Thank you everyone who has been reading and enjoying this story so far. Seriously, you all make my day and I hope everything is going great for you guys.

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: No ownership. If I owned Star Trek, I could buy a less crappy cell phone that doesn't turn off all the time. *angeranger*

How much money Kirk had, McCoy was seriously starting to wonder. The whole time he was in China, he sent picture text messages and called drunk more than just a few times.

But honestly, none of that surprised McCoy anymore. The random picture texts of vegetables that cost sixty-nine cents per pound ("Really fucking mature, Kirk.") and the drunken phone calls were becoming second nature to McCoy. In fact, he started to feel worried when a few days passed without any inebriated conversation with Kirk.

Regardless, overseas calls and texts were fucking expensive as hell. Kirk had already taken the liberty to call McCoy's damn phone company. McCoy had no idea what Kirk had managed to do, but apparently he used a sexy telephone voice (Kirk's words, not his) to switch over his phone plan to Kirk's.

"If I text you, I expect a response. No, I demand a response! I know it's expensive and you have a pretty little daughter to take care of. Since I'm the self-centered bastard that you always say I am, I'm insisting that you text me back or answer the phone when I call. So I'm paying so you have no excuse. So ha!"

So he answered the phone. He texted back.

Because, well, it wasn't his money so why not?

Kirk had been gone for a few weeks (three weeks and four days, but McCoy was only counting because he was waiting for the phone bill to make sure that Kirk had actually managed to change his service) and there was still no definite answer as to when he'd be back in San Francisco.

He had no reason to call, but his hand still managed to press in the appropriate numbers until the ringing was loud in his ear.

Lucky you. You got a hold of James T. Kirk's number. If you're hot, leave a message!

Damn answering machine. He didn't leave a message.

He hung up the phone, rolling his eyes over the damn kid's arrogance.

"Fucking god-complex," he muttered to himself. He couldn't help the amused grin that was making its way onto his face. He settled himself back at his desk at work when his phone started vibrating.

It was Kirk. He apparently screened his calls.

"Hello?" he gruffed into the phone.

"Hey, Bones!" Kirk's voice greeted cheerfully. He sounded so very far away. "I think this is the first time you've ever called me before."

It was. But McCoy didn't think it mattered.

"When are you coming back?" he asked, leaning back in his seat, tapping his fingers lightly against the desktop in front of him.

"You miss me?" Kirk teased across the ocean. "You could have just texted me."

"Texting is for infants. You need to learn some damn social skills," McCoy barked into the phone feeling significantly flushed for reasons he couldn't (wouldn't) explain to himself.

"Like hell I'm gonna take social advice from you. I actually like getting laid, thanks," Kirk answered. He allowed the subtle burn to hit McCoy who opened his mouth to make a few choice remarks before Kirk started speaking again. "Anyway, not sure when I'm coming back. I have a few stops along the way before I get back to San Francisco." His tone changed from cavalier to curious. "Why? You need me to come back for something?"

"No," McCoy conceded. His fingers slowed their tapping and fell to rest in his lap. A silence settled between them and though it was probably fine with Kirk (that damn kid never seemed uncomfortable), he was growing increasingly unsettled.

Clearing his throat loudly, he changed the subject. "Your damn answering message is arrogant as hell."

Kirk laughed on the other end and McCoy could perfectly picture him swiping the hair from his face.

"It's confidence, Bones. You could use some," he taunted, safe at his distance thousands of miles away. "I mean, if you were really confident, you would have left a message." His voice turned sly. "I said to leave a message if you're hot."

McCoy chose not to respond to that.

"What if your mother called or something?" he prodded, shifting in his seat. He scrolled down whatever documents that were on his computer, but he couldn't focus on any of the medical jargon listed.

"If my mother calls, I've got other bigger things to occupy my mind with," Kirk answered in an uncharacteristically distant voice.

It took McCoy a while to respond because there was something hidden in the younger man's voice that made him sound much too old for twenty-three.

He just wrote it off as being yet another elephant in the room. Maybe one day they would address the herd that seemed to fill the space around them.

McCoy couldn't really remember who hung up the phone first, but he still did not know when Kirk was coming back.

The day he got a thank you card from Joanna was the day he realized just how much he was missing out on.

Apparently Joanna in all her second-grade wisdom (When did she enter the second grade? Was it really September already? He had left Georgia a year ago. A year ago? Had it really been that long?) decided to practice her cursive.

Dear Dad,

Thank you for the jewlry box and the necklace and the card. I really liked them. They were pretty. Thank Mr. Jim to.

Yours Sincerly,

Joanna

Because if that wasn't a stiff, loveless letter, he didn't know what was. Yours Sincerely? She had to have gotten that from her damn mother. And when did she stop calling him Daddy? He thought the worst part might me that he didn't even know she knew cursive. She had trouble writing her r's. Every one of them was messed up.

