Selfish
Leonard McCoy sighed as he watched Jim Kirk leave his office. He watched the way that they black dress slacks the uniform dictated clung to all the right places and made Leonard's own pants fit a bit snug, in all the right places. But he knew he could never have this man.
Jim was beautiful, golden, while Leonard himself was a grouchy doctor with an ex-wife and a kid he never saw. But the most important fact of why Leonard would never have the man who had just left his office was the glaring fact that Jim was straight. He was pretty lose with his sexual preferences, Jim's "type" was female.
"You should have kissed him." A female voice spoke up from where she was leaning by the door. Leonard was sure that she had not been there while Jim and he had been talking. How long had he been thinking about Jim? When did she come in, and why didn't she get his attention? These were questions Leonard would never get the answers too.
"Who the hell are you?" Leonard growled. He was beyond trying to being nice.
"Audrey, but that's not important." She pushed off the wall and dropped into the chair that Jim had just left. "I'm here to talk about why you haven't kissed your captain's very pretty mouth." She leaned forwards and looked Leonard right in the eye. Most crew members were too terrified of him to do that. Audrey must have been new.
"I'm not interes..."
"Bullshit." The word was out of her mouth before Leonard could finish the word. "He's pretty interested too."
"How do you figure that?" Leonard leaned forward, challenging this nosy little girl. She couldn't have been older than Jim. 23 maybe? She had long red hair, big green eyes, and skin the color of fresh cream. Thought her cheeks looked like she had spent some time in the sun, colored a bit pink. What the hell did this baby faced girl know about life? About him and about Jim?
"I'll tell you, because you're too stupid to figure it out yourself." She paused for effect and then answered. "He kept looking at your mouth, and then licking his lips. Like he was trying to imagine how you'd taste if he wasn't such a damn coward." Leonard ran his own tongue over his own lips, as if trying to imagine how Jim would taste. "And he'd lean forward and smile real sweet at you, and then you'd say something gruff and he'd lean back, looking disappointed. He thinks you should be able to read his mind."
"Maybe he needs to be taught a lesson." Leonard crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
"I think you need to learn the same lesson." Audrey stood up. "I should explain. But you're going to think I'm crazy."
"Already do." It was pure curiosity that had kept Leonard from throwing the girl out of his office in the first place. And the need to talk about something he couldn't tell his best friend.
"I'm dead." She said, biting down on her lip. "Or as good as. You're the only one can see me. I'm going to help you get Jim."
"So you're what? My guardian angel?"
Audrey laughed. "No, just an interested third party." She stuffed he hands into her jeans. "Death is a funny thing. It does funny things to a person. I think if makes a person want to meddle in someone else's life."
"And I have the good fortune of being the person you wanted to meddle with?"
"I got plans Leonard." Audrey shrugged. "So I'll be seeing you around." Audrey didn't bother with a door, she just kinda whisked away like smoke.
Leonard ran his fingers through his hair and pulled a bottle of Tennessee whisky out of a desk drawer. As if life couldn't get any weirder, someone adds a big dollop of crazy on top.
The next day, Audrey waltzed into Leonard's office and walked to read over his shoulder. "You don't have a brain tumor." She told him.
"I'm hallucinating, and it's not some weird fucking pollen." Leonard groused.
"You are not." Audrey considered him for a moment. "Did you know that the word karaoke means empty orchestra in Japanese?"
"I did not." Leonard just kind of stares.
"See, I'm real?" Leonard is less than convinced.
Leonard had not seen Audrey in weeks, and he was beginning to think that he had imagined the entire thing. Until he was berating Jim for being a stupid mother fucker because another away mission had gone to hell in a hand basket.
She was sitting on a bio bed just in the edge of Leonard's vision smiling at him. "You should kiss him." She said, as if her entire existence were to tell Leonard this. "I hear it does a whole lot of good healing hurts."
Leonard rolled his eyes, but he didn't bother to look over at her. Seemed she was right about the only one who could see her bit. Jim never let anyone see him in med bay. That was why he was here in the middle of the night.
