AN: I know I should be updating Favourites...but I've been working on some original stories which will hopefully eventually make it onto Fictionpress.

In the mean time, I will publish all the little Star Trek stories I've got lying around.

Jim Kirk eats a lot of apples. He eats them in class, he eats them in exams. After he becomes Captain of the Enterprise, he not only eats them in the Mess Hall, but also in his quarters, in the Gym and in the Captain's Chair.

But why? Why is the youngest Starfleet Captain in history so partial to this particular, very common, Terran fruit? And why does he so feel the need to eat them wherever he goes? And at such peculiar times?

It all begins at the Academy, in first year. Jim Kirk, being Jim Kirk, has gotten himself beaten up. Again. In a bar fight, over a girl.

Leonard McCoy, being Leonard McCoy, is complaining, and patching up his roommate.

'Damn it, Jim! I'd bet even apples couldn't keep the doctor away from you!'

He rams a hypo, with more force than necessary, into his friend's neck. Jim swears. Loudly.

'Don't be such an infant!'

There is nothing infantile about Kirk's vocabulary.

But unknown to Bones, he has unwittingly begun a Jim Kirk tradition, his infamous habit of consuming apples wherever he may go.

So throughout the years, Kirk eats his apples. It doesn't keep the doctor away. When you're Jim Kirk, nothing does. But McCoy remains oblivious to the source of the apple addiction. He doesn't find out until after an away mission goes wrong. Well, more wrong than usual anyway. He can't remember the last time an away mission went right.

'Damn it Jim! Can you not require medical attention for just one day?'

Slightly high on various drugs, Kirk replies.

'Well, I've been eating my apples, Bones, but it doesn't seem to be working.'

'Damn it, Jim! Apples don't keep the doctor away!'

Spock, head tilted slightly and eyebrow raised, interjects.

'Doctor, apples are a highly nutritious and healthy food. They-'

'Damn it, you green-blooded hobgoblin! It's an old Earth saying! An apple a day keeps the doctor away, unless you're James Tiberius Kirk!'

'Doctor, I do not believe that an old Terran colloquialism would refer specifically to the Captain.'

'Can't you take a joke, hobgoblin?'

Spock's eyebrow rises higher, practically disappearing past his hairline.

Kirk begins laughing hysterically.

McCoy seizes a hypo and rolls his eyes, before ramming the hypo, none too gently, into Kirk's neck.

Kirk swears, then promptly collapses onto the biobed.

Spock's eyebrow has long since been declared lost in action.

'Pardon me, Doctor, but I cannot comprehend this bizarre human behaviour, nor can I comprehend the previous colloquialism. '

McCoy rolls his eyes again.

'Pardon me, green-blooded hobgoblin, but I don't understand a damn word that's coming out of your mouth!'

Jim Kirk decides now is a good time to prevent a fight, by way of having an allergic reaction.

'Damn it, Jim! Nurse Chapel, I need 50 ccs of Cortizone!'