Birthdays

"Jim?" Selece called, pressing the door's bell for the fourth time. The buzzing sound echoed along the corridor but nobody answered the door. "Jim Kirk, I know you're in there!" She buzzed again and waited, supporting the small box that she was carrying against her hip. With a sigh, Selece decided to forget her manners and entered an override code in the panel beside the door. The fact that she was a trainee in Security had its advantages, like to be capable to break in every dorm in the Academy. After all, you can't trust cadets this much, they are always getting themselves in a trouble of some kind that request security to do something drastic like what she was doing right now.

The door opened with a hiss, giving her access to a darkened room. There was only a bedside lamp on and it was this light that was pouring over a familiar form shrunk in a corner with a half empty bottle of whiskey beside the person what made Selece let out a long breath.

"Jim." She whispered, closing the door behind her and going to Kirk, lowering herself in front of him and putting the box next to her feet. "Jimmy?" Selece called his name slowly and baby blue eyes tinged with red raised to look at her. There was also a blush on his nose and cheeks and the girl put her hand on his forehead to check for a fever, coming back with nothing. Apparently the flush was because the alcohol and the trail of dried tears on his face.

"What are you doing here?" Jim hiccuped.

"Can't a friend come for a visit anymore?" She smiled to him but his only answer to that was to catch the bottle of whiskey and take a long gulp from it.

"Bones sent you, didn't he?" He glared and took another gulp. "Like a damn babysitter. Poor little Jimmy, can't let him alone to drown his sorrows." Selece didn't comment about this. Kirk was right, McCoy called her telling he was worried about Jim's state of mind because of the day and that he couldn't stay with him because he was in the night shift in the Starfleet's hospital. So she decided to do the doctor's job and be the mother hen for that night in McCoy's place.

"What if he did?" His glared intensified and Jim moved his arm like he was about to chuck the bottle on her direction but changed his mind in the middle of it.

"I don't need anyone's pity! I'm a big boy who can take care of himself!" Jim screamed but Selece didn't move a muscle with his suddenly reaction. Alcohol usually made the blond irrational to the point where he would do something stupid like start a fight or sleep with a stranger. In this case, in this particularly day, he would yell at his best friends. But that was okay, because Selece could take Jim's angry or violent side while McCoy took care of his physiologic side.

"Since when I do pity?" The Chizetan raised an eyebrow and sat with her legs crossed in front of Kirk. Blue eyes glared at her and another gulp of whiskey followed that look. "But apparently you do." She said while looking to the almost empty bottle.

"Well, I have the right to because I'm screwed like that and my life is a shit." He snorted and looked away from her when the brunette only stared at him with a mysterious glint in her eyes.

"So... Because your life is a shit you think that you can forget everything and drink until oblivion. How poetic, or pathetic."

"Well, not everybody can be perfect like you." Jim said with disdain. In his bad days he usually used that tirade when he wanted do insult her and push Selece away. It always seemed to him that because she was a perfect being made by science, everything in her life was perfect as well.

"Genetically speaking, yes. Now about the rest... I don't know." She shrugged and Jim blinked at her, trying to disperse the fuzzy feeling that the drink was giving to his brain.

"What are you talking about?" The blond frowned when was Selece's turn to look away from him.

"I was made to be a warrior, and only this. Technically I shouldn't be here, be your friend, but like my creator says: I am a defective project."

"What?" He blinked again and Selece saw that the blue eyes seemed a little less clouded and more sober.

"We're made in labs, with chosen DNA and selected mothers. We're trained since we were babies and we can't attach ourselves to no one. But my creator broke those rules when he attached himself to me and taught me things like emotion, family and friendship. Why do you think I'm here on Earth training to be a Starfleet officer?"

"Don't know? Because you would be useful?"

"Why? If it's because my strength, a Temissan is stronger than me. If it's about intelligence, a Vulcan is better than me and about resistance, a Cartasian is a match to me."

"But you are all these things in one person."

"True, but I shouldn't feel and because of that my creator and I were banned from Chizeta because I wasn't useful for them."

"Bullshit! You're the best warrior that I ever seen." Selece smiled with the compliment.

"But I'm not good enough for my own people." Jim thought that this story had something more, but decided to not comment about this.

"So what? Are you going to do self pity now?"

"No. And that's what I'm trying to say to you. I'm not wanted by a whole planet, but it doesn't mean that I'll let myself be shaken by this. You, otherwise, is wanted..."

"By whom? My absent mother who doesn't give a shit for the son who reminds her too much of her beloved dead husband? By a brother who ran away from home and didn't care for what I feel? By my ex-girlfriends who only wanted me for my good look? Or by a step-father who took a huge pleasure to fuck my life?" Every word coming from his mouth was followed by rage and resentment, making company to the scowl on his pretty face.

"You're wanted by me." She said in a whisper and Kirk blinked for the third time, caught by surprise with this revelation.

"What? I thought you didn't fuck friends. Especially this friend." The girl rolled her eyes and had to stop herself to not slap him on the head.

"Everything to you is about sex? Don't answer that." Jim only gave her a boyish smile. "I want you as my best friend, as a little brother..."

"I'm older than you."

"So? Your mental age is younger than mine. So, you're my little brother."

"Right, until you get tired and leave like the others."

"I won't leave."

"What makes you so sure of this?"

"Because I'm here, aren't I? Listening to you complaining about your life and making sure that you'll survive this day without irreparable damage."

"I'm already damaged."

"Maybe, but I like you even with all your faults." Jim gave her a pained smile and took another swing from the bottle.

"Well, love is blind." He said bitterly.

"It's seems so." She raised her hand and put it on Jim's head, caressing his head like a mother comforting a child. Kirk promptly leaned into the touch and his grip on the bottle relaxed what make Selece use this moment to take the whiskey away from him. "Ah, I brought something for you." She put the bottle aside and grabbed the box instead, opening it and taking out a small cake. With a flouring gesture she lighted the only candle on it and extended the cake to Jim's direction. "Happy Birthday sweetie."

Baby blue eyes blinked repeatedly to ride itself of the tears and he laughed a little when the girl started to sing a very out of tune birthday song. One minute later she finished her awful singing and looked at Jim with expectation in her gray eyes.

"So? Make a wish." Kirk arched both his eyebrows and stared at the beautiful girl in front of him. Stared at the girl that chose to spend her night with a friend who was drowning his sorrows instead of be around the campus celebrating the anniversary of the day that George Kirk became a hero to Earth. The girl who when he blew out the candle, he wished to never, ever leave his side. "That's my baby." She joked and the smile that blossomed on Kirk's face was so radiant that Selece had to blink to not be blinded by it.

"Your baby? Again, I thought that you hadn't this kind of desire for me." He smirked.

"Don't be such a spoil sport. You know what I meant by 'baby'."

"I know." He whispered, giving her a gentle smile. "And I'm honored." Again he stared her in silence for several minutes, like he was searching for something.

"What?"

"Just thinking... Your people are wrong."

"Why?"

"You are perfect. At least for me, you are perfect." Selece smiled beatifically to him.

"Well... If James Tiberius Kirk is giving me praises, who I am to say no to that?" She joked after a minute.

"Damn right. Enjoy while you can."

"And you..." She trusted the cake to him. "Enjoy your cake." And Jim only thought while he tasted a piece of the chocolate cake was that was the best birthday he ever had.