Thank you to reading, reviewing, lurking, etc! And a special thanks to all the well wishes for my health. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I have an ear infection in addition to the strep so I'm not thrilled with life right now. But whatever, I digress.

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 wouldn't have to go to college to get a job because I would be independently wealthy. Also, I don't own Snow White. I just realized I have two SW references in this chapter. lol

Just in case Kirk never decided to come back, McCoy tried to stop thinking about him as much. There was no point in getting used to someone's presence if they were just going to stop being there. The ex had taught him that one. He had gotten used to her presence and Joanna's and suddenly there was just an alimony check to fill out every month.

But Chapel's nurse uniform was an unfortunate shade of blue and the patients at the hospital all seemed to be suffering from the effects of a bar fight. Their excuses brought to mind too many stories McCoy remembered from Kirk's retellings.

"And then, this one guy, I called him Cupcake. You can guess that he didn't like that one. He told me to get bent, basically. And I was. Bent over the table. But not in a fun way. In a bleeding way. I still totally won though. Kicked his ass back to wherever the hell he came from."

Probably a lie, but McCoy actually smirked when the hospital cafeteria served cupcakes that one day.

This forgetting thing was harder than he had anticipated.

If Chapel noticed that he was throwing himself a little deeper into his work, she didn't say anything. She just gave him a few new medical journals to keep him occupied. If he were in a different position, he would have called her an enabler, but he was just glad no one was telling him how to run his own damn life.

He fucking hated laws and hated how they changed. He had been paying alimony for almost a year now and the damn government had the fucking gall to change the laws concerning how much he had to pay each month. It had been almost a year (eight months since he got fucking kicked out of his house), shouldn't he have been grandfathered in by now?

No. The world had decided to shit on Doctor Leonard H. McCoy so he was stuck paying almost double in alimony. All he could do was work more shifts and pray that someone was deaf, blind, and mentally challenged enough to want to marry his ex so that he wouldn't have to fucking pay anymore.

He flat-out refused to leave of his tiny apartment to move into a smaller, more affordable apartment that more or less guaranteed that he would be robbed. Shot and mugged, probably. In that order. So, he worked out a deal with his landlord and now was the primary dog-walker for all the tenants in the building.

Perfect. Just so damn perfect. As if he didn't have enough problems, now his dog allergies were acting up even stronger than before. So. Damn. Perfect.

It was about two weeks into his latest enterprising career as a dog walker and he was seriously starting to think about slipping that little yippy dog some arsenic-laced treats. Or maybe he could just sit on it. It would silence the damn yips even faster, he figured.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated in his pocket, scaring the hell out of him. Nothing like having your pants shake.

Moving like an arthritic man, careful not to lose the leashes wrapped around his wrists, he pulled the phone from his pocket and saw that Kirk was calling him. Normally he wouldn't have answered, but Kirk hadn't contacted him in weeks save for a few drunken calls or texts.

Kirk was at the hospital, expecting McCoy to be there because "You live there. I'm about seventy-five percent sure that you live there because it's the only place you ever mention being." Apparently, he and "the lovely Christine" were becoming fast friends and she had already informed Kirk that McCoy spent nearly all his spare time at the hospital and she was surprised he wasn't there either.

"She gave me your address. I'm coming to meet you there. Be ready."

The phone clicked in his ear, signaling that Kirk had deemed the conversation over.

He was going to have to talk to Chapel about doctor's-residence-confidentiality. It might not actually be in the hospital's guidelines, but it was just common sense, dammit.

The dogs were returned to their owners in the most understandable order: the ones that pissed McCoy off the most were returned first. Starting with that yipping mongrel.

He was in his studio apartment for approximately four minutes (he wasn't straightening up for any particular reason, it was just to pass the time) when an obnoxious buzzing filled the small room.

"Open the damn door, old man!"

McCoy groaned. He could actually hear Kirk yelling from outside. Four stories below. Through a closed window. Yeah, he was going to hear about that one later from his landlord.

He buzzed for the door to open and not even a minute later, his door flung open to reveal Kirk.

"Honey, I'm home!" he cried out into the small room, flashing McCoy what he clearly thought was his best Ricky-Ricardo smile. He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. His eyes glanced about the tiny apartment, darting around like laser-blue bullets.

He gave McCoy a look.

"Doctors who pay alimony don't get the fancy apartments," McCoy muttered, uncharacteristically embarrassed about the frugality of his place. Feeling awkwardly short beside Kirk's tall form, he abruptly stood from his chair.