"You're the only one he lets see him like that." She called from corner. "Looks sweet. Like a little kid." Leonard winced at the comparison. The word Audrey should have used was "vulnerable", because Jim couldn't have won a fight with kitten at this point.
"Kiss him on the forehead." Audrey got off the bed and walked over to stand over Leonard's shoulder. "Tell him everything is gunna be fine." Audrey's voice was tight with some emotion Leonard wouldn't be able to place unless he saw her face.
"You're gunna be just fine, Jim." Leonard said, his voice gruff. "But you gotta stop trying to get yourself killed."
Audrey laughed and then bent over and kissed Jim's forehead for him. Jim didn't say anything about it, but he reached up and rubbed the spot that Audrey had kissed. "Next time you gotta kiss him." She said as she walked out of med bay.
Audrey showed up the next day. Leonard was alone in his room, drinking from a bottle of whiskey, when she dropped on the the sofa next to him. "Drinking again." She sang from some old big band song. She didn't have a smile on her face, and there was no joke in her voice.
"You got a real pretty voice." Leonard said, to drunk to care. It had a been a long day.
"Thanks." Audrey laid her head back and exhaled. "Can I ask you a favor?"
"Why would I want to do you a favor?"
"Because I asked." Audrey shrugged.
"You have to answer some questions first."
"I'm not inclined to answer."
"What's this favor then?"
"Talk." Audrey shook her head. "Just talk."
"That's an odd request."
"I'm an odd kinda person."
"I've noticed." Leonard looked at Audrey for a moment. "I also noticed you only answer questions that have nothing to do with you. So, I'm gunna make you a deal."
"What kind of deal?" Audrey opened her eyes and gave Leonard a skeptical look.
"Why the hell are you here?"
"Because I'm selfish." Audrey shrugged. "We're all selfish. That's what drives every human action."
Leonard nodded. He could believe that. "Now what do you want me to talk about?"
"Jim." Leonard made a face. "Or whatever comes to mind. I just wanna hear your voice."
In hindsight, the request was a little creepy. Was this woman someone who had loved him while she was alive, or before she was pretty much dead? Leonard didn't think of it then, but he did later.
Three days later, Audrey was sitting on his bed.
"You know you're stubborn, don't you?"
"I prefer dedicated to my cause." Audrey laughed. "You should ask Jim out to dinner."
Leonard rolled his eyes and went to shower. Audrey was gone when he came back.
It was a week. Audrey walked into Leonard's office right after Jim, who was bleeding from his nose, smiling at Leonard.
"He's a handful." She laughed. "How do you stand it? I'm glad I was always the one who got into trouble. Could never have watched Jack get his nose broken." When the sentence is finished, Audrey pales. Like she's said something she hadn't meant to. Something that brought back memories. Leonard made a note in the back of his mind to ask her, later, when Jim wasn't bleeding and wasn't around to think he was crazy.
"What happened?" Leonard asked Jim instead.
Jim laughed. "There was a misunderstanding." He shrugged.
"What did I tell you about getting into fights?"
"You sound like his mom." Audrey rolled her eyes. "It wasn't his fault anyways." Leonard suddenly felt irritated that Audrey had been watching Jim.
"Don't be a mother hen, Bones." Jim rolled his eyes.
"Bones?" Audrey looked at Leonard. "Huh. That kinda fits." She had her hands on her hips. "He had a nickname for you." She poked Bones in the side. "That's so cute!"
Leonard went on fixing Jim's nose, trying to be gentle, but Leonard had never had a very good bedside manor. Audrey wasn't helping.
"You could kiss him, you know." She said, as if she had not mentioned this every time she came around. "He wouldn't mind. He would probably close his eyes and make a little noise and then grab handfuls of your hair and kiss the ever livin'..."
Leonard swallowed hard at the image. If it had been hard not having Jim before, it was ten times worse having Audrey's images in his head. It hurt so bad, to want something you could never have. He felt his eyes water, and he blinked them away.
