Ship Olympics : Event 2 Team Blonde Ambition
Title: Honestly, It Happened Exactly Like That
Creator(s): fringedweller
Universe: AOS
Word Count: 6925
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Janice Rand and Jim Kirk had sex, got married and fell in love. Yes, in that order.
Disclaimer: Team Blonde Ambition do not own anything written about in this fic, although we'd dearly love to. Please don't sue us, all we have is our shiny team comm.
Janice Rand and Jim Kirk had sex, got married and fell in love.
Yes, in that order.
No, they’re not joking.
(She really wishes they were; he still gets a kick out of it, even after all this time.)
They met for the first time in one of those flavour-of-the-month clubs in San Francisco, the sort that get packed out every night for a week because of some great buzz on the social network feeds, and then becomes just another place to go.
She was drunk and he was drunker, but it only took her twenty minutes from their first collision on the dance floor to usher him out of the club’s back door and get him pinned against the wall. The heavy beat of the music wound its way out to the dark alley, and Janice could feel it throbbing in her veins as she ran her hands appreciatively over his body. It was night and the security lighting was pathetically low, but it was enough to show those beautiful eyes that had beckoned to her back inside.
“So pretty,” she breathed, cupping his face in her small hand and pulling down so their foreheads could meet. She was wearing her three inch heeled ‘fuck me now’ shoes, but he was still taller.
“Supposed to be my line,” he slurred, his hands skimming over her breasts with a surprising gentleness.
“I’m not one for lines,” she laughed, reaching up to kiss him. “In fact,” she said, pulling away a little to nibble at his plump lower lip, “I’m not really one for talking.” She nipped his lip hard enough for him to draw in his breath suddenly. “At all,” she explained.
“Message received and understood,” he said, moving suddenly and with unexpected purpose. He switched their positions and hauled Janice up into the air so that she was the one with her back pressed to the wall. She spread her legs happily and let him settle between them, his hardness already clear by the happy way he was grinding against her.
She’d give him this; obvious alcohol consumption did not stop him from kissing like a pro. A half-formed thought crossed her brain that maybe he was, and that he had confused her interest for a commission, but then he did something amazing with his tongue that made her decide that even if he was a prostitute, she’d happily pay. Skills like that need to be rewarded.
She gave as good as she got, and discovered that if she raked her nails through his hair his whole body would shiver and he’d keen loudly. Sucking on his earlobe made him thrust against her. A combination of the two manoeuvres made both of them incredibly happy.
He had one large hand pressed against the wall to help him balance, but the one had been busy stroking her hair, tracing the outline of her ear, cupping a breast. Now that free hand tugged at her dress where it pooled around her thighs, and disappeared underneath it. She felt his fingers tug at the elastic of her underwear, pulling it aside far enough to let him slide a finger gently inside her.
“This ok?” he breathed into her ear, as he repositioned his hand to let his thumb rest on her clit as another finger joined the first. Janice was no virgin, but her yeoman training was hellish and responsible for a dry spell that she had been determined to break tonight. It had been such a long time for her that he had almost got her there with his sinfully delicious kisses.
But not quite.
“Harder,” she commanded, jerking her hips to get a little friction going. “Come on, move.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said directly into her ear, the buzz of his lips and the warmth of his breath doing wonderful things to the side of her neck.
He followed her orders well, setting up a rhythm between his hand and his mouth as he played with her clit and sucked what she was sure would be huge bruises into her neck. She could feel her orgasm build in every muscle in her body as she thrust desperately against his hand. The pleasure burst in her body, radiating from her core and travelling along every nerve simultaneously. She clutched tightly to his broad shoulders as she rode out the aftershocks and he waited patiently as she took several deep gulps of air to centre herself.
When she had collected herself, she immediately unwound one of her arms from around his neck and reached down to palm the front of his pants. She was of the opinion that one good turn deserved another, and he was in for one hell of a good turn from her. He wrapped one of his hands gently around her wrist and tugged it away as she discovered a large wet patch on the front of his jeans.
“No need,” he told her, his speech slightly more slurred than it had been before.
Janice blinked. That had never happened to her before.
“You were just too much,” he said softly, dropping her wrist and returning his hand to her hair. “Too much woman.”
He grinned then, a devilish look in those amazing eyes that had made her choose him in the first place.
“I’d be up for a rematch,” he told her, swaying slightly under the combined weight of Janice and whatever he had drunk that night. “Give me ten minutes.”
“In ten minutes you’ll be flat on your back,” Janice said as she peered through the gloom to check out the size of his pupils. Who knows what else he had done before meeting her that night.
He leered at her and she sighed, and motioned for him to put her down.
“Not like that, asshole,” she said kindly as she adjusted her underwear. “Come on, I’ll find you a cab.”
“Tomorrow?” he asked hopefully as she decanted him into the back of a hovercab and gave the driver the address of the Fleet dorms.
“Sure,” she lied. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She paid the driver in advance - the very least she could do - and headed back to the club to find her friends. He was so drunk that he wouldn’t be able to remember her name the next morning and she hadn’t even bothered to ask his. Pretty cadets were a dime a dozen, and pretty soon she’d be shipping out to start her shipboard training cycle.
What were the chances that she’d see ever him again, anyway?
She recognised him as soon as she stepped through the door to his hastily acquired office in Starfleet Command. He was still bruised from his adventures on the Narada and he looked as if he hadn’t got a full night’s sleep in a week, which was probably the case.
But his eyes.
There was no mistaking those eyes.
She’s heard the news, of course - it had been all over civilian and Fleet feeds - but until this second she hadn’t put ‘Jim Kirk - saviour of Earth” and “hot blond with blue eyes and a talented tongue” together. She prayed that he really had been too drunk to remember her name.
She cleared her throat nervously, and stood to attention.
“Yeoman Rand reporting for duty, sir,” she said in what she hoped was a clear and steady voice.
He looked up from the stack of PADDS on the desk, a look of slight confusion marring his handsome (although multi-coloured) face.
“Admiral Pike sent me, sir,” she told him. “He thought you might need some administrative assistance. He sent you an email.”
Kirk peered at his desk, shifted stacks of PADDs around, moved a tray containing a half eaten meal and lifted his jacket from where it was draped over his data screen.
“I haven’t exactly had the time to check that,” he muttered, stabbing at the screen. He frowned as he looked at his inbox.
“There’s nothing here about a yeoman,” he said, peering at the screen.
Janice cleared her throat gently.
“I think you may have more luck if you opened the inbox for Captain Kirk, rather than Cadet Kirk, sir.”
He stared blankly at her for a moment, and then swore under his breath as he poked the screen again. His new inbox popped up on the screen, and he groaned as he saw that he had over two hundred new messages.
Janice studied him critically. He was clearly running off caffeine and determination, which was no good. Tired captains were cranky captains, and cranky captains just stopped her from doing her job.
“Sir, if I may make a suggestion?”
He looked back to her from the screen.
“Go ahead, yeoman,” he sighed, slouching back into his chair.
“You’ve clearly been working for a very long time without a proper rest period. Why don’t you go and take a nap and get something to eat while I start working my way through your paperwork? We can meet again when you’re refreshed.”
He looked at her, amusement clearly visible in his eyes.
“Do you suggest naps to all your captains, Rand?” he asked, stretching his arms above his head and yawning. His black undershirt rode up slightly, revealing a toned stomach that would have been incredibly pleasant if not for the bruising evident there.
“Just those that are on the verge of falling asleep at their desks, sir,” she said as kindly as she could. “I’m trained to deal with your administrative load, sir, and this is too much for one person to do alone.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said slowly, staring at her face.
Janice swallowed. Had he recognised her?
He shook his head, as if to clear it.
“You’re right. I must be tired. I thought for a moment...no, it’s just fatigue. Alright yeoman, the stack of PADDs is yours to deal with. If you get bored, I think you could build a small fort out of them.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that, sir,” she said firmly, trying not to smile at his small attempt at humour. Smiling would mean thinking of him as something other than a superior officer, and that could be...dangerous. Distracting, certainly.
