You Can't Live Your Life Like A Romance Novel
Title: You Can't Live Your Life Like A Romance Novel
Authors: fringedweller and izzyfics
Pairing: Kirk/Rand
Rating: PG-13 - they talk about it, but they don't do it...yet
Warnings: None
Summary: Prequel to Project Corset Removal, where McCoy and Chapel are locked in a Pride and Prejudice-style holo-programme by their well meaning friends. Not really necessary to read, but it's very hot.
Word count: 3878
Disclaimer: Nothing that you recognise here belongs to us in any way.
Beta: seren_ccd
The captain wasn’t in his ready room when she arrived on schedule to complete the last of the personnel evaluation forms that Starfleet Command needed this week. Janice sighed, and tapped at her PADD, requesting the location of the captain from the ship’s computer. It had him located in Jefferies tube twenty seven-epsilon, which meant that the captain of the ship was currently inching his way through a narrow maintenance tube directly above the ship’s swimming pool.
Janice really didn’t want to know why he was doing that, but her primary job was keeping the captain‘s administrative paperwork to manageable levels, and it was hard to do that when he wasn’t on the same deck as she was.
“Rand to Captain Kirk,” she said, activating the comm unit in the wall. “Captain Kirk, please respond.”
He didn’t reply immediately. Probably got his comm unit in his pants pocket, and those tubes are tight, so he’s going to have to wriggle around a bit... The mental image of her captain wriggling and writhing, snaking his hand down his body to retrieve the comm unit was quite a pleasant one, and before long she was quite lost in a little fantasy about being called down there to join him in the tight space, wriggling against him and finding-
When he did finally respond, his voice, panting with exertion, snapped her out of her heated reverie.
“Oh shit, Janice, I’m late, aren’t I?”
“You are, sir,” she agreed. “Starfleet Command needs these evaluations as soon as possible.”
There were a few exasperated puffs of air and some metallic noises before he spoke again.
“It’s going to take me a little while to get out of here,” he admitted.
“Are you stuck, sir?” she asked, humour creeping in at the edge of her voice.
“No!” he said indignantly. “Wedged, possibly...” His voice trailed off and there were a few more metallic noises.
“Shall I reschedule for later, sir?” she asked, holding back a sigh as she pulled up his schedule and tried to find another window for the meeting.
“No!” he said firmly. “It’s my fault I’m down here and not up there with you. You stay put. Order some lunch, for the two of us. We can eat while doing the reports.”
“Understood, sir,” she replied, bringing up the menu on her PADD to see what he had chosen for lunch over the last few days. Too much fat and salt, she thought as she noted the burgers and the pizza, and ordered up some healthy grilled chicken and a large, tangy salad. Knowing that he’d complain otherwise, she also added an ice-cream sundae for dessert, but she substituted the ice -cream with lower-fat frozen yogurt. Resisting temptation to order up a big bowl of fries and some garlic bread for herself, she doubled the order so she would have the same as him.
The mess hall acknowledged her message, and she looked through her to-do list and cleared a few items. Still, despite this time-wasting activity, Kirk still hadn’t appeared. At a loose end, she called up the novel she was reading and settled down to get lost in the world of regency heiresses and ravishing rakes for a few minutes.
Yes, she knew they were ridiculous. They were completely formulaic and conveniently side-stepped some of the more unpleasant realities of the time period. No romance writer ever mentioned how a woman coped with her period in the days before the medication that most women chose to take to stop their bleeds. The writers also glossed over the shocking legal position of women, unless it was a plot point in their novel. As much as she loved the novels, Janice was under no illusion about how women really lived in the nineteenth century.
But there was a good reason why writers kept returning to that period of history to set their stories. On a starship where everything she wore, ate and did was controlled and regulated to be as efficient as possible, it was fun to dream about gowns whose purpose was nothing but decorative. Empire-line cuts to aid in flaunting or concealing décolletage, as many shades of colour as she wanted - dresses so intricate that she’d need a servant to get her in and out of them. Delicate dancing clippers, ornate pelisses - bonnets, damnit. Every woman deserved to wear a bonnet every so often.
And the men. Oh, the men.
Regency heroes were uniformly tall and broad, handsome of face and possessed with a voice that set heroine’s hearts a-flutter. They were masterly and commanding, yet able to be knocked completely off-course by the mere presence of the woman of their dreams. They were either rich, or titled, or both, and after some minor plot device (the big misunderstanding), they unfailingly swept the (woefully impoverished, highly virginal) women up into their muscled arms (after begging forgiveness on their knees for their stupid actions) and off to paradise. Paradise being, of course, a large country estate in Wiltshire, where they would-without fail-have lots of sex and produce lots of heirs.
