I have returned, fellow Star Trek lovers! After a few weeks of no updating/new stories, I bring you this AU. (It would have been here sooner, but silly college has been getting in the way.) Hopefully, I will be updating it fairly soon. I'd love to know what you guys think of this.

Notes: This AU takes place about 20 minutes in the future in San Francisco. I'm not sure what sort of "verse" it is yet, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know! Also, I rated this T because there's nothing too bad except for McCoy and Kirk's language. I don't think it's strong enough to warrant an M rating, but if anyone has a problem with it, I will up the rating.

Disclaimer: If I owned Star Trek, I would use my money to build a transporter so that I wouldn't have to walk across campus in cold rain that soaks my jeans. Wet jeans in a math class. Not fun.

It was two in the morning and McCoy sat in his tiny chair watching random crap on the television. Its blue glow filled the studio apartment as infomercials tried to persuade him to buy their stupid product.

As if he was going to buy a damn useless product from people who just looked as though they were missing chromosomes.

The bed was messy and empty just a few feet away, but he knew the minute he tried to go to sleep, that would be when the hospital would call him in for an emergency.

So he continued to sit in the chair, watching the flashing images before him as he ate the cold noodles from their Styrofoam container. The whole thing reminded him of college, but instead of a test the next day, he had an actual surgery.

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The grinning woman with the lazy eye faded away from the screen as he hit the power button. The plastic prongs of his fork scrapped the empty bottom of his container now that he had finished eating his cold noodles. There was nothing left to delay the inevitable and he really did need some sleep before he could perform the surgery tomorrow.

Tossing the Styrofoam in the trash and falling unceremoniously into the bed, McCoy quickly started to fall asleep.

Ring!

"Dammit!"

Hospitals are never known for being particularly warm and heartfelt, but McCoy thought this one was especially cold. Which was surprising since it was San Francisco's best hospital and he thought that would have made it a bit better of a working environment, but even he would admit that he had the exact opposite of rose-colored glasses.

Still, the work there was the same as it was in Georgia except people here talked faster and their illnesses and injuries were usually due to some inebriated shit they had gotten themselves into. Maybe he should have been grateful to have been hired so quickly after leaving (getting kicked out of, more like) Georgia, but everything was just routine to him and he didn't even want to be here anyway. He just didn't have a choice.

The hospital might have been a few degrees better than the studio apartment though. He'd only been in San Francisco for a few weeks, but he knew he should finally unpack all those left over boxes because the ex had made it pretty damn clear that he wouldn't be going back to Georgia anytime soon.

But try as he might, he never could manage to get to the box that held the framed photos of a little girl with dimples. He only got as far as the boxes of medical journals and the refrigerator of whiskey.

It was a Thursday when he finally could not handle being in the apartment anymore. The lack of personal affects felt as though it might choke him and he wasn't even allowed to paint the walls anything other than their uniform-white.

He normally had Thursdays off from work, but, hell, he wasn't doing anything better and may as well make some more money. So he gathered his medical bag and checked the clock to see that he had about ten minutes before the metro near his apartment building would show up that would take him to the hospital.

It wasn't a far walk from the apartment, but he still had to rush to make it in time. Dammit, but he hated the subway. Dark and full of diseases and bodily fluids that had come from unsanitary places from strangers' bodies. And this was supposed to be a revolutionary way of traveling from place to place in the city?

Still internally grumbling about the lack of sanitation, he swung himself into one of the subway cars. He barely made it inside before the doors shut behind him. As he had rushed in, the medic bag on his shoulder had slipped. Annoyed at nothing in particular, he hoisted it further up his arm, jerking his arm around as he did so.

"Ow!"

He turned around to see a younger man standing next to him, clutching his eye. The train began to pick up some speed and the younger man, holding onto his eye and not onto the bar above him, slid over to fall against McCoy's side. For a moment, McCoy's vision was obscured by a head of tousled, dark blonde shag.

The younger man moved his hands away to grab the bar and pull himself away from McCoy. McCoy noticed that the man's eye was red and watery (and vividly, electrically blue) and he realized he must have elbowed him in the face by accident.

Maybe he should have been a bit guilty about what he had unintentionally done to the guy, but fuck it. He was having a bad day.

"You should have moved," he said gruffly.

The younger man's look of surprise shifted into one of amusement and he shrugged his shoulders as if to say "you're right." Then he turned his head away with a smirk, leaving McCoy to continue to sulk silently.

Two stops away from where McCoy needed to get off, the man beside him exited the subway. He gave a two fingered salute partnered with a wink before he stepped onto the platform.

McCoy wasn't really sure what just happened.

Why did he go to work again? People were stupid little infants who couldn't pull their heads out of their asses long enough to work their pea-sized brains around the concept of common sense.

His head nurse, Christine Chapel or something like that, was a bit of a relief. After he spoke with the patients, she had a way of persuading them not to file any reports against him and he supposed that was probably something he should be thankful to her for. She was fast, efficient, and didn't seem as much of an infant as some of the other interns seemed. After a few hours of paperwork and the occasional check-up, she managed to convince him to take advantage of his day off.