Kirk perpetually seemed to think everything in the world was custom-made for him and everyone else's actions were done solely for his benefit. Without any other thought as to why McCoy might have stood up, he took a few long strides to the desk chair and slumped into the seat.

McCoy could only stare. How could someone be so comfortable somewhere they had never been before? Although, now that he thought about it, that was probably part of Kirk's magical ability to travel with such practiced ease.

"She really is such a pretty girl," Kirk announced as he stared at Joanna's picture that had never quite managed to make it back to the box after McCoy had shown it to him those months ago.

"This is Joanna. The one you bought the gift for," he said gruffly, shoving the framed photograph into Kirk's hands.

"Pretty girl," Kirk observed, holding the photograph cautiously under McCoy's wary eye. "You're gonna have to buy a big gun for when the boys come'a'courtin'." He winked as he handed back the frame, careful not to smudge his fingers against the glass.

"Don't remind me."

"Hard to believe she's related to you," Kirk finished snidely with a smirk clearly evident on his face as he cut through McCoy's brief memory.

"Piss off, frat boy," he muttered darkly, slumping onto his bed and kicking at the back of the desk chair.

Kirk flashed him a quick smile as he nudged away from the offending foot that tried to kick him. Once McCoy let his foot fall listless at the edge of his bed and away from Kirk's thigh, Kirk swung around in the seat. His back rested against the edge of the desk and his legs dangled over the back of the chair.

"I would have thought you'd have more pictures of her," he asked with something akin to surprise and admonishment in his voice. There was something soft in the tone that really caught McCoy's attention for unfathomable reasons and he snapped his head up from where it had rested against the hard mattress.

"In the box."

He gestured over to the cardboard box that had surprisingly not started to deteriorate yet in the corner of the room where the make-shift closet was located. Why the hell he felt he needed to reveal that bit of information to Kirk, he had no idea. But something about Kirk actually being in his apartment was doing all sorts of fucked up things to his system. Least of all was his sense of privacy.

"Can't have that now, can we?" Kirk spoke rhetorically, still using that damned voice. The man practically pranced over to the box like a damn cat, stealthy and swiftly across the small room.

McCoy sat up from the bed and watched as Kirk carefully opened the box, his long fingers shifted and moved and rearranged all the items in the box until his hands reemerged with several frames in his grasp. Blue eyes flickered over the pictures of the smiling girl in various outfits in front of various backgrounds. Most of the pictures were of just Joanna, but a few managed to capture a shot of him holding his little girl.

"You look nice when you smile," Kirk mused quietly, his eyes softening as he stared at one particular picture of McCoy holding Joanna as she hugged his neck.

Neither man said anything for a moment as Kirk continued to look at the picture and McCoy stared at the ceiling, at the rug, at anything else. He couldn't think of a damn thing to say.

But Kirk being Kirk, he had a way out of it as usual.

He was up on his feet in two seconds flat, the quietness of the moment gone as quickly as it arrived. His hands full of photographs, he began to place them in various spots around the room. Once a frame was settled on a flat surface, he would proceed to look at it for a moment with a cocked head as though judging whether or not the appointed location would work.

But it was Kirk and he apparently always did things right on the first try, so of course nothing had to be rearranged.

"What the hell are you doing, Kirk?" McCoy asked as Kirk placed Joanna's kindergarten picture on the window sill next to the bed.

"When you have pictures of a girl, you put them around the house," Kirk answered matter-of-factly as though he had suddenly transformed into Miss Fucking Manners.

"Your girlfriend teach you that?" McCoy asked, rolling his eyes, but staring rather intently at Joanna's five-year-old smile. Had her cheeks always been so round?

"Nah, my mom did," Kirk corrected, still darting around the room like a masculine Snow White, redecorating the studio.

McCoy froze and stared up at Kirk. He felt immediately seized with an overwhelming need to leap from the bed, jab his finger into Kirk's chest, and scream "Aha! So you admit to having a mother!"

But that thought soon propelled itself out of his mind as he realized how fucking insane it sounded.

Clearly the man had a mother. Everyone did. But this was the first bit of proof McCoy had that made him sure that Kirk was a human instead of a… Well, he didn't know what didn't have a mother. But it was comforting to know that Kirk at least had something in common with other people.

He watched as Kirk stared at the same photograph again, the one with him smiling at his little girl who smiled at the camera. The soft look was back in Kirk's eyes and one finger moved slowly down the edge of the frame, rounding against the sharp corner. It felt like a victory.

Knowing that Kirk had a mom, he meant.