Yawning, he stumbled out of the door and she took a good look around the small office he had been assigned. It was one of the ones Command used for guest lecturers who wouldn’t be hanging around for a long time - utterly Spartan in design, with a less than enticing view of the laundry building from the small, badly placed window. There was a synthesiser unit (one of the old ones, that couldn’t handle anything more complicated than coffee), one desk, one chair and a framed holo of the President of the Federation smiling graciously from behind her (larger) desk.
Not the sort of office that a captain of the fleet deserved, let alone the captain of the flagship, who had, not a week ago, saved what remains of the Vulcan race, prevented Earth from annihilation, rid the universe of the genocidal Romulan that had been the cause of all the trouble to begin with and rescued Admiral Pike from the enemy ship practically singlehandedly.
Janice had worked for Pike ever since graduating, and she respected him immensely. Anybody that saved his life deserved more respect than this closet of a room. She frowned. This may only be a temporary assignment while Admiral Pike recuperated at Starfleet Medical, but she was damned if she was going to let some idiot in Administration show any captain of hers such disrespect.
She cleared the desk of the collection of PADDs and used the Admiral’s access codes to access the Administration servers. With a few decisive clicks she had Kirk upgraded to one of the better offices on the other side of the building. She hunted out a supply closet, found a grav-sled and loaded it with all the PADDS that had been dumped on Kirk. She left a note on the data screen informing Kirk of his upgraded office, and left, towing the grav sled behind her.
It was six hours before Kirk arrived at the new office, looking slightly more rested than he had before. He was also wearing command gold, which only served to make his eyes even more blue.
“This is not the office I had before,” he said, waving Janice back to her seat as she jumped up and saluted.
“That wasn’t an office, sir, that was an insult,” Janice said, without thinking.
She blanched. Pike had allowed her certain liberties with speech, as long as she remembered when she had to be formal. Luckily, it seemed that Kirk had the same inclinations.
“I’ve certainly got a better view,” he said, peering out into the quad below. “I ran naked though that fountain once. I never thought I’d get an office looking down on it.”
Janice immediately forbade herself to think of Jim Kirk naked, and failed spectacularly.
“Right,” he said briskly, rubbing his hands together. “Other than find me a new office, what have you managed to do, Rand?”
Quite a lot, as it turned out.
First of all she had pruned back his email queue, deleting all messages from previous..ah, acquaintances who were keen to get back in touch. This was an official email account, after all. Fleet business only. Then she had set up a calendar, syncing information from the emails to it, providing him with an at-a-glance list of meetings and events he was required to attend over the next three weeks.
The PADDS had proved more troublesome, but she had managed at least separate them into distinct piles according to their relevant data, rather than in a giant mess. There were PADDs regarding the state of his new ship, PADDs regarding crew that had been killed or injured during the line of duty, PADDs containing the names of crew suitable for replacing those killed or injured, PADDs containing nothing but empty forms that had to be filled in, in triplicate.
Some of the tasks she had been able to handle herself, but others needed his personal attention.
“You did all this in six hours?” he asked as he stared, amazed, at the orderly stream of information.
“It’s what I’m trained for, sir,” she replied. “I couldn’t face a Romulan in hand to hand combat, but I can cope with Starfleet requisition orders.”
“I know which one I’d prefer,” Kirk told her, his eyes full of humour. “Thank you yeoman, you’ve done an amazing job. You can go off duty now, if you wish.”
Janice hesitated.
“Are you going to stay working, sir?” she asked.
He frowned. “I’m rested after my enforced nap. I thought I’d start clearing the backlog.”
“Captain’s yeomen traditionally go off duty when the captain does, sir,” Janice informed him. “I’m good for another couple of hours, and you’ll get more done with my help.”
“Have you eaten?” he asked abruptly.
“Sir?” she said, slightly confused by the change in topic.
“When did you last eat, yeoman?” he said patiently.
She glanced at the chronometer.
“I had a sandwich a few hours ago.”
“Not good enough,” he said firmly. “Let’s see what this fancy new synthesiser can do. Do you like Mexican food?”
“I prefer Chinese,” she admitted.
Seconds later she was handed a plate of fragrant noodles, rice and what looked to be her favourite, lemon chicken.
“Too much for a woman?” Kirk asked innocently.
Janice blinked, remembering his drunken words at the back of the club.
“P..pardon?” she stammered.
“I’m never sure how much women eat,” he said airily, tucking into his equally heaped plate. She stared at him suspiciously for a moment, but he looked back at her with a face that radiated innocence.
“This is plenty, thank you,” she said politely, and started to eat, not noticing his thoughtful stare.
Shared meals became common over the next few weeks; they worked very closely together as she dug him out of the landslide of administration Command seemed determined to bury him under. Janice tried to force herself to forget about the fact that he had been responsible for one of the most intense orgasms she had ever received, and there would be days when she would forget for, ooh, hours at a time.
Then he would smile at her, or his eyes would crinkle slightly, or their fingers would brush and it would be as if a massive surge of electricity passed through her, lighting her from the inside out. Keeping her composure was hard; keeping the secret that they had once shared a pretty spectacular orgasm was even harder.
But it was only for a few more weeks, just until the Enterprise had been refitted and he had finished selecting the rest of the complement of crew. Then he’d be off on a five year tour, and she’d be back with Admiral Pike here on Earth as he settled into his new job as a full time instructor at the Academy. Part of Janice longed for the excitement of a life amongst the stars, but she knew her duty was to support Admiral Pike for as long as he needed her. Besides, serving under Kirk would be...awkward, given their past history.
No, the best thing all round would be for her to stay planetside.
Which, of course, was exactly why Admiral Pike decided to assign her to the Enterprise.
Everyone made jokes about captains and their yeomen, just like they did about doctors and their nurses, although not many people made that mistake around Nurse Chapel, not after that incident with Ensign Kent and the unexpected enema. Janice had always vowed that she would never be one of those women, ones that sighed from afar over a dashing man. After all, she had worked for Pike for three years and she had never felt anything for him other than respect, and you had to admit that the man was definitely attractive.
But it seemed that all the rules were off when it came to Jim Kirk.
For a start, he was on a mission to get her to call him Jim, at least when they were in the privacy of his ready room. She had resisted, citing regulations, although he had shown great pleasure in proving to her that actually, there was no specific regulation covering the way that the captain’s yeoman should address the captain.
“See? Right there, in all its pixelated glory.”
She sighed, and took the PADD that had been thrust at her as soon as she had stepped through the door to his ready room.
“Good morning captain. What am I looking at?”
“Proof that I’m right and you’re wrong. Look, paragraph six, sub-section c. Right there.”
She scanned the PADD.
“Appropriate forms of address must be used at all times by all ranks when addressing the captain,” she read aloud, then pulled an exasperated face.
“Sir, it only goes to support my point! I have to address you appropriately!”
“And what’s more appropriate than the name I was given at birth?” he demanded.
She sagged.
“You’re not going to back down, are you sir?” she asked.
The start of his victory dance was all the answer she needed.
“Very well,” she sighed, “Tiberius, I have requisition forms from Engineering for you to sign off on. “
It was worth the informality just to see the aggrieved look on his face.
“My name is Jim!” he spluttered.
“That’s not what your service record says,” Janice said airily, pulling it up and displaying it on the large data display attached to the wall. “See? James Tiberius.”
“I have never actually forgiven my mother for that one,” he told her, defeated, dropping into his seat behind his desk. “Very well, you win. Call off your dogs.”
Janice smiled, pleased with her victory. Her pleasure lasted only as long as it took him to pull up her personnel file and discover her mother had called her Janice Donnatella in memory of a much -revered great-great-great grandmother.
They decided to call it a draw, and bonded over the aberrent behaviour of mothers in naming their children.
But it wasn’t just his quest for informality. Every little detail she discovered about him made her even more attracted. She loved his brash confidence, whether he was talking down an attacking ship or taking on his senior staff in their weekly poker game. She attended every few weeks, usually when one of the senior staff had the conn and they needed some fresh blood.
She loved how damned smart he was, how he seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of just about everything stored up in that big brain of his. She loved how he cared for his crew, and went out of his way to ensure that he met and knew all of them individually. She loved the way that she would find him down in Engineering tucked in a Jefferies tube as often as in his chair on the bridge.
