, untouched and alone.
“Thank you,” Kirk says – not to McCoy, of course. He’s talking to that damn spokeswoman wearing the tower-like hat. “We appreciate the Scholar’s patience in this matter. We’ll be happy to commence negotiations shortly.”
Happy is not the word McCoy would use. He hefts himself up from the cushion before the door swings shut behind the alien spokeswoman, hearing his knees crack. Well, his knees or something in his heart, take your pick.
“Don’t think y’all be needing me anymore, will ya?”
“On the contrary, Doctor –”
“Bones, sit down.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” McCoy says, swiping his med-kit and jacket from the wall. He fishes his communicator from the pocket and flips it open, and in the beat it takes him to compose himself at hearing that blasted beeping noise again, at seeing them again, after weeks apart, Kirk’s hand appears to snap it shut.
“As soon as negotiations are over, I’ll make this right,” Kirk says, as honest as the man McCoy thought he knew.
McCoy could damn well bite him.
“Sure Jim, it ain’t like you've had weeks to make it right already.”
Kirk grimaces. He wraps his other hand around the communicator, holding or trapping McCoy’s fingers, whichever works for him.
“It’s a condition for the proceedings, Bones, you know that. My hands are tied.”
“I’ll bet – But is your tongue? You couldn’t’ve just wagged it like you always do? Sweet talked your way out of stupidity? It ain’t failed us before.”
“You think I didn’t try that? I would love to say it worked, Bones. I wouldn’t have called you away from the ship if I believed there was another way.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Jim Kirk I married,” McCoy spits. He wrestles free and reopens his comm. “Oh wait – Divorced.”
“Doctor –”
“And I don’t want to talk to you either. McCoy to Enterprise. One to beam up. Don't bother summoning me back down here when the judgement notice comes through. Send it to my PADD! Unless y'all can't think of another way.”
“Bones,” Kirk tries, one more time, but then the transporter beam comes down from above like a light from God and shatters McCoy into a thousand pieces, and carries it all away.
##
Try as he might not to think about the ins and outs of transporter technology, there are times McCoy questions whether the man that breaks apart on a planet is the same one that reappears on the ship.
He doesn't feel like it, beaming up from Vortha. Sure, his clothes are the same and his equipment is the same, but they can be replicated and replaced: they're just things. He is a living being with sentience and feeling and pain – so why, if he isn't the same person, if there are a thousand versions of him still lingering in the dust of the Enterprise and orbiting space, on every planet he has visited and every spacecraft he called home, then why is he stuck with his memories, why not wipe him clean?
Start anew. Start afresh. That is what he did the last time he got divorced; he joined Starfleet, hell, he threw himself into space. He said goodbye to his daughter and goodbye to his life – he made a new life for himself on this rust bucket with Kirk and Spock and he loves them, he loves them, he misses them, he hates them –
McCoy pours himself another Saurian brandy.
“Assholes,” he mutters to the rapidly draining bottle, donking it down hard onto the table. The few other off-duty officers in the bar look over at the loud thunk but wisely offer McCoy a wide berth.
As they should. After weeks of waiting, and misery, weeks of the ridiculous Vorthan laws and Kirk's hair-raising willingness to follow them, the trade deal talks only took up an afternoon.
An afternoon! For all that stress! For all those nights alone and for many nights more! Oh, Starfleet will be happy. The rest of the crew will be happy. McCoy is going to sit here and drink and be alone.
He wouldn't usually commiserate his woes in public like this, but Kirk and Spock have open access to all of his private places these days (ha!) so what difference does it make? Everywhere is public. Let the ship talk; it's already talking. It's been talking for weeks. There's no damn privacy on this circus stage.
Kirk would never dare make a scene in Sickbay, of course, not with McCoy's good standing with his staff and patients in jeopardy, but that is the first place they'll look for him now they are back on board.
The second place they'll look for him is his own cabin, but cornering McCoy there feels like the sort of shit he doesn't want to encourage. He made it clear before he married them that he wanted his own space, in name if nothing else. And so far, they have been good about that.
All bets are off now – not because of the divorce, but because they clearly never respected him much in the first place, and Kirk always gets his way. If he wants to hash out the details of their new and improved working relationship in the same way he hashed out their disclosures, then a door he can override definitely ain't going to stop him.