There was a park next to the apartment complex and it was really more of a sad, pathetic lot of grass and really high weeds with the occasional tree. This was the sort of place the local teenagers went to make out with perky breasted girlfriends wearing bright colored tops. McCoy was pretty sure he could buy some less offensive drugs there from the wanna-be thugs, but alcohol and an overdose of medical journals were his poison of choice, thank you very much.

But Kirk had a penchant for examining everything that seemed a little left of center. He seemed a bit fascinated by the kitchen-sink realism that he was finally understanding McCoy's life to be. And for reasons McCoy clearly did not comprehend, this man-child, who seemed to get bored of everything as quickly as a damn infant, still hadn't gotten bored with him. So naturally, in Kirk's mind, the next step of the way was to explore.

"You know, Bones," Kirk started, glancing around the small, weeded park as he noticed the cigarette butts and a discarded hookah. "I'll bet you can get some damn good drugs here."

"No. Just no."

McCoy stared at him with crossed arms and possibly the most evil look on his face. Of course, it didn't faze Kirk in the slightest, he only laughed.

"You're such a mothering hen, dear," Kirk quipped, shoving McCoy lightly. He took a few steps ahead of McCoy, his arms folded behind his head as he looked up at the sky with squinted eyes.

McCoy had this sudden image of Kirk in the middle of a smoke-filled room, flashing lights, half-naked girls, the "glamour" of drugs. He was a doctor, dammit. He knew the aftereffects. He knew track marks don't look nearly as appealing under the harsh lights in the hospital when some fucking idiot overdoses and has to be saved.

If Kirk were into that goddamn business, McCoy was pretty sure he'd have to kill him. A roundabout way of protecting the kid, but the overwhelming urge to keep Kirk away from being another fucking idiot kid on a gurney was choking him.

"A few months ago, I would have waited til dark to get some," Kirk continued to say, not realizing that McCoy was nearly tomato-faced with sheer rage.

"Well, you better fucking stop, you goddamn bastard. It's fucking stupid and I sure as hell don't want to see your scrawny ass in the hospital hooked up to IVs on your fucking deathbed because you couldn't wake the hell up and realize that you could be doing something less destructive, goddamnit," McCoy yelled across the few feet that separated them.

One of his neighbors was walking by to the grocery or wherever the hell nosy women go in the evening.

Probably to play goddamn bingo or Parcheesi. Well, now she has something to tell her bitty friends, McCoy thought in the back of his mind as he watched in growing anger at Kirk's amused expression.

"Hello, ma'am!" Kirk called out to the woman with his most charming smile plastered all over his too-pretty face. One hand swiped away the fallen strands of hair that had fallen into those eyes and he gave the woman a wink.

Judging by how quickly she walked away, McCoy figured with an internal groan that he was probably going to have to treat her for a heart attack later that night. Shit.

"I'm not doing drugs anymore, Bones," Kirk reassured, turning that charm-and-wink onto McCoy. "Don't have much of a reason anymore."

That grin again. But softer. Less teeth.

Maybe he shouldn't have trusted him, but McCoy found himself nodding and the horrible knot in his stomach dissipated by degrees as the sunlight started to fade into the horizon.

Somehow, McCoy's work schedule was shifted around so that he ended up with the next night off. Chapel seemed blissfully unaware as to why this sort of occurrence might have happened when she called him to inform him not to come in the next night. Apparently Doctor Puri was taking over. For once. Where the hell had he been lately? McCoy might have argued, but Doctor Puri really needed to start pulling his weight around in the hospital.

Needless to say, Kirk was also informed about McCoy's sudden night off. In what was too short of a time after Chapel's phone call to be considered coincidental, Kirk showed up at his door, smiling like a goddamn Buddha. Or Gandhi. Or even Mother Theresa. One of those notable, historical figures that smiled all the damn time.

But there was absolutely nothing religious in that shit-eating grin of his. If McCoy were a weaker person, he might have been disturbed by the sharp, playful glint in Kirk's eyes.

"We're staying in tonight. It's what bachelors do. I have declared it so."

He didn't even say hello. He just waltzed in and started fiddling with McCoy's DVD player.

"Thank God you actually have one. This place is so fucking bare, I thought maybe your best form of entertainment was a hand down your pants," he called over his shoulder as he inserted the movie disk.

McCoy felt some heat on his ears, but it wasn't a blush, dammit!

"Shut up, kid," he snapped, plopping himself onto the couch and rubbing his hands on the rough fabric of his jeans (it wasn't an anxious habit).

Kirk only beamed and showed too many teeth as his hair fell into his face, blocking those blue eyes from McCoy's view.

A flash of a flesh-colored blur and then the eyes were revealed to him once more as the hair was brushed away.