He wasn't there to help her.

Moving robotically, instinctually, he reached for the cell phone that had he had thrown onto the small desk near the bed.

Lucky you. You got a hold of James T. Kirk's number. If you're hot, leave a message!

McCoy didn't leave a message. Just listened for the beep and let the silence wash over him for a few seconds before hanging up, snapping his phone shut harder than necessary.

Talking to Kirk wasn't going to solve anything. He just… God, he was turning into a fucking woman.

He pondered calling the hospital to see if they needed him for work. Lord knew there was a fucking alimony check due in a week and rent on top of that. The weight of the world bore down on him with a damn price tag.

But he couldn't find the strength to call the hospital. Because knowing his luck, Chapel would be working and she would be the one to answer the phone. He hated her pitying voice and she had been using it increasingly often whenever he mentioned that Kirk had left again.

He didn't want to hear a woman's voice. Hell, he didn't want to hear anyone's voice. Woman, man, anyone.

Except Joanna's. Or Kirk's.

They shouldn't have been related at all in his mind, but somehow they were.

He hadn't had anything to drink since before Kirk left for China but fuck it all to hell and blazes. And so the night was spent with a bottle of whiskey and a medical journal about co-dependency.

McCoy was at the Laundromat when his pants started vibrating. It was a strange look from the other customers when he leapt from the bench in surprise and yelled out a curse. He really needed to remember to change it from vibrate when he was no longer working a shift at the hospital.

The text was from Kirk and he wasn't at all surprised. The only other person who ever really contacted him was Chapel or the hospital personnel, and they only called. Never texted. Only Kirk did.

Turn around.

He couldn't stop the rakish grin from appearing on his face when he turned around to see Kirk standing in the doorway like he owned the place. It was like a stupid scene in one of those damn movies that the ex used to make him watch, but it was too good to see him for McCoy to focus on anything else. (But he really didn't care because this was the first day since he got that damn thank you note when it didn't seem like the world was shitting on him.)

The smile must have caught Kirk off-guard because he raised his eyebrows in slight surprise before taking a few strides over to McCoy. Then, doing something he had never done before, he hugged McCoy briefly in greeting. It was just a slight pressure of his arms around McCoy's rib cage and McCoy found himself patting Kirk's back with just enough pressure to make it manly, but without bruising him.

The other Laundromat patrons seemed undisturbed by the display. But then again, it was San Francisco. Funnily enough, McCoy didn't care what they thought, even though they were definitely wrong with their assumptions.

"I thought you had other places to go before you came back here," McCoy said, pulling away from Kirk. The grin settled a little less heavily on his face and they looked at each other with a practiced ease.

"They weren't as exciting as I thought they'd be," Kirk answered vaguely, his eyes practically winking in the fluorescent lights of the building.

"And you think San Francisco is more exciting?" McCoy joked as the machine sounded behind him, indicating that his load had finished drying.

Kirk merely shrugged amiably, crossing his arms and leaning against the machines next to McCoy's crouched form as McCoy started tossing his clothes into his canvas bag.

"I need coffee," Kirk declared loudly after watching McCoy finish emptying the dryer.

"This is new," McCoy responded, rolling his eyes at Kirk's childish behavior. He tossed in the last t-shirt (Oh, they were going to wrinkle so badly. The ex would have yelled at him.)

"Spock's new assistant is a totally head bitch in charge," he started explaining. He leaned away from the machines to speak more animatedly. His arms waved about his head in a helter skelter fashion, something McCoy had noticed was something he did when he was genuinely amused. "She's just feisty and wonderful and won't bang me, which makes me like her even more." He gave a dramatic sigh and leaned back against the machines, his slumped posture catching the eye of a few women within the vicinity. He winked at them before turning his own feral grin onto McCoy. "I enjoy a challenge."

"And this has what to do with coffee?" McCoy questioned, ignoring the insinuating comments.

"She got me hooked!" he exclaimed, once again bounding from the stacked machines. His exuberance was rubbing off on McCoy who sat back on the bench between the rows of washers and dryers. That grin was somewhat infectious.

"We had a bit," he half-shrugged with a curved smirk on his face. "When I'd visit Spock at his work, she'd be there. She was hot, so we talked."

His voice just dripped with the unspoken words: Because it's me and I talk to anything with a decent ass.

"And it became our thing in the mornings," he continued. If McCoy didn't know any better, he'd have thought that lecherous grin turned into something almost resembling sweet. "I would steal her coffee and she would chide me while I tried to guess her name and she would turn me down."