Goddamn. That's what McCoy gets for marrying a captain. And Spock could just rip the door off its hinges anyway. That's what he gets for marrying a Vulcan.
Another drink goes down.
Eventually, he recognises the merit of retiring for the night. Where to, who knows? He has been alone in his cabin for weeks. He should have moved his stuff out of Kirk and Spock's places, but he didn't have the heart or balls for it.
He heard Kirk’s voice over the intercom a while ago like a disembodied angel through the brandy-red haze. Kirk's got the face for it – and the smile. Stick a pair of cherub wings on him and give him a bow and he could be Cupid; McCoy felt shot by an arrow the first time he laid eyes on Kirk, that much is true.
He was a younger man, then. Divorced. Still is.
It was always going to happen like this. Kirk and Spock are playing destiny's game, and they don't lose.
“Damn it all to hell,” McCoy mutters.
He swipes his empty glass and the bottle from the table. It won't do for the Chief Medical Officer to be seen carrying them around the corridors like a drunk, so he sets the brandy back behind the counter and deposits the glass for a clean. Then he wipes brandy splash or sweat from his mouth and gets on his way.
Spock is waiting outside of McCoy's quarters – loitering, even. He has a PADD tucked under his arm and a tray in his hands. If that is supposed to be a peace offering, then McCoy isn't interested.
But it would be rude to outright ignore him. McCoy sidles up to his door and asks, obliged and pitying, because who knows how long Spock has been waiting. Oh right, weeks.
“Everyone back on board, then?”
“Yes. We have instruction to return to Deep Space Two,” Spock replies, his face betraying nothing, betraying everything.
Before McCoy was presented with a petition to dissolve their marriage, he would have said he was pretty good at getting read on Spock. Funny that.
McCoy feels like an outsider, looking at him. He is an outsider, an onlooker. There is a part of Spock beyond his reach and there always has been. It is the part of him that reaches only for Kirk.
McCoy keys himself into his room. “Am I expecting Jim to pounce on me in here?”
“He is on the Bridge.”
Convenient. Kirk's silver tongue could have gotten him out of his captainly duties, too. But god knows it doesn't seem to be dazzling the cosmos today.
“And you?”
“It is not my intention to ‘pounce’,” Spock replies. “I determined it likely that you will not have taken an evening meal. I have brought you one.”
“A couple ol’ drinks was enough for me,” says McCoy, wishing he still had the bottle. He could have clobbered himself with it.
“Regardless, may I bring this inside?”
“And what if I say no?”
Spock’s eyes close slightly. “Then I will take my leave. It is not my wish to overstep, Leonard. I understand your frustration –”
“My frustration?”
“With my being here,” Spock clarifies, but it is too late.
Fury surges up McCoy's throat like the burn of the alcohol on the way down. He snatches the tray, spitting, “I said I don't want to talk to you. And you can tell Jim through your lover's link that applies to him, too.”
The door shuts behind him. His quarters are dark. The blue stream of warpspeed that he hadn't previously noticed is the only light in the room, rushing past his window like claws of glimmering rain.
McCoy slams the tray onto the table and waits for the ring of the buzzer, but it doesn't come.
##
He doesn't sleep. He goes to bed dehydrated and hungry, and has a waking dream of Kirk sliding under the sheets beside him. Across the room, a lone candle dances in the warp-blue rain: one of Spock's, for meditation. McCoy stares at it until the shapes of other people feel real in his dream.
“I knew you'd barge your way in here,” he says to Kirk, somewhere between sleep and waking, not sure which way he'd rather this go. “Can't a man lick his wounds in peace?”
Kirk's hand touches his hip. Testing the waters, so to speak. Usually, he is sprawled all over McCoy, as unabashed about taking up space as a big, golden dog.
It's been weeks, McCoy reminds himself. Despite himself, he curls into Kirk's touch, wanting it, dreading it.
“Not when I've made those wounds, Bones. I don't like the thought that I've hurt you.”
“Then don't think about it,” McCoy grumbles. “Had a lot of practice these last couple of weeks, haven't you?”
Kirk's voice is quiet, hurt. “That's not true.”
“No? Then why didn't I join you on your fancy little holiday? Oh right, the Vorthas wouldn't allow it. Nice to know where I stand with you two.”