And, let’s face it, the man could have made a fortune in the modelling industry, what with those eyes and that face and those wonderfully broad shoulders.
So, Janice was on her guard. She couldn’t afford to risk being transferred from the Enterprise just because she (like so many of the crew) had developed a crush on the captain. She enjoyed being a part of the crew too much to be sent back to Earth, or to another ship.
Every time the captain tried to entice her into an after-hours drink in one of the rec rooms, she politely declined. Every time he urged her to call him Jim, she politely ignored him. Every time she thought she caught him staring at her with a longing look on his face, she told herself she was imagining it.
Someone had to be the responsible one, and he had enough responsibility on his (wide, muscular, biteable) shoulders already. It was up to her to be the one that put the brakes on, and say no.
“No!” Janice gasped, digging her heels into the packed earth of the road beneath them. “This way!”
She reached out and grabbed Kirk’s arm, and yanked him back a few feet and down a tiny alleyway between two tall stone houses. They flattened themselves against the wall of the alley and breathed in reflexively when a platoon of armed guards rushed past them in hot pursuit.
Janice watched as the rows and rows of fierce soldiers streamed past their hiding place. Their eyes were forward, scanning the road ahead for any sign of two human strangers in Starfleet uniforms. Eventually they all passed their alleyway, and she sighed in relief.
“We can’t stay here,” Kirk said shortly. “Come on.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her along after him as they wound their way along the alley, negotiating stray animals that hissed and bags of rubbish that gave off a rotten aroma that Janice knew would cling to her hair and clothes. The alleyway opened up onto a small courtyard which was littered with clothing drying on lines strung between weak looking trees.
“Find something to change into,” Kirk commanded. “We’re too visible in our uniforms.”
Janice hurriedly scanned the washing lines and found a pair of wide, gauzy pants and a sleeveless top that looked as though they may fit. The saffron yellow colour wasn’t particularly flattering, but beggers couldn’t be choosers. Feeling guilty for stealing some other woman’s clothes, Janice ducked behind a large sheet hanging listlessly on the line, shucked off her dress and slipped on the stolen clothes. Her boots looked wrong, but there was no way she was going barefoot, not on the dirty pavements of the town.
She stepped out from behind the sheet to find Kirk in boots, a pair of rough, brown trousers and nothing else. Kafaria was a warm planet, and the men there routinely wore nothing above their waists. Despite the fact that their nice, safe, routine diplomatic mission had turned into a bloodbath, forcing them to flee into the shady and disreputable Old Quarter of the capital city, Janice couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate the picture he presented.
If she was going to die at the hands of a group of bloodthirsty Kafarian rebels, she was going to appreciate the view.
“We should keep moving,” he said eventually, tearing his eyes away from the deep v of her neckline. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Janice sighed. She routinely wore a dress that displayed a more than healthy expanse of leg, yet the one time she even hinted she had a cleavage, he couldn’t take his eyes from it.
She should be affronted, she knew. What did it say about her that she was actually quite pleased?
A voice in her head that sounded like Gaila informed her that she had been celibate for too long, and she should really do something about that. Soon.
He held out his hand again and she took it, and they were off into the maze of small alleyways that made up the Old Quarter.
“All we need to do is keep our heads down, and keep moving,” Kirk told her as he guided her carefully around a large puddle of undetermined origin. “We’ve missed our check in, and Spock will be looking for us. “
“Our sub-dermal transponders should be working, right?” Janice asked as they hurried down another little alleyway.
“They’ll be able to track us,” he assured her. “Although they won’t be able to use them to get a transporter lock, they’re only prototypes, Scotty’s still working out a few bugs. Once they get a fix on us, they’ll send a shuttle.”
“So all we need to do is blend in and not draw attention to ourselves,” she said as they rounded a corner. “That shouldn’t be that difficult.”
One of these days she’d learn not to tempt fate like that.
They came out into a huge public square, crowded with hundreds of people. There was a large, raised dais draped in saffron coloured cloth, the same colour as the clothing she was wearing. In fact, there was a lot of saffron in the square. Every woman seemed to be wearing the colour, and most men had a splash of it somewhere - a hat, a sash, a belt.
“Greetings!” said a man with a large tray of sashes, who popped up behind them. “Congratulations!”
He looked at them expectantly, a beaming smile on his face.
“Uh...thanks?” Kirk replied, clearly on his guard, as he reached out and drew Janice closer to him.
“You have no holy colour!” exclaimed the vendor, clucking in disapproval. “You can’t stand before the Priestess without a sash!”
“I’m sorry,” Kirk said, using his best disarming smile. “Unfortunately, I haven’t got anything to pay you with.”
“Take it in the name of the Goddess,” said the man dismissively, plucking a particularly luxurious silk sash from a pile on his tray and thrusting it into Kirk’s hands.
“Thank you,” Janice said, smiling at the man. “You’re very kind.”
The man turned his beaming smile on her.
“I had no sash when my wife and I stood before the Priestess, and some kind stranger gave me a scrap of silk to tie around my wrist. Now I am older and richer, I like to give to others. Take it and be blessed.”
The happy man nodded cheerfully to them, and went on his way, doling out saffron sashes to other delighted men and women.
“What do I do with this?” Kirk asked, looking at the strip of material with confusion.
Janice sighed, and took it from his hands.
“If it gets out that I have to dress you as well as make you finish your personnel evaluations forms, I’ll never hear the end of it,” she muttered as she reached around him to tie the sash around his hips.
She was surprised when his arms closed around her, pulling her close to his bare chest.
“Captain,” she squealed, but he bent his head forward and whispered in her ear.
“It’s what everyone else is doing,” he said in low tones. “Just play along.”
Sure enough, every other couple stood chest-to-chest, with their arms locked around each other. Rather self-consciously, Janice put her arms around him, laying her hands on the firm muscle of his lower back.
They stood there together as a woman dressed head to toe in saffron mounted the dais, lifted her arms and flattened her palms, and began to sing.
Janice couldn’t understand any of the song; the universal translator never worked well with idiom, so it was next to useless here. But the melody was a sweet one, and the woman had a truly beautiful voice. As the woman sang, the crowd began to join in. She couldn’t sing the words but she could hum along, and after a short time Kirk joined her, a little hesitantly to begin with, but more confidently as the song’s patterns revealed themselves.
Janice began to relax in his arms, going so far as to lean her head against his chest. After a moment she felt him lay his cheek against the top of her head, and his arms tighten slightly around her. She let her fingers stroke a soothing rhythm against his skin, and they stayed cuddled together until the woman concluded her song on a high, joyful note.
“The Song has been Sung,” she said calmly, her voice amplified to reach all of the large, saffron-clad crowd. “You have been joined in the eyes of the Goddess, and may you rest safe in Her arms, as well as the arms of your Chosen. Show the Goddess your joy!”
Around them there were great cheers and shouts, and the happy couples started to kiss enthusiastically. Janice’s eyes widened as she took in what had just happened.
“Did we...what did we do?” she asked nervously.
“We were joined in the eyes and arms of the Goddess,” Kirk said quietly, not releasing her from his grip. “Kiss me, Janice.”
“To...to fit in with the crowd?” Janice asked, swallowing heavily as her eyes met his.
“That too,” he replied, with a tiny hint of the smirk that she had grown to love.
He took her small smile as agreement, and bent down to brush his lips against hers. The kiss was light and unusually tentative. When it was clear that she wasn’t going to object to the contact, he deepened it, and she shifted her arms up to his shoulders, and then wound them around his neck. He pulled away and stared at her solemnly for a moment before she pushed one of her hands up into his hair and dragged his head back down again.
This kiss was not like the other.
This kiss was wild, a furious clash of lips and tongues as they vied for control. His hands slid to her hips, then her backside, then back up to her hips as he pulled her even closer. In retaliation she ran her fingers through his hair as she had done those years ago in the dingy light at the back of a club she couldn’t remember the name of.
He shuddered and she laughed briefly before he yanked her into his arms and pulled her sideways back into the alleyway they had come from. Pressed against the wall, she wound a leg around his waist and he helped pull her up so she felt the evidence of his arousal pressing insistently against her centre. They stayed locked together, pulling apart only to breathe and rid Janice of half of her clothing.