Heroes were never coarse, overweight, intellectually-challenged or burdened with halitosis, acne or hair loss. They never promised a girl the moon and failed to deliver it. They always treated a lady with respect, and in the racier novels, made sure she came first.
No, there was a very good reason that romance novels set in the nineteenth century still appealed in the twenty-third, and it was the same reason that they would appeal in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth as well. They gave a woman hope that one day, out there somewhere, was their own Jack Faraday, or Alexander Cale or even Quinlan Bancroft.
Janice hoped that she didn’t have a Quinlan waiting for her, because she wasn’t sure that she could manage to moan “Oh, Quinlan!” in bed without laughing.
She got so engrossed by her novel that she didn’t hear the doors to the ready room slide open.
“What’s got you so entranced?” Kirk asked cheerfully. “I hope it’s something more exciting than personnel evaluations.”
He snatched up her PADD and scanned the screen. Janice blushed and made a grab for it, but he used his extra inches and held it just out of her reach. Like a bully. Or a bullying older brother. Not that she thought of her captain at all like a brother.
“Just a silly novel,” she said, desperately. “Nothing to be interested in, captain.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, reading the page rapidly. “It seems pretty interesting to me. Why are they in a closet?”
“Because he thinks she’s a spy for the French government and she thinks he’s stolen a priceless manuscript, and while they were searching the library for clues, a housemaid startled them and they ended up hiding in the same closet,” Janice said in a rush, her cheeks going from pink to bright red.
“I’m not sure that’s physically possible in a closet,” Kirk said, tipping his head slightly as if he was imagining the contortions that they characters were twisted into.
Oh, she knew what contortions he was thinking about as she had just reread the passage for the fourth time. “It’s just a silly novel,” Janice repeated, taking the opportunity of his distraction to grab the PADD away from him and close down the text. “Shall we get on with these evaluations?”
“There’s no need to be embarrassed, Janice,” Kirk said blithely, settling in behind his desk. “I’ve been known to read or two of those silly stories myself.”
“You have?” she asked, blinking.
Kirk shrugged, and this time it was his turn to look a little embarrassed. “I got into trouble as a kid on a fairly frequent basis, and one time my step-dad had me clean up the attic as punishment. I found a stack of real old-fashioned paper novels in a box up there. Must have belonged to a great-grandmother or something, but reading them was better than cleaning up the crap of generations past. They weren’t half-bad.”
“Oh,” Janice said, her blush beginning to fade. “Well, anyway, I was just killing time until you got here. And you’re here now, so let’s get these evaluations started, shall we?”
They managed four before lunch arrived, and predictably he started to complain about the salad until he caught sight of the sundae. Janice rolled her eyes, and settled down to her meal.
“They’re great for teaching you about sex,” he said suddenly, out of nowhere. Janice, mid-mouthful, started to choke. “The books, I mean,” he said hurriedly as he poured her a glass of water. “When you’re a young teenager and you’ve got no idea what women want, those books sort of spell it out for you.”
“Hmm,” Janice said, regaining her composure.
“You don’t agree with me?” he said, using the full Kirk smile. She felt parts of her that hadn’t been in circulation much recently begin to perk up.
“Well,” she began hesitantly. “The sex isn’t exactly realistic, is it? It’s all quivering bosoms and virginal fluttering, with the hero being very...dominant.”
“Go on,” Kirk said, obviously intrigued.
“Not every woman wants to be passive in the bedroom, captain.” Janice smiled. “Or the closet, for that matter. These books are fun to read, and I’d imagine that any woman losing her virginity with the man she loved would be feeling a bit like the heroines do, but they’re just escapism. Fantasy.”
Her tone of voice changed, and a harsh look came over her face before she chased it away.
“Reality is different,” she said eventually. “You can’t live your life like a romance novel.”
“No,” he said, clearly considering her words carefully. “But surely there’s room for a little fantasy in everybody’s life?”
“That’s what the rec room’s holoprogram is for,” Janice said firmly.
“That’s all the crew use it for,” Kirk grumbled. “Did you see the maintenance reports from Engineering? They’ve had to change the biological filters three times, and the decks have only been working for a month.”
“It was a bit of a stretch to think that the crew would just use them for training purposes,” Janice laughed.
“I think the only person who hasn’t been jumping off waterfalls or hot-air ballooning with Phileas Fogg, or doing...other stuff is Bones,” Kirk said, digging into his sundae. “I’ve tried to make him go, but he always has an excuse. I think he just likes staring at Chapel across the biobeds too much.”
Janice snorted, a very unladylike sound that would never make it into a romance novel.
“You don’t think he likes her?” Kirk asked, amused. “She’s always coming up in conversation.”
“He’s got a very odd way of showing that he likes her,” Janice said slowly. “I trust that this will go no further than this room? Because I’m betraying a confidence here.”