“Your standing has not changed, Leonard,” Spock says.
“Bones, we talked about this. I told you, it's just paperwork –”
McCoy rises to his elbows. “It didn't feel like paperwork when you dragged me down to your goddamn palace and gave me those fucking forms to sign! Not all of us have some soul bond you can't just throw away –”
“No one is being thrown away,” Kirk says, slinging his arm around McCoy's waist. He tries to pull him back down to the bed, grunting, “Come on, Bones – babe – I knew you'd think that –”
“Get off me.”
“I had orders from Command to –”
“I said, get off me, Jim! Why would I give a crap about Command? I’m not some – some venerated captain – or some hotshot Vulcan!” He fights his way off the bed to whirl on Spock, barely a shadow in the dark. “You signed it too! And I didn't let you in here!”
Spock’s candle doesn't waver – but he does. Apparently, McCoy does still know him well enough to recognise indecision playing out on his face.
The half-second it takes Spock to reply is probably a hundred years in that Vulcan mind-link of his, talking to Kirk in that place McCoy cannot hear.
“There was no alternative,” Spock says. “Starfleet mandates that all negotiations must abide to the social and cultural norms of a Federation candidate –”
McCoy grabs a cushion. For better or for worse, he grabs a fucking cushion from the bed and tries to eat it.
“I'm not questioning their norms, for god's sake!”
“Bones, you know what was at stake –”
Of course he knows; Kirk told him all about it at the top of his lungs when he handed over that petition. Half of the Vorthan population probably heard their argument.
“We couldn't say no, either,” Kirk tries.
He hasn't moved far across the bed, which is just as well, because McCoy swiping with the cushion would have split open his nose.
“You two are still married!” McCoy hisses. “Vulcan married! Bonded! Whatever! And don't you dare say, ‘well that's your own damn fault, isn't it, Bones –’”
“I wouldn't say that.”
“But you're thinking it! In that –” He gestures between them, tracing an invisible and yet patently present thread. He knows they all know what he means, even when the words slop together in his mouth: the brandy is coming back up. All he can manage is, “Jim!”
It is a cry for help as well as frustration. Spock was right, goddammit. He is frustrated. He is frustrated at this whole darn pigsty of a month, and himself, and them, but mostly at himself and his bleeding heart.
He misses them. He has them right here in his room and they have never felt so far apart. This isn’t a new thing. But until the goddamn Vorthas and their caveats, until signing that document again, he hadn't realised just how far apart they were.
It is his own doing, McCoy knows it. He wanted a flimsy Human marriage. He wasn't ready for the real deal.
That’s what he gets for marrying thy’la. Goddamn.
“Okay, no, that's enough of that,” Kirk says. The sheets rustle as he rises from the bed. He has a heavy tread, an undeniable presence. His arms close around McCoy's waist and squeeze tight. “Spock, would you –?”
The candlewick hisses. Spock moves past them, sleep robes feathering around his ankles. McCoy hears the thu-donk of meal cards into the synthesiser.
Then Kirk's mouth brushes over his neck.
“Bones. I wish I knew what to say. It was easy, in some regards. It was the consequences I knew would be hard.” That lingers between them, awaiting a response. Without one, he concedes, “Spock won't say it, but he's mad at me too.”
“Starfleet's mandates are hardly your fault,” McCoy mutters. If they were, maybe he could do a damn thing about them.
Kirk kisses his shoulder. “He knows that. I'd rather he be mad at me than at himself. The same goes for you.”
Tough shit. McCoy peeks over the cushion and spies Spock returning with tea. Affection and exasperation churn inside of his stomach with all of that alcohol. Jesus, he used to be better at holding his drink. He used to be a younger man.
“Leonard.” Spock swaps the gnawed cushion for one of the cups of tea. Then he gestures to the bed. “Please sit.”
He doesn't have much choice about it, regardless. Kirk drags him back over. It is not a big enough bed for all three of them: this is McCoy's space, after all. His space, his cowardice, and his insecurities.
His marriage.
“I wish you could have stayed planetside with us,” Kirk says gently. “It might have been a holiday, then. We never did have a honeymoon.”