Janice shuddered and gasped as cool air met her heated flesh, and then made a noise she thought she was incapable of as he started to kiss his way along the length of her neck, down over her collarbone to her breasts. She actually screamed with the sensation of that talented mouth sucking on her nipple.
After not nearly long enough attention to that part of her body, Kirk raised his head and looked around.
“Don’t stop!” Janice panted.
“I heard something,” he said quietly.
“Probably my underwear combusting,” she grumbled, and he couldn’t hide the flicker of amusement cross his face.
“Sssh,” he warned, and then Janice heard the wholly unwelcome and horrifically timed entrance of a landing party from the Enterprise make their way into the square full of happy newlyweds.
“Shit,” she cursed, scrambling out of his arms. “Where’s my top?”
He found it, a little grubbier than before after being discarded so quickly onto the alley floor. She scrambled into it as he stepped out into the square and discreetly signalled the away team sent to retrieve them. She exited the alleyway once he gave her the signal to join the group, and once again she cursed great-great-great grandmother Donnatella’s genetic gift of alabaster skin . She was positive that her flushed face gave away exactly what they had been doing when they had been “hiding” in the alleyway.
The away team led them briskly to their shuttle’s landing site, and Kirk immediately got into contact with the Enterprise to tell them about their disastrous diplomatic mission. Janice sat quietly at the back of the shuttle, and tried not to get in the way. It was a quick ride back to the ship, and Kirk kept as much distance as he could in the small vessel. She was dismissed from the shuttle bay with a “Get changed and report for debrief in my ready room, yeoman, on the double,” and then Kirk turned and walked away.
She hadn’t exactly expected a heartfelt declaration of love right there amongst the shuttlecraft, but he hadn’t even softened the words with one of his customary smiles. Janice shook her head bitterly and left to go and change.
Clearly, everything that happened on the planet had been a huge mistake.
“It was a huge mistake,” Kirk said quietly to her, once Spock and the other officers had heard their debrief and left to attend to other ship’s business.
“I understand,” she said tightly, pressing her lips together and fighting the urge to do something stupid, like cry, or hit him with a chair. Crying wouldn’t help, and would just make her look like a silly little girl.
The chairs were bolted to the floor, which was a shame.
“I should never have...” Kirk began, but she interrupted him, feeling the pressure of unshed tears in her eyes. She needed to leave the room, quickly, before she made an even bigger fool of herself.
“There’s no need to apologise,” she cut in. “What happened was...an aberration.”
“That’s right,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m not usually in the habit of doing that.”
“So, I think it’s best if we forget it ever happened,” she went on, sidling towards the door.
“Oh, I can’t do that,” he replied, looking stricken.
Janice sighed. She was afraid that it would come to this.
“I understand, sir,” she said quietly. “I only ask that you recommend transfer to another deep space vessel. If I can’t be on the Enterprise, I’d rather be onboard a ship than dirtside.”
“Transfer?” Kirk said, puzzled. “Who said anything about a transfer? Janice, do you want to leave?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, equally confused.
“What are we talking about?” he asked.
“I’m not sure anymore,” she confessed.
He barked out a laugh, and ran his fingers through his hair. Janice’s fingers twitched with muscle memory.
“Right, let’s start again,” he said heavily.
“Right,” she agreed.
There was a pause.
“Don’t you want to start?” she prompted.
“I’m getting to it,” he said, pacing the deck. “This isn’t easy. Sit down, will you? This will be easier if you’re sitting down.”
She dutifully let him pace for a few more moments before he stopped and wheeled around.
“I know who you are,” he announced.
Janice sighed, and didn’t bother trying to be polite about it.
“You’re the mystery girl from the club,” he announced, and the snarky remark she had been about to utter got swallowed very quickly.
“The..club?” she managed.
“You know exactly which club I mean, Janice,” he said firmly. “Admit it.”
“Fine,” she said eventually. “Yes, I’m the girl from the club. And you’re the drunk cadet I poured into a cab.”
“I thought I dreamed you,” he said quietly, fixing her with a stare that she just couldn’t shake. “I was positive that I dreamed that some hot blonde girl climbed me like a tree, and I was such a drunken idiot that I couldn’t stop myself from coming in my pants like a horny teenager.”
“It was hot,” Janice said automatically, then felt her cheeks burn red. “That I made you do that, I mean. That had never happened before. It made me feel...powerful. Sexy.”
“It made me feel like an idiot,” he said, grimacing.
“Don’t feel bad,” she said, crossing the room to him without realising what she was doing. “That was the best orgasm of my life.”
“Seriously?” he asked, perking up.
“I know I’ll regret saying this, but seriously,” she replied, rolling her eyes.
Ego reassured, he stood up a little straighter.
“I thought I remembered you back at Command, when you showed up and made all the paperwork make sense, but I wasn’t sure,” he admitted.
“What gave it away?” she asked.
“Sense memory,” he grinned. “As soon as you had your hand in my hair I was halfway to...well, let’s just say that the situation was becoming incredibly familiar.”
Janice’s blush strengthened.
“So,” she said, clearing her throat. “What do we do now?”
“Now?” he repeated, smiling. “Now, we date.”
“Date?” she spluttered. “Captain, we can’t date!”
“Jim,” he corrected her. “And yes we can.”
“The regulations...” she began, but she was cut off.
“The regulations actually require us to see each other,” he said airily, tapping at a data screen and swivelling it so she could see.
“Paragraph seventeen, subsection twelve, married couples are exempt from regulations prohibiting sexual contact between ranks and are required to spend a minimum of five hours of every ninety six in activities designed to promote a happy and harmonious relationship...Wait, we’re married?”
She looked at him, shocked, and sank into a seat.
“Surprise!” he said happily.
She looked at him stonily, then relented a little when she saw his jazz hands manoeuvre falter a littler.
“Apparently we took part in a mass wedding ceremony this afternoon,” he explained. “Kafaria has Federation Ally status, so all legal ceremonies undertaken there are valid in the eyes of the Federation. And the JAG corps.”
“Married,” she said dumbly. “Joined in the eyes and arms of the Goddess. Holy shit.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, still smiling. “When I tell Bones, I’m never going to hear the end of it.”
Janice sat in silence as she processed what had just happened. He had known it was her - or at least suspected it was her - for as long as they had been working with each other. Then now they had accidentally got married and nearly ended up having sex in an alleyway again.
“And why did you show me those regs?” she asked, confused.
“Well,” he said, sinking into the seat next to her, and picking up one of her hands in his larger one, “I was thinking that if we had any other jobs than the ones we have, I’d have asked you out long ago.”
“Yeah, me too,” she found herself admitting. “But captains and their yeomen can’t date.”
“They can if they’re already married,” he said triumphantly. “Five hours out of every ninety six, remember?”
She looked at him, lost for words, but clearly her expression was enough to make him clarify things.
“What I’m proposing is, let’s not file for divorce with the JAG corps straight away. Let’s let the marriage stand, legally speaking. We can then make use of the time we’ve been ordered to take to get to know each other without these ranks hanging over our heads.”
“And if we don’t suit?” she made herself say.
Kirk shrugged.
“Then we file for divorce, and go back to how things are now.”
He paused to look at her directly.
“But I think we suit, Janice,” he said, his voice going a little deeper. His thumb started to rub the skin on the back of her hand. “And I think that you think that too. So, what do you say?”
He looked at her expectantly, and despite the confidence of his voice, she could see a glimmer of fear in his eyes. This man, who had taken on the most dangerous man in the universe in combat and won, this man who had gone on to outwit and out manoeuvre some of this galaxy’s greatest threats, was actually scared that she’d turn him down.
“I have ground rules,” she warned him, and he gave her a dazzling smile that turned her knees to jelly.
“I’ll break them,” he warned her, and she smiled in return.
“I know,” she sighed. “But I guess I’ll learn to live with it.”
The kiss they shared then was ten times better than any they had shared before, and was only the start of the kisses they would share in the future.
Janice Rand and Jim Kirk had sex, got married and fell in love.
Yes, in that order.
No, they’re not joking.