"Hey." Audrey sat down next to Leonard, their shoulders brushing. "Don't look like that." She was silent for a minute. Biting on her lips, watching as Bones fixed Jim's nose.
Leonard didn't even have the heart to berate Jim. He was heart broken in a way that he had never been in his life. Not even after his messy divorce, not after he learned that he would only be able to see Joanna from a view screen, and definitely not after the shit storm that had been their first mission.
Jim's hand was suddenly on his cheek. Without thinking about it, Bones leaned into his hand. "What planet you on, Bones?" He whispered.
"One far away." Bones whispered back. "You scare the shit outta me, JIm." He put his own hand over Jim's. "Do you know that?"
Jim laughed. "I scare the shit out of everybody." He then stood and took Bones' face between his hands. "But you're the only one that keeps coming back."
"I'm your doctor." Bones meant it to sound like a chore he did not particularly like, but Audrey heard the devotion. Apparently, so did Jim.
"You're my best friend." Jim bend his head to rest his forehead against Bones, careful not to bump his nose.
"He loves you so much." Audrey said, somehow not ruining the moment. Leonard heard the heartbreak in her voice. "Don't let him think you don't love him just as much." She then got up and left the room. Left Leonard with Jim all but in his lap, and his heart ripping through his rib cage.
"Jim." His voice sounded rough, like he had been crying.
"Hm?" Jim pulled back so they could look each other in the eyes, but he kept his hands on Bones' face.
"I love you." Bones pushed himself up so that he could push his lips against Jim's. "And you scare the shit out of me because you seem intent on getting yourself killed, and I don't know what would be worse. Not having you, or losing you."
"You're not going to lose me." Jim settled himself onto Bones. "And you've had me for a while." Jim laughed. "I guess I was a little scared too."
Bones laughed. Jim had never admitted to being scared before. Then he kissed Jim. And they kissed for a while. Making up for all the time they had been stupid enough not to see what was right in front of them.
That night, when Leonard went back to his room, Audrey was waiting. She was sitting on the sofa, looking at her feet. She looked up at him and gave him a sad sort of smile. Leonard thought that she would have been happy. She had gotten him to kiss Jim.
"You look awfully blue." Leonard observed.
"I have to go." Audrey bit her lip. "But I have a favor to ask of you."
"Anything." Even if Audrey was all in his head, he owed her big. She had given him Jim.
"You'll be on Earth in a day and I want you to contact this hospital." Audrey wrote down some contact information on the PADD that was laying on the coffee table. "And I want you to find a baby."
"A baby?" Out of everything Audrey could have asked, Leonard had never expected this.
She nodded. "I want you to adopt him. I want you and Jim to raise him and give him a family."
"On the Enterprise?"
"Yes. He'll grow up surrounded by stars." She smiled.
"How do I know what baby this is?"
Audrey wrote down something else. "You'll know." She got off the sofa and looked at Leonard for a moment. "You'll be a great dad to him. Jim will too." She made for the door.
"Wait." Leonard grabbed her arm. "This baby, he's your son, isn't he?"
"Yes." Audrey smiled. "I told you I was selfish. When you got Jim, I hoped that you would be willing to take my son. I couldn't care less about you, but I need someone to raise him, and it can't be me." He voice was choked. "I made a deal. I lost love, so I would help someone find love." She took his hands in hers. "I lost my family, so I gave someone else mine."
"I'll find your son." Leonard promised. She nodded and left. Leonard felt so sure that this was the last time that he was going to see her.
It had surprised Leonard that the hospital that had been written down on his PADD had existed. It had surprised him even more when they had told him that there was a baby boy up for adoption. He made an appointment to go and pick up the child.
Jim thought he was crazy, and maybe he was. But this was Audrey's son, and he had promised. It would difficult, he understood that, even though Jim thought this was some weird way to rebuild that family he had left in Georgia. And maybe it was, and maybe Audrey knew that. She seemed to know a lot.