"You look like a fucking hippie. Get a goddamn haircut," he complained from his seat on the couch as Kirk fell into it.

McCoy noticed that Kirk sat only a few inches away. Maybe two, if he had to eyeball it.

"If you were a dwarf, you'd be Grumpy," Kirk joked, sprawling out on the couch. His foot nudged McCoy's leg, which McCoy yanked away from him.

"Move the hell over," he ordered, deciding to ignore the Disney reference. He wasn't Grumpy. And if he was, well, it wasn't his fault he was perpetually surrounded by idiots.

Kirk wiggled in his seat like a four-year-old in a way that McCoy briefly thought to be endearing until he shoved that thought to the back of his mind. By the time Kirk finally stopped twitching around, he was only maybe an inch or two further than his original seat.

But the couch was pretty small and there really wasn't much room anyway, so McCoy didn't "grump" anymore.

The movie blared on the screen, the volume just loud enough to hear it because Kirk, if I get nailed from my landlord about being too loud, I'll kick your ass. But McCoy wasn't sure at all what was going on because Kirk was apparently a fidgety kid.

Every fifteen minutes, he had to walk around the room to get a drink of water or go to the bathroom (probably because he kept drinking water) or just walk around to look at a picture of Joanna that had suddenly resurfaced on the desk.

And when he finally sat down again, it was always too close to McCoy. But there was no point to argue. Because he was just going to get up in fifteen minutes anyway. Contrary to popular belief, McCoy did have a tolerance level. He could last fifteen minutes next to someone. So if Kirk really wanted to sit with his leg flush against McCoy, that was fine.

Credits rolled along the screen and the two men stared blankly, both too lazy to actually get off their asses and stop the movie.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Kirk announced. Somehow, he had stopped moving around every fifteen minutes and had finally come to rest just next to McCoy, his hair tickling McCoy's arm outstretched on the back of the couch.

"That was fast," McCoy said with a touch of surprise inflecting his tone. He looked down at the slumped man next to him.

"I've actually got somewhere to be," Kirk shrugged, his shoulders digging into the threadbare fabric of the old couch.

"Where?" McCoy asked curiously.

"China."

Well. He hadn't been expecting that one.

"What's in China?" he questioned, clearly unable to keep the look of shock off of his face. A job? A family member? Some girl that Kirk had impregnated? He had never actually mentioned any sexual escapades from China, but McCoy figured that the countries were all starting to blend together in his mind.

"Spock," Kirk shrugged as though that answered everything.

"What's a spock?"

Kirk actually laughed at that one, a full belly laugh that split his face into a giant smile.

His teeth were very white, McCoy observed offhandedly.

"He's a person," Kirk explained once the laughter had subsided a bit. "Met him through a family friend. Pike."

He added the name at the last moment, a definite pause before the name was dropped. He looked up at McCoy as though waiting for recognition or a reaction, but McCoy had nothing to offer him.

"Anyway," he continued once he realized McCoy wasn't going to say anything, "I have to visit him. Long story. Something to do with his mom."

It sounded like one of those "your mom" jokes that the damn teenagers yapped about when one of their moronic friends ended up in the hospital for whatever "ingenious" plan they had concocted.

McCoy could only roll his eyes, but he listened to himself ask Kirk about this Spock character.

"What's he like?"

Did Kirk visit him like he visited McCoy? Did they eat hamburgers together? Did he buy a birthday gift for some random little girl he didn't know but meant a hell of a lot to Spock?

…he had to stop the internal questions now.

"He's a walking contradiction," Kirk said after a moment of silence.

McCoy raised a single eyebrow, waiting for some clarification. Behind them, the movie had restarted and Kirk moved a lazy hand to press the mute button on the remote. The resounding silence was a bit denser than McCoy had realized. It was then that he noticed neither had moved at all from their positions on the couch.

Shouldn't his arm have fallen asleep by now?

Kirk explained that Spock was half-Chinese on his father's side and half-French on his mother's side. The Chinese didn't like him because he was his father's second born, which wasn't allowed. The French didn't like him because, well, he wasn't fully French.

Chinese tradition with French manners. McCoy could only imagine.

"You wouldn't like him," Kirk said thoughtfully after his description. His head was cocked at an odd angle to stare at McCoy from his place on the couch. The blonde hair brushed softly against McCoy's arm and it must have tickled because goosebumps were erupting over his skin. He pulled his arm away too quickly, catching Kirk's attention.

Kirk noticed. He eyed the goosebumps. He grinned.

"Don't miss me too much."

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