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Leo thought about the first time he had met Jaimie as he fingered the box in his pocket. He had rather made a fool of himself, nearly vomiting all over her shoes on the damn shuttle. She had warily introduced herself after apparently deciding that he was worth being friends with, and unhesitatingly latched herself onto him.
She was his best friend in the entire galaxy, and he knew her better than anyone else did. He knew she secretly loved love songs, though she outwardly expressed that they were cheesy. He knew that she had vowed that if she ever got married, it wouldn’t be in a white dress (even if it weren’t considered highly disrespectful to not marry in Starfleet dress uniform), and she was the most stubborn person that he had ever met. Even if someone thought she was wrong, she knew that she was right because Jaimie Tiberius Kirk was always right.
He remembered the first time that they had actually gone on a date, when Leo had finally built up the courage to ask her to dinner in their third year at the Academy. She had admitted that she normally wouldn’t have fallen for anyone like the doctor, but their three years of friendship had completely altered her perspective on dating and relationships in general. She had had her fair share of bed partners in her near 25 years, with a wide variety in the past three years, but she was done with flings, she had declared one night when they got drunk together.
“No mor’ sleeping wi’h eve’ything,” she had hiccuped. “Gotta wai’ for someon’ nice.”
Leo had laughed at her admission initially, but he thought back to their first meeting again. He had never expected to fall in love with the tall blonde that was so far out of his league that it wasn’t funny, but their three years of friendship had changed both of their perspectives on love and relationships in general.
They didn’t make sense as a couple, he thought. They were polar opposites, the grumpy dark-haired doctor and the shining blond command cadet, and Leo wasn’t even sure how they had become friends. They had little in common, but somehow, they were closer than any other pair of friends on campus.
“Our relationship is so fucked up,” Leo had pointed out one night, not long after the Enterprise had embarked on her first official mission. “I mean, who would have ever expected us to be friends, let alone fall in love?”
Jaimie had laughed and reached over to kiss him. “Dunno, Bones. I don’t know about you, but I’m damn glad they were wrong, cause I fucking love having you by my side.”
Leo had grinned and kissed her back. That was why he loved her so much, he remembered. She never failed to defy the odds, no matter how high they were. That’s what made her the love of his life.
Jaimie didn’t think she was beautiful. She thought that others thought that, and she had often used that to her advantage to earn more than her fair share of bed partners, but she had never believed it. She was the most beautiful girl on campus, human or otherwise, Leo thought, but blonde and blue-eyed wasn’t considered the typical kind of beauty anymore. Nowadays, people considered darker hair and skin to be more attractive, and Jaimie knew that. She dressed down unless she was in uniform, and more often than not, Leo would come to her room to find her with her long hair piled in a knot on her head (how she ever managed to get it up there or how it was comfortable at all, Leo didn’t know), a baggy sweater (usually his) hanging off of her broad shoulders and narrow waist, thick black glasses on her nose, and sweatpants that only made it halfway down her calves complemented by socks that matched in no sense of the word. She would complain when he invited her out, insisting that she didn’t want to put her civvies on, and flat out refused to go to any “mainstream” movie with him, instead opting to frequent the run down, independent movie theaters that littered San Francisco. And if the film had a cliche happy ending, she complained for weeks, insisting that real life never works out like that (“Look at me, Bones! My dad died the day I was born, how does that set my life up for my happy ending? It doesn’t, no one gets that life!”)
There were plenty of sides to her, of course. It wasn’t uncommon for her to sing to herself as she walked around campus or the city, and sometimes she would take her guitar down to the local bars and perform for fun. Her voice was incredible, so Leo was never surprised when passerby stopped or slowed to listen to her words as she sang. The best side of Jaimie, he thought, was the side that didn’t care what people thought about her, the side that rarely came out due to all of her insecurities. It was uncommon, but not unheard of, and he loved her for it, and it never came as a surprise to him when she would flip her hair and then her middle finger up at or tear apart someone who sneered at her or said something about her only being admitted to Starfleet because of who her father was.
They really were the odd couple on campus, the doctor and the command cadet. No one had ever expected them to get together, and they didn’t seem like they would have worked as a couple. Jaimie was reckless and brave and selfless, willing to do anything to protect the friends and later family she had, both on campus and the Enterprise, while Leo was precise and grouchy, as a doctor should be. Anyone who knew their reputations never would have expected them to make a couple, but that was why they worked so well together. That was why they loved each other so much, because together, they could overcome any obstacle, and both of them had faced enough that they couldn’t too many times before to be able to cope with another.
It really did seem impossible, Leo thought, that he had found someone like Jaimie. He never would have expected to be the guy to fall for the tall blonde that he met in college, and he never expected her to fall in love with him. But now that he had her, he knew he never wanted to let her go, and he knew she felt the same.
That’s what made her his. And that’s what made him hers.