(She really wishes they were; he still gets a kick out of it, even after all this time. But secretly, she does too.)
Creator(s): fringedweller
Universe: AOS
Word Count: 6925
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Janice Rand and Jim Kirk had sex, got married and fell in love. Yes, in that order.
Disclaimer: Team Blonde Ambition do not own anything written about in this fic, although we'd dearly love to. Please don't sue us, all we have is our shiny team comm.
Janice Rand and Jim Kirk had sex, got married and fell in love.
Yes, in that order.
No, they’re not joking.
(She really wishes they were; he still gets a kick out of it, even after all this time.)
They met for the first time in one of those flavour-of-the-month clubs in San Francisco, the sort that get packed out every night for a week because of some great buzz on the social network feeds, and then becomes just another place to go.
She was drunk and he was drunker, but it only took her twenty minutes from their first collision on the dance floor to usher him out of the club’s back door and get him pinned against the wall. The heavy beat of the music wound its way out to the dark alley, and Janice could feel it throbbing in her veins as she ran her hands appreciatively over his body. It was night and the security lighting was pathetically low, but it was enough to show those beautiful eyes that had beckoned to her back inside.
“So pretty,” she breathed, cupping his face in her small hand and pulling down so their foreheads could meet. She was wearing her three inch heeled ‘fuck me now’ shoes, but he was still taller.
“Supposed to be my line,” he slurred, his hands skimming over her breasts with a surprising gentleness.
“I’m not one for lines,” she laughed, reaching up to kiss him. “In fact,” she said, pulling away a little to nibble at his plump lower lip, “I’m not really one for talking.” She nipped his lip hard enough for him to draw in his breath suddenly. “At all,” she explained.
“Message received and understood,” he said, moving suddenly and with unexpected purpose. He switched their positions and hauled Janice up into the air so that she was the one with her back pressed to the wall. She spread her legs happily and let him settle between them, his hardness already clear by the happy way he was grinding against her.
She’d give him this; obvious alcohol consumption did not stop him from kissing like a pro. A half-formed thought crossed her brain that maybe he was, and that he had confused her interest for a commission, but then he did something amazing with his tongue that made her decide that even if he was a prostitute, she’d happily pay. Skills like that need to be rewarded.
She gave as good as she got, and discovered that if she raked her nails through his hair his whole body would shiver and he’d keen loudly. Sucking on his earlobe made him thrust against her. A combination of the two manoeuvres made both of them incredibly happy.
He had one large hand pressed against the wall to help him balance, but the one had been busy stroking her hair, tracing the outline of her ear, cupping a breast. Now that free hand tugged at her dress where it pooled around her thighs, and disappeared underneath it. She felt his fingers tug at the elastic of her underwear, pulling it aside far enough to let him slide a finger gently inside her.
“This ok?” he breathed into her ear, as he repositioned his hand to let his thumb rest on her clit as another finger joined the first. Janice was no virgin, but her yeoman training was hellish and responsible for a dry spell that she had been determined to break tonight. It had been such a long time for her that he had almost got her there with his sinfully delicious kisses.
But not quite.
“Harder,” she commanded, jerking her hips to get a little friction going. “Come on, move.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said directly into her ear, the buzz of his lips and the warmth of his breath doing wonderful things to the side of her neck.
He followed her orders well, setting up a rhythm between his hand and his mouth as he played with her clit and sucked what she was sure would be huge bruises into her neck. She could feel her orgasm build in every muscle in her body as she thrust desperately against his hand. The pleasure burst in her body, radiating from her core and travelling along every nerve simultaneously. She clutched tightly to his broad shoulders as she rode out the aftershocks and he waited patiently as she took several deep gulps of air to centre herself.
When she had collected herself, she immediately unwound one of her arms from around his neck and reached down to palm the front of his pants. She was of the opinion that one good turn deserved another, and he was in for one hell of a good turn from her. He wrapped one of his hands gently around her wrist and tugged it away as she discovered a large wet patch on the front of his jeans.
“No need,” he told her, his speech slightly more slurred than it had been before.
Janice blinked. That had never happened to her before.
“You were just too much,” he said softly, dropping her wrist and returning his hand to her hair. “Too much woman.”
He grinned then, a devilish look in those amazing eyes that had made her choose him in the first place.
“I’d be up for a rematch,” he told her, swaying slightly under the combined weight of Janice and whatever he had drunk that night. “Give me ten minutes.”
“In ten minutes you’ll be flat on your back,” Janice said as she peered through the gloom to check out the size of his pupils. Who knows what else he had done before meeting her that night.
He leered at her and she sighed, and motioned for him to put her down.
“Not like that, asshole,” she said kindly as she adjusted her underwear. “Come on, I’ll find you a cab.”
“Tomorrow?” he asked hopefully as she decanted him into the back of a hovercab and gave the driver the address of the Fleet dorms.
“Sure,” she lied. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She paid the driver in advance - the very least she could do - and headed back to the club to find her friends. He was so drunk that he wouldn’t be able to remember her name the next morning and she hadn’t even bothered to ask his. Pretty cadets were a dime a dozen, and pretty soon she’d be shipping out to start her shipboard training cycle.
What were the chances that she’d see ever him again, anyway?
She recognised him as soon as she stepped through the door to his hastily acquired office in Starfleet Command. He was still bruised from his adventures on the Narada and he looked as if he hadn’t got a full night’s sleep in a week, which was probably the case.
But his eyes.
There was no mistaking those eyes.
She’s heard the news, of course - it had been all over civilian and Fleet feeds - but until this second she hadn’t put ‘Jim Kirk - saviour of Earth” and “hot blond with blue eyes and a talented tongue” together. She prayed that he really had been too drunk to remember her name.
She cleared her throat nervously, and stood to attention.
“Yeoman Rand reporting for duty, sir,” she said in what she hoped was a clear and steady voice.
He looked up from the stack of PADDS on the desk, a look of slight confusion marring his handsome (although multi-coloured) face.
“Admiral Pike sent me, sir,” she told him. “He thought you might need some administrative assistance. He sent you an email.”
Kirk peered at his desk, shifted stacks of PADDs around, moved a tray containing a half eaten meal and lifted his jacket from where it was draped over his data screen.
“I haven’t exactly had the time to check that,” he muttered, stabbing at the screen. He frowned as he looked at his inbox.
“There’s nothing here about a yeoman,” he said, peering at the screen.
Janice cleared her throat gently.
“I think you may have more luck if you opened the inbox for Captain Kirk, rather than Cadet Kirk, sir.”
He stared blankly at her for a moment, and then swore under his breath as he poked the screen again. His new inbox popped up on the screen, and he groaned as he saw that he had over two hundred new messages.
Janice studied him critically. He was clearly running off caffeine and determination, which was no good. Tired captains were cranky captains, and cranky captains just stopped her from doing her job.
“Sir, if I may make a suggestion?”
He looked back to her from the screen.
“Go ahead, yeoman,” he sighed, slouching back into his chair.
“You’ve clearly been working for a very long time without a proper rest period. Why don’t you go and take a nap and get something to eat while I start working my way through your paperwork? We can meet again when you’re refreshed.”
He looked at her, amusement clearly visible in his eyes.
“Do you suggest naps to all your captains, Rand?” he asked, stretching his arms above his head and yawning. His black undershirt rode up slightly, revealing a toned stomach that would have been incredibly pleasant if not for the bruising evident there.
“Just those that are on the verge of falling asleep at their desks, sir,” she said as kindly as she could. “I’m trained to deal with your administrative load, sir, and this is too much for one person to do alone.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said slowly, staring at her face.
Janice swallowed. Had he recognised her?
He shook his head, as if to clear it.
“You’re right. I must be tired. I thought for a moment...no, it’s just fatigue. Alright yeoman, the stack of PADDs is yours to deal with. If you get bored, I think you could build a small fort out of them.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that, sir,” she said firmly, trying not to smile at his small attempt at humour. Smiling would mean thinking of him as something other than a superior officer, and that could be...dangerous. Distracting, certainly.