"Go get dinner or something," she gently suggested as she pushed him out the door. For such a petite woman, she was fiercely strong. "There's always tomorrow to do the work that you were assigned to do, well, tomorrow."

McCoy walked down the cement sidewalk next to the hospital, trying to decide what the hell he wanted to eat that night, when he heard some pounding behind him.

"Hey! Hey, Bones!"

San Francisco wasn't as bad as New York or other cities in regards to crazy people roaming the streets, but McCoy still had enough sense not to turn around. He kept walking forward, the scowl more pronounced on his face as he tugged his medic's bag tighter to his body.

But his new fan club didn't seem to be deterred by the obvious leave-me-the-fuck alone body language and ran up beside him, jogging to keep up with McCoy's quick pace.

"Hey, remember me?"

There was something in his voice that sounded so much like a goddamn puppy that McCoy actually did turn to face the other man.

Oh.

"It's you," he stated with all the eloquence of a jackhammer.

"Yeah, it's me," the man grinned, showing too many teeth. And they were all shiny and white in a way that McCoy was pretty sure wasn't natural. "I'll bet you thought you'd never see me again."

McCoy mumbled something in agreement, beginning to walk again. Much to his annoyance, the man continued to walk beside him.

"Jim Kirk," he offered. When McCoy did not respond, he kept at his cheerful pace. "I'm new in town and don't know where to get a good hamburger."

His voice dropped with hints, persuading McCoy to show him where to go.

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?" McCoy asked out of the side of his mouth, turning the corner to head near the food streets near the hospital.

"It's the least you could do after assaulting my eye," Kirk said amiably. He flashed another smile and McCoy sighed.

If nothing else, he would get this man-child out of his hair.

Three days later and they were eating dinner together for the third time.

How the hell that happened, McCoy had no idea. James T. Kirk had been a part of his life for three days now and McCoy had already figured that if anyone could do the impossible, it would be him.

He sat across the small table, staring at his new acquaintance. He wasn't young enough to be a frat boy, but he was definitely old enough to not be so damn chipper about life. Wasn't that supposed to be knocked out of you by age twenty-two?

But this kid was maybe only a few years older than twenty-two and was lucky enough to have so far avoided that particular letdown. From McCoy's view, Kirk was tall, average build, nothing too out of the ordinary except maybe a bit more handsome than most. (Not that he noticed that. It was something that all the women that seemed to follow him were fond of commenting on.)

His hair had an annoying way of falling into his face and Kirk would sloppily rake a hand over the offending strands to move them aside before they just fell back into place on his forehead. Blue eyes stared out from an open face that was more than just a bit pock-marked. McCoy assumed the tiny scars were from fights and the usual recklessness that came from little boys who thought they were invincible.

"Hmm, meat," Kirk said, his eyes shut in ecstasy as the grease from the burger started to seep out of the corners of his mouth. A quick tongue darted out to the side to catch the offending drip and he smacked his lips happily.

"Didn't your momma teach you manners?" McCoy asked disgustingly, staring at the greasy lips.

"I love how southern you are, Bones," Kirk answered, dodging the question with ease.

"Don't call me that," McCoy repeated for the god-only-knows time.

"Sorry, Bones," Kirk shrugged, talking around a mouthful of burger in a way that made McCoy want to sanitize the whole room, "but Leonard is too much of a pansy-ass name." He crossed his eyes in exaggerated incredulity when he sounded out Leonard.

McCoy couldn't argue with that one. He never really did like his name.

"But Bones?" he asked, stressing the damn nickname in a way that should have made Kirk coil back in fear. Anyone else would have. But Kirk, he seemed to be cut of a different cloth.

"You had a boney elbow. It fucking hurt, Bones," he reminded him with a glint of humor in those damn blue eyes of his. "And you're a doctor. Clearly, I nailed that one."

The smirk just begged to be smacked off of him in the most satisfying way, but McCoy refused to give into the bait.

"You always get a burger," McCoy sidestepped, using the past three dinners as evidence to support his rather definitive claim.

"I like meat."

And when he bit down, it was with a bit more viciousness than necessary. There was that glint again.

For as much as Kirk talked, nothing he ever said was very substantial. It took McCoy a few minutes to realize that he knew basically nothing about the kid. Didn't know where he came from, where he was going, why he traveled, what his job was.

Shit. He knew his name and that he had a god-complex. Why the hell had he talked for him for so long? Why hadn't he just avoided him on that second day when Kirk found him at the hospital to ask him where he could find a good turkey burger?

Shit. Again.

But even though the only things Kirk ever talked about were stories of the countries he'd visited, or the girls he'd "gotten to know," or just random facts that he must have pulled out of his ass, McCoy found the sudden absence of his voice to be very apparent.

Kirk hadn't waited for him at the hospital for a few days. McCoy could only assume that Kirk had left to gallivant off to some other city or country. Apparently, it was something Kirk was oft to do. San Francisco had only been one stop on his seemingly endless and aimless journey.

The studio apartment was significantly more silent that night than it had been in a while.

Did you laugh? Cry? Become emotionally compromised? Please review and let me know what you think! I hope you have enjoyed it so far!