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Leonard McCoy was not like Jim. He could not and would not go home with women he had met only hours before, and it was nothing against his friend, he valued the captain immeasurably, but it was just not his style. On Kirk’s last attempt at ‘wing manning,’ McCoy had to flat out refuse him, and only then had his friend finally understood. McCoy was too old for that sort of thing now, and he almost felt like he had been too old even back then, in their academy days.
Jocelyn had been difficult enough, a relationship McCoy had thought he could handle, someone he accepted because he thought he could learn to love her. The enterprise had been a lucky break, something to get him away from an act he was failing to keep up, and in the end, when she had sent him the divorce papers, he had signed them with a sigh of relief. Jocelyn held an animosity for him that he could not hold for her in turn, after their separation, and Jim, who had bought enough alcohol to send McCoy into a coma, was wildly confused to find the Doctor was neither crying nor jumping for joy at his marriage’s end.
“I never would have thought you had been married at all Bones. You are stronger than I would have been.”
Jim had meant it as a form of praise, something to help his friend feel better, and yet McCoy could not accept it without feeling a slight sense of guilt. He had never been disloyal, and his separation from Jocelyn had not come from a place of ‘ wanting someone else ,’ it was just-
McCoy struggled to accept the fact that he had never loved her, and that though he had tried, he had never seemed to love anyone that he had met, at least, not romantically.
He had tried the hookup, he had tried the marriage, and he had tried every form of ‘ get to know ,’ that existed in his lifetime, and yet, the only tug in his chest appeared where he was not looking for it at all .
Spock was a presence that grated on his nerves, someone McCoy was afraid he would struggle to work with, and in the end, he was someone Leonard became afraid to live without. He was not a Jocelyn , or a ‘ pretty face at the bar, ’ he was just Spock, someone that realistically, Bones, if he had turned down Jim’s invitation to join the enterprise, never would have met. Spock was an accident of a body in his life, someone literally alien to him, and McCoy had found that, even with their constant banter, he was drawn to him.
This had been a startling revelation, something McCoy had choked down with the burn of his brandy on nights that he felt his prayers had not been enough. He had been raised southern, raised kneeling at the altar, and now he wanted nothing more than to kneel before a man that, for one reason or another, knew of McCoy’s sin and felt no fear of damnation from it.
Space was different from Georgia, different in its law and custom, and McCoy knew that if he went home the way he was now, his mother would accuse him of being infected, and his father would send him back to the church to be ‘ saved. ’
But-
He had never felt more human than he did when he was pressed against Spock, never more afraid, and certainly never more loved. He still prayed, but it was just a simple begging, a pleading, that wherever he went, Spock would be allowed to go too.
Jim had realized before even McCoy had, had pointed out that he was “ a little sweet on the ‘hobgoblin ,’” as McCoy so loved to refer to his now Vulcan partner, and the doctor had shot him down with a slew of curses and an offer to ‘ have his head medically checked .’
The captain had been right of course, and McCoy, after beginning his relationship with Spock, had to buy his friend a few drinks in sober apology for his previously icy denial.
He had been raised to deny, and deny, and deny , and so when the option was placed before him, who could blame the doctor for answering in the only way he knew how ? Even if the option was a six-foot-tall alien, with logic on his lips, and sin in his stupidly good kisses?
Jim did, blamed McCoy to hell and back when he had said things that he shouldn't have to the Vulcan, when he had said things that bordered on cruelty to try and save his own face.
“Does it make you feel ‘holy’ Bones? Do you feel righteous when you talk to my first officer like that?”
And McCoy had found himself turning away, with shame in his grimace, and guilt hot in his veins.
He left to apologize to Spock that night, had sat against the Vulcan’s bedroom wall and begged God to forgive him. Spock’s lips were warm, and his hands cold when he pulled McCoy out of his sorry kneel to call him “illogical and irrational” in his closeted attempt to hide his “ obvious” feeling.
“There are no words on Vulcans in your book Doctor.” The man had said, and McCoy had held onto him, wrapped his arms around him and sobbed, and Spock had stood there patient through it all.
“Does it make you feel ‘holy’ Bones?” And it was Jim’s words McCoy heard in his nightmares, the doctor’s own fear he turned away from in his dreams.
Spock had not damned him anymore than he had already damned himself, and he would walk through space or hell in his own southern spite.
Spock was his, aggravation and logic and all, and McCoy had met things even the most powerful of deity’s would fear during his time on the enterprise. Even if, by chance, loving Spock would lead to a fate far worse after death, McCoy would greet it with open arms. Damnation be damned, he would love Spock. It would be illogical for him not to.