Yawning, he stumbled out of the door and she took a good look around the small office he had been assigned. It was one of the ones Command used for guest lecturers who wouldn’t be hanging around for a long time - utterly Spartan in design, with a less than enticing view of the laundry building from the small, badly placed window. There was a synthesiser unit (one of the old ones, that couldn’t handle anything more complicated than coffee), one desk, one chair and a framed holo of the President of the Federation smiling graciously from behind her (larger) desk.
Not the sort of office that a captain of the fleet deserved, let alone the captain of the flagship, who had, not a week ago, saved what remains of the Vulcan race, prevented Earth from annihilation, rid the universe of the genocidal Romulan that had been the cause of all the trouble to begin with and rescued Admiral Pike from the enemy ship practically singlehandedly.
Janice had worked for Pike ever since graduating, and she respected him immensely. Anybody that saved his life deserved more respect than this closet of a room. She frowned. This may only be a temporary assignment while Admiral Pike recuperated at Starfleet Medical, but she was damned if she was going to let some idiot in Administration show any captain of hers such disrespect.
She cleared the desk of the collection of PADDs and used the Admiral’s access codes to access the Administration servers. With a few decisive clicks she had Kirk upgraded to one of the better offices on the other side of the building. She hunted out a supply closet, found a grav-sled and loaded it with all the PADDS that had been dumped on Kirk. She left a note on the data screen informing Kirk of his upgraded office, and left, towing the grav sled behind her.
It was six hours before Kirk arrived at the new office, looking slightly more rested than he had before. He was also wearing command gold, which only served to make his eyes even more blue.
“This is not the office I had before,” he said, waving Janice back to her seat as she jumped up and saluted.
“That wasn’t an office, sir, that was an insult,” Janice said, without thinking.
She blanched. Pike had allowed her certain liberties with speech, as long as she remembered when she had to be formal. Luckily, it seemed that Kirk had the same inclinations.
“I’ve certainly got a better view,” he said, peering out into the quad below. “I ran naked though that fountain once. I never thought I’d get an office looking down on it.”
Janice immediately forbade herself to think of Jim Kirk naked, and failed spectacularly.
“Right,” he said briskly, rubbing his hands together. “Other than find me a new office, what have you managed to do, Rand?”
Quite a lot, as it turned out.
First of all she had pruned back his email queue, deleting all messages from previous..ah, acquaintances who were keen to get back in touch. This was an official email account, after all. Fleet business only. Then she had set up a calendar, syncing information from the emails to it, providing him with an at-a-glance list of meetings and events he was required to attend over the next three weeks.
The PADDS had proved more troublesome, but she had managed at least separate them into distinct piles according to their relevant data, rather than in a giant mess. There were PADDs regarding the state of his new ship, PADDs regarding crew that had been killed or injured during the line of duty, PADDs containing the names of crew suitable for replacing those killed or injured, PADDs containing nothing but empty forms that had to be filled in, in triplicate.
Some of the tasks she had been able to handle herself, but others needed his personal attention.
“You did all this in six hours?” he asked as he stared, amazed, at the orderly stream of information.
“It’s what I’m trained for, sir,” she replied. “I couldn’t face a Romulan in hand to hand combat, but I can cope with Starfleet requisition orders.”
“I know which one I’d prefer,” Kirk told her, his eyes full of humour. “Thank you yeoman, you’ve done an amazing job. You can go off duty now, if you wish.”
Janice hesitated.
“Are you going to stay working, sir?” she asked.
He frowned. “I’m rested after my enforced nap. I thought I’d start clearing the backlog.”
“Captain’s yeomen traditionally go off duty when the captain does, sir,” Janice informed him. “I’m good for another couple of hours, and you’ll get more done with my help.”
“Have you eaten?” he asked abruptly.
“Sir?” she said, slightly confused by the change in topic.
“When did you last eat, yeoman?” he said patiently.
She glanced at the chronometer.
“I had a sandwich a few hours ago.”
“Not good enough,” he said firmly. “Let’s see what this fancy new synthesiser can do. Do you like Mexican food?”
“I prefer Chinese,” she admitted.
Seconds later she was handed a plate of fragrant noodles, rice and what looked to be her favourite, lemon chicken.
“Too much for a woman?” Kirk asked innocently.
Janice blinked, remembering his drunken words at the back of the club.
“P..pardon?” she stammered.
“I’m never sure how much women eat,” he said airily, tucking into his equally heaped plate. She stared at him suspiciously for a moment, but he looked back at her with a face that radiated innocence.
“This is plenty, thank you,” she said politely, and started to eat, not noticing his thoughtful stare.
Shared meals became common over the next few weeks; they worked very closely together as she dug him out of the landslide of administration Command seemed determined to bury him under. Janice tried to force herself to forget about the fact that he had been responsible for one of the most intense orgasms she had ever received, and there would be days when she would forget for, ooh, hours at a time.
Then he would smile at her, or his eyes would crinkle slightly, or their fingers would brush and it would be as if a massive surge of electricity passed through her, lighting her from the inside out. Keeping her composure was hard; keeping the secret that they had once shared a pretty spectacular orgasm was even harder.
But it was only for a few more weeks, just until the Enterprise had been refitted and he had finished selecting the rest of the complement of crew. Then he’d be off on a five year tour, and she’d be back with Admiral Pike here on Earth as he settled into his new job as a full time instructor at the Academy. Part of Janice longed for the excitement of a life amongst the stars, but she knew her duty was to support Admiral Pike for as long as he needed her. Besides, serving under Kirk would be...awkward, given their past history.
No, the best thing all round would be for her to stay planetside.
Which, of course, was exactly why Admiral Pike decided to assign her to the Enterprise.
Everyone made jokes about captains and their yeomen, just like they did about doctors and their nurses, although not many people made that mistake around Nurse Chapel, not after that incident with Ensign Kent and the unexpected enema. Janice had always vowed that she would never be one of those women, ones that sighed from afar over a dashing man. After all, she had worked for Pike for three years and she had never felt anything for him other than respect, and you had to admit that the man was definitely attractive.
But it seemed that all the rules were off when it came to Jim Kirk.
For a start, he was on a mission to get her to call him Jim, at least when they were in the privacy of his ready room. She had resisted, citing regulations, although he had shown great pleasure in proving to her that actually, there was no specific regulation covering the way that the captain’s yeoman should address the captain.
“See? Right there, in all its pixelated glory.”
She sighed, and took the PADD that had been thrust at her as soon as she had stepped through the door to his ready room.
“Good morning captain. What am I looking at?”
“Proof that I’m right and you’re wrong. Look, paragraph six, sub-section c. Right there.”
She scanned the PADD.
“Appropriate forms of address must be used at all times by all ranks when addressing the captain,” she read aloud, then pulled an exasperated face.
“Sir, it only goes to support my point! I have to address you appropriately!”
“And what’s more appropriate than the name I was given at birth?” he demanded.
She sagged.
“You’re not going to back down, are you sir?” she asked.
The start of his victory dance was all the answer she needed.
“Very well,” she sighed, “Tiberius, I have requisition forms from Engineering for you to sign off on. “
It was worth the informality just to see the aggrieved look on his face.
“My name is Jim!” he spluttered.
“That’s not what your service record says,” Janice said airily, pulling it up and displaying it on the large data display attached to the wall. “See? James Tiberius.”
“I have never actually forgiven my mother for that one,” he told her, defeated, dropping into his seat behind his desk. “Very well, you win. Call off your dogs.”
Janice smiled, pleased with her victory. Her pleasure lasted only as long as it took him to pull up her personnel file and discover her mother had called her Janice Donnatella in memory of a much -revered great-great-great grandmother.
They decided to call it a draw, and bonded over the aberrent behaviour of mothers in naming their children.
But it wasn’t just his quest for informality. Every little detail she discovered about him made her even more attracted. She loved his brash confidence, whether he was talking down an attacking ship or taking on his senior staff in their weekly poker game. She attended every few weeks, usually when one of the senior staff had the conn and they needed some fresh blood.
She loved how damned smart he was, how he seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of just about everything stored up in that big brain of his. She loved how he cared for his crew, and went out of his way to ensure that he met and knew all of them individually. She loved the way that she would find him down in Engineering tucked in a Jefferies tube as often as in his chair on the bridge.