“People don't tend to honeymoon after they get divorced,” McCoy says. “If they do, I've clearly been doing it wrong. You should’ve sent me to Risa instead of back to the ship.”
“I should have hidden you in a closet and just told the Vorthas you’d beamed back aboard,” Kirk says, swirling his cup of tea around. “Would that have pissed them off, you think, Spock?’
“We could not afford to risk it, if so,” he replies, perching on the other side of the bed. “The importance of our mission reflected the Federation's dire need of allies in this sector.”
“Dire enough to divorce me,” McCoy mutters.
“Dire enough to divorce all of us,” Kirk corrects. “In the Human manner, yes, I know. Spock was an entirely new phenomenon to the Vorthas; they didn't have a clue about Vulcans and we decided not to explain.”
“Vulcans don't explain anything anyway,” McCoy says, and he means it as a joke, but neither of them laugh.
Spock inclines his head, agreeing. “To our detriment, perhaps. If a train of thought is logical, then it is unnecessary to transcribe. All who engage in logical thinking will have reached the same conclusion, and it is known.”
“And Humans…?” Kirk probes.
“Humans do not share this implicit understanding. In fact, you often share in implicit misunderstandings,” says Spock. “For example, Leonard believes that the transient nature of our marriage reflects a transient nature of our relationship. This is false. Marriage is a legal legitimacy used to establish rights for two or more spouses in many Federation worlds, but not all, and nothing more.”
“Well now, Spock, I think it's a bit more than that,” McCoy argues, side-eyeing Kirk for his reaction. They damn well are far apart if Spock has been harbouring these feelings towards marriage all this time. “It’s about love. Commitment. Family.”
“It is not,” says Spock in a clipped tone. “We are already family, ashalik; you do not require marriage paperwork to know our affection for you, nor our commitment.”
“It can be both things,” Kirk mediates, looking between them in amusement. “But in this case, I have to agree with Spock –”
“Of course you do.”
He laughs and takes hold of McCoy’s hand. “Bones. You’re still wearing your ring.”
So he is. McCoy sees it gleaming in the warp blue light: just a simple ring for a simple man, a plain gold band. He had told them to get fancier ones for themselves if they wanted, but both had settled for exactly the same. Kirk's is on his left hand, and Spock wears his on a chain.
“Didn't think to take it off,” McCoy admits. He swallows hard, overcome. It is far too late to be having a conversation like this, isn't it? He sets aside his tea, struggling to say, “Guess that means you think I'm getting worked up over nothing. Upsetting you two.”
It's his fault, no figure. But he knew that already.
“We are not upset with you,” Spock says.
“And it's not nothing, Bones. I'm mad about the divorce, too. We should have just married you the Vulcan way as soon as the Vorthas started making a fuss. Nothing should be able to take you away from us.”
Heat prickles behind McCoy’s eyes. He scrubs his face with his sleeve, muttering, “Dammit you two…”
Spock leans closer and wraps the long ends of his meditation robes around McCoy’s lap. He is solid and warm, and unbending to all, except when he folds across McCoy's back.
“I would have you in my mind, Leonard, always.”
“You don't want that,” says McCoy, but he huffs a laugh when Kirk noses under his ear, pawing like a dog. Tears dribble from his eyes. “Oh god, but I want that. Tell me y’all let me have that.”
“It is not in question.”
“That and more, Bones,” Kirk assures. “I wish I'd noticed before it came to this. It shouldn’t have taken me divorcing you to realise.”
“You petitioned a divorce to us both,” says Spock.
Kirk rolls his eyes. The stars are back: warm and gold. “That I did. But I think we all knew you were merely a pleasant bonus in our very Human marriage, Mister Spock. It's Bones I wanted.”
Spock nods as though he finds that acceptable.
“Full of yourself, aren't you?” McCoy asks, but he turns his face aside for a kiss that Kirk is only too happy to oblige.
Then he turns his face the other way, for Spock. His mouth must taste a little salty, but neither of them complain.
It is their first kiss in weeks: an apology and a promise. McCoy traces the sharp point of Spock’s ear with his fingers and then leans in for more. There are still tears on his cheeks; loving fingers wipe them away.
This could be the first kiss of their honeymoon, if Kirk is to get his way. His hands slide down under McCoy’s sleep shirt, and then lower, definitely about to get their way.