"You didn't know her name?" McCoy remarked with one raised eyebrow. Kirk was practically bouncing on his heels as he waited for McCoy to stand up so they could exit the Laundromat.

"Only her last name. She won't tell me her first name!" he gestured greatly as their voices expanded into the open air of San Francisco.

"I like her already," McCoy smirked, clapping a hand on the younger man's shoulder as he hoisted the laundry bag higher on his arm.

Kirk mock-glared at him before his stern expression washed away to something much more gleeful and familiar. The laughter came from deep in his throat and was more subdued than his usual boisterous noise. As infectious as his grin, McCoy joined him as they strode down the sidewalk.

"You're in a good mood today," Kirk observed, squinting at McCoy under the bright sunlight.

"That a crime?" McCoy retorted, immediately falling onto his old suspicious standby.

Kirk raised his hands in a defensive stance. "No, I'm just worried about you." His innocent expression broke away into a teasing glance.

"Har har, Kirk," McCoy said with deep sarcasm, rolling his eyes.

This kid's gonna leave me dizzy the amount of times he makes me do that, McCoy thought to himself.

"C'mon," Kirk piped, picking up the pace of his steps. His long legs spread and quickened his walk and McCoy might had observed a spring in his step if he looked closely enough. "Let's drop your clothes off and get some coffee."

McCoy ranted a bit about caffeine addiction and both the short- and long-term effects it could have, but Kirk only swung an arm around his shoulder so they walked at the same quick pace.

"That's more like it, you cantankerous bastard."

The café was not too far from his apartment as Kirk apparently needed his fix as quickly as possible. McCoy was completely satisfied to get his coffee (hot, black, nothing added) and walk around, but Kirk insisted they sit down.

They couldn't just sit down inside the café because "Bones, it's nice out. This is storybook weather and I want to soak in the San Francisco September air." The real reason was because the seats outside the café allowed Kirk to be openly observed by passersby. The man was good-looking and he knew it. He was a slut for attention.

"So, you never did tell me what you do for a living," McCoy commented, breaking the silence that had fallen between the two of them as they drank their coffees in peace.

"Guess," Kirk answered with a cocky grin as he settled more comfortably into his seat. He really did have a talent for making any chair he sat in look like a throne.

"Dammit, Jim, it's all a game to you, isn't it?" McCoy said with his usual impatience towards Kirk's arrogance.

"Aw, c'mon, Bones! It'll be fun," Kirk pleaded, leaning forward in his seat. The table was impossibly small for anything more than place two coffee cups on it. Kirk barely had to move to be almost directly in front of McCoy. He positively beamed at McCoy, looking like a kid on Christmas. "What do you think I do for a living?"

McCoy thought over all the little tidbits Kirk had let slip in random conversations that would help him narrow down his guesses. Kirk traveled a lot, went to so many different countries and had a crazy (usually sex-filled) story for each one.

He had an indeterminate amount of money that he never seemed to work for, so maybe he was just a trust-fund kid. He was a fucking ball of energy, that was for sure, but he wasn't snobby, so McCoy removed that from his internal list.

Just from his conversations and the way he spoke, McCoy knew he was intelligent. Maybe as smart as him even, dropping random facts and knowledge of the most random objects.

"A model?" he questioned, the words slipping out of his mouth without his control. His eyes widened a little, shocked that he had actually said that despite having thought it for a good long time by now.

Kirk was grinning at him with that damn cocky grin and McCoy knew he was never going to hear the end of this.

Raising one perfectly groomed eyebrow deliberately slow, Kirk leaned in just a bit more closely over the table they were sharing. His breath danced briefly off McCoy's cheeks, warming him.

"Not that I don't appreciate the comment, but just because I am astonishingly, naturally, undeniably the most damn sexy person to ever live on Earth, it doesn't mean I'm a model," he denied. He spoke so honestly that McCoy wondered if he knew he was being cocky or if he just genuinely believed that.

"Being over-the-moon attractive doesn't immediately conclude that you're a model," he explained, taking a sip of his frappe chino. His eyes burned into McCoy's as he stared over the rim of his cup, looking him up and down appreciatively.

McCoy didn't blush, dammit. He just didn't. Or ever feel awkward. It wasn't not him.

But he changed the subject quickly, feeling exposed under Jim's intense gaze.

"Can't believe you drink those frappe chinys, or whatever the hell they're called. It's a girl coffee."

Kirk just shrugged with that shit-eating grin still plastered over his face. He didn't respond, just continued to stare at McCoy and finish his drink.

I absolutely love the coffee scene. It was actually the first part that I wrote for the whole story (I never write scenes in order. lol) and is probably my favorite part so far.

Sorry the chapter was pretty short, but things really start to pick up in the next chapter! Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this! Please review!