And, let’s face it, the man could have made a fortune in the modelling industry, what with those eyes and that face and those wonderfully broad shoulders.
So, Janice was on her guard. She couldn’t afford to risk being transferred from the Enterprise just because she (like so many of the crew) had developed a crush on the captain. She enjoyed being a part of the crew too much to be sent back to Earth, or to another ship.
Every time the captain tried to entice her into an after-hours drink in one of the rec rooms, she politely declined. Every time he urged her to call him Jim, she politely ignored him. Every time she thought she caught him staring at her with a longing look on his face, she told herself she was imagining it.
Someone had to be the responsible one, and he had enough responsibility on his (wide, muscular, biteable) shoulders already. It was up to her to be the one that put the brakes on, and say no.
“No!” Janice gasped, digging her heels into the packed earth of the road beneath them. “This way!”
She reached out and grabbed Kirk’s arm, and yanked him back a few feet and down a tiny alleyway between two tall stone houses. They flattened themselves against the wall of the alley and breathed in reflexively when a platoon of armed guards rushed past them in hot pursuit.
Janice watched as the rows and rows of fierce soldiers streamed past their hiding place. Their eyes were forward, scanning the road ahead for any sign of two human strangers in Starfleet uniforms. Eventually they all passed their alleyway, and she sighed in relief.
“We can’t stay here,” Kirk said shortly. “Come on.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her along after him as they wound their way along the alley, negotiating stray animals that hissed and bags of rubbish that gave off a rotten aroma that Janice knew would cling to her hair and clothes. The alleyway opened up onto a small courtyard which was littered with clothing drying on lines strung between weak looking trees.
“Find something to change into,” Kirk commanded. “We’re too visible in our uniforms.”
Janice hurriedly scanned the washing lines and found a pair of wide, gauzy pants and a sleeveless top that looked as though they may fit. The saffron yellow colour wasn’t particularly flattering, but beggers couldn’t be choosers. Feeling guilty for stealing some other woman’s clothes, Janice ducked behind a large sheet hanging listlessly on the line, shucked off her dress and slipped on the stolen clothes. Her boots looked wrong, but there was no way she was going barefoot, not on the dirty pavements of the town.
She stepped out from behind the sheet to find Kirk in boots, a pair of rough, brown trousers and nothing else. Kafaria was a warm planet, and the men there routinely wore nothing above their waists. Despite the fact that their nice, safe, routine diplomatic mission had turned into a bloodbath, forcing them to flee into the shady and disreputable Old Quarter of the capital city, Janice couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate the picture he presented.
If she was going to die at the hands of a group of bloodthirsty Kafarian rebels, she was going to appreciate the view.
“We should keep moving,” he said eventually, tearing his eyes away from the deep v of her neckline. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Janice sighed. She routinely wore a dress that displayed a more than healthy expanse of leg, yet the one time she even hinted she had a cleavage, he couldn’t take his eyes from it.
She should be affronted, she knew. What did it say about her that she was actually quite pleased?
A voice in her head that sounded like Gaila informed her that she had been celibate for too long, and she should really do something about that. Soon.
He held out his hand again and she took it, and they were off into the maze of small alleyways that made up the Old Quarter.
“All we need to do is keep our heads down, and keep moving,” Kirk told her as he guided her carefully around a large puddle of undetermined origin. “We’ve missed our check in, and Spock will be looking for us. “
“Our sub-dermal transponders should be working, right?” Janice asked as they hurried down another little alleyway.
“They’ll be able to track us,” he assured her. “Although they won’t be able to use them to get a transporter lock, they’re only prototypes, Scotty’s still working out a few bugs. Once they get a fix on us, they’ll send a shuttle.”
“So all we need to do is blend in and not draw attention to ourselves,” she said as they rounded a corner. “That shouldn’t be that difficult.”
One of these days she’d learn not to tempt fate like that.
They came out into a huge public square, crowded with hundreds of people. There was a large, raised dais draped in saffron coloured cloth, the same colour as the clothing she was wearing. In fact, there was a lot of saffron in the square. Every woman seemed to be wearing the colour, and most men had a splash of it somewhere - a hat, a sash, a belt.
“Greetings!” said a man with a large tray of sashes, who popped up behind them. “Congratulations!”
He looked at them expectantly, a beaming smile on his face.
“Uh...thanks?” Kirk replied, clearly on his guard, as he reached out and drew Janice closer to him.
“You have no holy colour!” exclaimed the vendor, clucking in disapproval. “You can’t stand before the Priestess without a sash!”
“I’m sorry,” Kirk said, using his best disarming smile. “Unfortunately, I haven’t got anything to pay you with.”
“Take it in the name of the Goddess,” said the man dismissively, plucking a particularly luxurious silk sash from a pile on his tray and thrusting it into Kirk’s hands.
“Thank you,” Janice said, smiling at the man. “You’re very kind.”
The man turned his beaming smile on her.
“I had no sash when my wife and I stood before the Priestess, and some kind stranger gave me a scrap of silk to tie around my wrist. Now I am older and richer, I like to give to others. Take it and be blessed.”
The happy man nodded cheerfully to them, and went on his way, doling out saffron sashes to other delighted men and women.
“What do I do with this?” Kirk asked, looking at the strip of material with confusion.
Janice sighed, and took it from his hands.
“If it gets out that I have to dress you as well as make you finish your personnel evaluations forms, I’ll never hear the end of it,” she muttered as she reached around him to tie the sash around his hips.
She was surprised when his arms closed around her, pulling her close to his bare chest.
“Captain,” she squealed, but he bent his head forward and whispered in her ear.
“It’s what everyone else is doing,” he said in low tones. “Just play along.”
Sure enough, every other couple stood chest-to-chest, with their arms locked around each other. Rather self-consciously, Janice put her arms around him, laying her hands on the firm muscle of his lower back.
They stood there together as a woman dressed head to toe in saffron mounted the dais, lifted her arms and flattened her palms, and began to sing.
Janice couldn’t understand any of the song; the universal translator never worked well with idiom, so it was next to useless here. But the melody was a sweet one, and the woman had a truly beautiful voice. As the woman sang, the crowd began to join in. She couldn’t sing the words but she could hum along, and after a short time Kirk joined her, a little hesitantly to begin with, but more confidently as the song’s patterns revealed themselves.
Janice began to relax in his arms, going so far as to lean her head against his chest. After a moment she felt him lay his cheek against the top of her head, and his arms tighten slightly around her. She let her fingers stroke a soothing rhythm against his skin, and they stayed cuddled together until the woman concluded her song on a high, joyful note.
“The Song has been Sung,” she said calmly, her voice amplified to reach all of the large, saffron-clad crowd. “You have been joined in the eyes of the Goddess, and may you rest safe in Her arms, as well as the arms of your Chosen. Show the Goddess your joy!”
Around them there were great cheers and shouts, and the happy couples started to kiss enthusiastically. Janice’s eyes widened as she took in what had just happened.
“Did we...what did we do?” she asked nervously.
“We were joined in the eyes and arms of the Goddess,” Kirk said quietly, not releasing her from his grip. “Kiss me, Janice.”
“To...to fit in with the crowd?” Janice asked, swallowing heavily as her eyes met his.
“That too,” he replied, with a tiny hint of the smirk that she had grown to love.
He took her small smile as agreement, and bent down to brush his lips against hers. The kiss was light and unusually tentative. When it was clear that she wasn’t going to object to the contact, he deepened it, and she shifted her arms up to his shoulders, and then wound them around his neck. He pulled away and stared at her solemnly for a moment before she pushed one of her hands up into his hair and dragged his head back down again.
This kiss was not like the other.
This kiss was wild, a furious clash of lips and tongues as they vied for control. His hands slid to her hips, then her backside, then back up to her hips as he pulled her even closer. In retaliation she ran her fingers through his hair as she had done those years ago in the dingy light at the back of a club she couldn’t remember the name of.
He shuddered and she laughed briefly before he yanked her into his arms and pulled her sideways back into the alleyway they had come from. Pressed against the wall, she wound a leg around his waist and he helped pull her up so she felt the evidence of his arousal pressing insistently against her centre. They stayed locked together, pulling apart only to breathe and rid Janice of half of her clothing.