"Leonard McCoy." He told the receptionist. She called a nurse who led him to the nursery. He knew which child she was going to pick up before the nurse had even gotten to the right row. Audrey was standing over the baby cooing at it. The boy was waving his hands in the air, as if he could see and hear her. But maybe he could.
"He here is." The nurse smiled at the baby. "Poor little man. Such a tragic start." She shook her head and handed Leonard the baby.
"He's beautiful." Leonard breathed.
"He looks like his daddy." Audrey said over his shoulder. "He looks like Jack." Leonard can tell that she's crying.
"He has your eyes." He whispered, soft enough that the nurse couldn't hear him.
"I love you." She whispered to the baby. "So much. I don't even know you and I love you."
"I'll tell him about you." Leonard offers. "So he can love you too."
"You don't know anything about me."Audrey spoke to him.
"You could tell me." Leonard went to sit down in one of the hard chairs that seemed to be a staple of hospital decor.
"I married Jack a six months ago. August 6th." She smiled. "I was pregnant and Jack wanted to do it. I wanted to get married before I was huge. It's a bit tacky to be six months pregnant and getting married. Like a shotgun wedding.
"No one knew, my parents are dead and Jack was in such a hurry. The first time he's rushed into anything since we'd met. I knew saw him for a month before he even talked to me." She laughed at the memory. The baby gurgled in Leonard's arms. "And about a month ago, Jack and I went to tell his parents. They were beyond pissed. There were some words.
"Jack stormed out yelling how his parents were no longer welcome in his life. The angriest I'd ever seen him. We were on our way home when some fucktard hit our car." Audrey paused, staring at the baby.
"Jackson was dead on arrival. I heard the paramedics say it as they put me in the back of the ambulance. I remember them trying to get me stable, but I kept telling them 'save the baby'. I would have been a terrible mother without Jack. He was the sensible one. And any parent knows that the life of a child is more important than your own." Leonard nodded, looking at the child.
"I'm in a coma down the hall." That was what she had meant by 'as good as dead'. "In a few minutes I'm going to go die, but I wanted to know by baby was taken care of. You'll sign the papers, and you'll be happy." Audrey stood up.
"Wait." Leonard stayed sitting. He didn't want to wake the baby. "How did you pick me?"
"Jack was from Georgia. I wanted him to have the accent."
"What's his name?" Leonard asked before she could leave. Audrey shrugged.
"It's up to you and Jim." She bent over her son and whispered her goodbye. "I'll love you dear I'll love you. Till China and Africa meet, and the river jumps over the mountain, and the salmon sing in the street."
And then Audrey was gone. An hour later the nurse came back with the papers. "We had to wait for the mother to pass." She shook her head. "That woman was stubborn."
Leonard nodded and signed that papers and took the baby home to Jim.
Leonard sat in his office, his son cradled in his arms, talking to himself. "His name is Auden George Kirk-McCoy. It's quite a mouthful for such a small man." He laughed. "After the poet you quoted." Leonard says. "That was the last thing you ever said to him. And Jim's father."
"Jim loves him. He wasn't sure at first, he thought I was crazy, but he's smitten now. And the best parent anyone could hope for. Though I had to teach him how to hold a baby."
Leonard shifted the baby and ran his fingers through his hair. He felt stupid doing this, but he hoped that where ever Audrey was now, she could hear him telling her about her son. And maybe she could tell Jack. Maybe they could see Auden and Jim and see how happy they all were.
"I love him. He's perfect." There was only silence. No witty remarks from the corners of his office. "Everyone loves him. The entire crew is falling over themselves to be around him."
Leonard sighed. "He'll love you too." He promised as he got out of his chair and went back to bed, feeling silly over this entire thing, but he was sure Audrey had heard him. She was too dedicated not too.
A/N: I feel that "Kiss the Girl" should somehow be fit into this, but I'm not sure where so I'll just leave it out. Writing this actually made me tear up a bit, so please tell me what you think.