Janice shuddered and gasped as cool air met her heated flesh, and then made a noise she thought she was incapable of as he started to kiss his way along the length of her neck, down over her collarbone to her breasts. She actually screamed with the sensation of that talented mouth sucking on her nipple.
After not nearly long enough attention to that part of her body, Kirk raised his head and looked around.
“Don’t stop!” Janice panted.
“I heard something,” he said quietly.
“Probably my underwear combusting,” she grumbled, and he couldn’t hide the flicker of amusement cross his face.
“Sssh,” he warned, and then Janice heard the wholly unwelcome and horrifically timed entrance of a landing party from the Enterprise make their way into the square full of happy newlyweds.
“Shit,” she cursed, scrambling out of his arms. “Where’s my top?”
He found it, a little grubbier than before after being discarded so quickly onto the alley floor. She scrambled into it as he stepped out into the square and discreetly signalled the away team sent to retrieve them. She exited the alleyway once he gave her the signal to join the group, and once again she cursed great-great-great grandmother Donnatella’s genetic gift of alabaster skin . She was positive that her flushed face gave away exactly what they had been doing when they had been “hiding” in the alleyway.
The away team led them briskly to their shuttle’s landing site, and Kirk immediately got into contact with the Enterprise to tell them about their disastrous diplomatic mission. Janice sat quietly at the back of the shuttle, and tried not to get in the way. It was a quick ride back to the ship, and Kirk kept as much distance as he could in the small vessel. She was dismissed from the shuttle bay with a “Get changed and report for debrief in my ready room, yeoman, on the double,” and then Kirk turned and walked away.
She hadn’t exactly expected a heartfelt declaration of love right there amongst the shuttlecraft, but he hadn’t even softened the words with one of his customary smiles. Janice shook her head bitterly and left to go and change.
Clearly, everything that happened on the planet had been a huge mistake.
“It was a huge mistake,” Kirk said quietly to her, once Spock and the other officers had heard their debrief and left to attend to other ship’s business.
“I understand,” she said tightly, pressing her lips together and fighting the urge to do something stupid, like cry, or hit him with a chair. Crying wouldn’t help, and would just make her look like a silly little girl.
The chairs were bolted to the floor, which was a shame.
“I should never have...” Kirk began, but she interrupted him, feeling the pressure of unshed tears in her eyes. She needed to leave the room, quickly, before she made an even bigger fool of herself.
“There’s no need to apologise,” she cut in. “What happened was...an aberration.”
“That’s right,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m not usually in the habit of doing that.”
“So, I think it’s best if we forget it ever happened,” she went on, sidling towards the door.
“Oh, I can’t do that,” he replied, looking stricken.
Janice sighed. She was afraid that it would come to this.
“I understand, sir,” she said quietly. “I only ask that you recommend transfer to another deep space vessel. If I can’t be on the Enterprise, I’d rather be onboard a ship than dirtside.”
“Transfer?” Kirk said, puzzled. “Who said anything about a transfer? Janice, do you want to leave?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, equally confused.
“What are we talking about?” he asked.
“I’m not sure anymore,” she confessed.
He barked out a laugh, and ran his fingers through his hair. Janice’s fingers twitched with muscle memory.
“Right, let’s start again,” he said heavily.
“Right,” she agreed.
There was a pause.
“Don’t you want to start?” she prompted.
“I’m getting to it,” he said, pacing the deck. “This isn’t easy. Sit down, will you? This will be easier if you’re sitting down.”
She dutifully let him pace for a few more moments before he stopped and wheeled around.
“I know who you are,” he announced.
Janice sighed, and didn’t bother trying to be polite about it.
“You’re the mystery girl from the club,” he announced, and the snarky remark she had been about to utter got swallowed very quickly.
“The..club?” she managed.
“You know exactly which club I mean, Janice,” he said firmly. “Admit it.”
“Fine,” she said eventually. “Yes, I’m the girl from the club. And you’re the drunk cadet I poured into a cab.”
“I thought I dreamed you,” he said quietly, fixing her with a stare that she just couldn’t shake. “I was positive that I dreamed that some hot blonde girl climbed me like a tree, and I was such a drunken idiot that I couldn’t stop myself from coming in my pants like a horny teenager.”
“It was hot,” Janice said automatically, then felt her cheeks burn red. “That I made you do that, I mean. That had never happened before. It made me feel...powerful. Sexy.”
“It made me feel like an idiot,” he said, grimacing.
“Don’t feel bad,” she said, crossing the room to him without realising what she was doing. “That was the best orgasm of my life.”
“Seriously?” he asked, perking up.
“I know I’ll regret saying this, but seriously,” she replied, rolling her eyes.
Ego reassured, he stood up a little straighter.
“I thought I remembered you back at Command, when you showed up and made all the paperwork make sense, but I wasn’t sure,” he admitted.
“What gave it away?” she asked.
“Sense memory,” he grinned. “As soon as you had your hand in my hair I was halfway to...well, let’s just say that the situation was becoming incredibly familiar.”
Janice’s blush strengthened.
“So,” she said, clearing her throat. “What do we do now?”
“Now?” he repeated, smiling. “Now, we date.”
“Date?” she spluttered. “Captain, we can’t date!”
“Jim,” he corrected her. “And yes we can.”
“The regulations...” she began, but she was cut off.
“The regulations actually require us to see each other,” he said airily, tapping at a data screen and swivelling it so she could see.
“Paragraph seventeen, subsection twelve, married couples are exempt from regulations prohibiting sexual contact between ranks and are required to spend a minimum of five hours of every ninety six in activities designed to promote a happy and harmonious relationship...Wait, we’re married?”
She looked at him, shocked, and sank into a seat.
“Surprise!” he said happily.
She looked at him stonily, then relented a little when she saw his jazz hands manoeuvre falter a littler.
“Apparently we took part in a mass wedding ceremony this afternoon,” he explained. “Kafaria has Federation Ally status, so all legal ceremonies undertaken there are valid in the eyes of the Federation. And the JAG corps.”
“Married,” she said dumbly. “Joined in the eyes and arms of the Goddess. Holy shit.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, still smiling. “When I tell Bones, I’m never going to hear the end of it.”
Janice sat in silence as she processed what had just happened. He had known it was her - or at least suspected it was her - for as long as they had been working with each other. Then now they had accidentally got married and nearly ended up having sex in an alleyway again.
“And why did you show me those regs?” she asked, confused.
“Well,” he said, sinking into the seat next to her, and picking up one of her hands in his larger one, “I was thinking that if we had any other jobs than the ones we have, I’d have asked you out long ago.”
“Yeah, me too,” she found herself admitting. “But captains and their yeomen can’t date.”
“They can if they’re already married,” he said triumphantly. “Five hours out of every ninety six, remember?”
She looked at him, lost for words, but clearly her expression was enough to make him clarify things.
“What I’m proposing is, let’s not file for divorce with the JAG corps straight away. Let’s let the marriage stand, legally speaking. We can then make use of the time we’ve been ordered to take to get to know each other without these ranks hanging over our heads.”
“And if we don’t suit?” she made herself say.
Kirk shrugged.
“Then we file for divorce, and go back to how things are now.”
He paused to look at her directly.
“But I think we suit, Janice,” he said, his voice going a little deeper. His thumb started to rub the skin on the back of her hand. “And I think that you think that too. So, what do you say?”
He looked at her expectantly, and despite the confidence of his voice, she could see a glimmer of fear in his eyes. This man, who had taken on the most dangerous man in the universe in combat and won, this man who had gone on to outwit and out manoeuvre some of this galaxy’s greatest threats, was actually scared that she’d turn him down.
“I have ground rules,” she warned him, and he gave her a dazzling smile that turned her knees to jelly.
“I’ll break them,” he warned her, and she smiled in return.
“I know,” she sighed. “But I guess I’ll learn to live with it.”
The kiss they shared then was ten times better than any they had shared before, and was only the start of the kisses they would share in the future.
Janice Rand and Jim Kirk had sex, got married and fell in love.
Yes, in that order.
No, they’re not joking.
(She really wishes they were; he still gets a kick out of it, even after all this time. But secretly, she does too.)