“My lips are sealed,” Kirk replied eagerly. He leant forward, as if she were about to whisper.
“She’s head over heels for him,” Janice said, leaning forward as well. “But she’s convinced that she’s invisible to him as anything other than a nurse. It’s really getting her down, but she’s so totally gone on him that she won’t look at anybody else.”
“It’s always the smartest people that are the stupidest when it comes to love,” Kirk mused. He smacked his hand down on the table authoritatively. “I’m making an executive decision,” he said firmly. “Cancel all my appointments for the rest of this shift, and tell Spock I won’t be on the bridge today. We’ll blast through the last performance evaluations then spend the rest of the day coming up with a plan to get those two idiots together.”
Janice raised her eyebrows. “Seriously?” she asked, raising her stylus to the PADD.
He nodded firmly. “Absolutely,” he declared. “What’s the point of being captain if you can’t hijack your schedule once in a while?”
“Alright then,” Janice replied, smiling. With a few flicks of her stylus she cancelled four meetings, reorganising them for later in the week, and informed Commander Spock of the captain’s decision to lead from his office today.
“Tell me, Janice, does Chapel like romance novels too?” Kirk asked thoughtfully as they finished up the last of the evaluations.
“She’s borrowed a few from me, but she’s not a big fan,” Janice said, thinking. “She does like Pride and Prejudice, although I wouldn’t call it a romance novel, as such.”
“Do you think she’d be up for a holoprogram version of it?” Kirk asked. “You tell her that you’ve got a holo copy of Pride and Prejudice, and when she turns up, she discovers it’s been altered a bit to include a grumpy American gentleman. The program won’t end until they christen a closet together.”
“It will end when they kiss,” said Janice firmly. “I don’t want to force them to do anything they don’t want to do.”
“Fine,” Kirk agreed, waving a hand in the air. “Kiss. Or get busy in a closet, whatever happens first.”
“It sounds great,” Janice said, intrigued. “But how are you going to convince McCoy to go into the program willingly? You know that they have to be wearing period dress going in there, and I don’t see him as the type to strut around the ship for hours in knee-breeches and a waistcoat voluntarily.”
“Leave it to me,” Kirk said airily. “I know how to motivate Bones. All we need to do is get our hands on a copy of Pride and Prejudice and a programming guide. Piece of cake.”
It took them four and a half hours, two bags of chocolate-covered raisins and a lot of creative cursing, but by the end of the night they had a workable, adulterated Pride and Prejudice holoprogram ready to go. It had been fun, working with the captain in close quarters for so long.
“For God’s sake, call me Jim,” he had said, after her fourth ‘captain’ in a row. “We’re hijacking a classic piece of literature for the purpose of hooking up our idiot friends. I think that means we can be on a first-name basis.”
He’d said that before, many times, trying to turn her into his friend. She had resisted, knowing deep down that the moment that he stopped being the captain and started being in any way approachable, she’d be sunk under the weight of her hopeless aspirations. But there was something about him right now, so cheerful about the chance to play hooky and help out a friend that she just couldn’t resist.
“It’ll take some getting used to,” she said quietly, looking at him from under her lashes.
“It’ll happen more quickly if you start using it,” he said seriously. “I don’t want to be Captain Kirk with you Janice.”
“Jim it is then,” she said, finally working up the courage to look him in the eyes. “But only when no-one else is around. Regulations and all.”
“Regulations,” he repeated, and looked away quickly before saying, a shade too brightly, “So, how many sisters did Elizabeth have again?”
They had bickered and joked as they worked, and if she hadn’t been half in love with him at the start of their programming session then she would have been at the end. He had provided the technical know-how, but she had been the one with the in-depth knowledge of the story and the genre. They worked well together, reining the other in when their plans got a little too extreme.
“There,” he said in satisfaction as he finished the last piece of code. “It’s all done. I’ll get Bones to the rec room at 1900 hours, you get Chapel there half an hour earlier. The program lets her play around for a while before he’s introduced.”
“I hope this is worth it,” she grumbled, stretching out tired limbs. He tugged gently on a loose section of hair that had slipped from her elaborate up-do.
“We’re trying to give our friends a happily-ever-after,” he teased. “Of course it’s worth it.”
“You really are a romantic at heart, aren’t you?” she joked, but by the way he refused to catch her eye she realised she had touched a nerve in him.
“That’s not a bad thing,” she ventured, softly.
“It doesn’t really fit the image though, does it?” he said, his handsome face slipping into a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.
No, she thought sadly. And isn’t that a crying shame for the women of the galaxy?
“Your secret romance-novel reading days are safe with me, Jim,” she said softly. “I won’t tell a soul, I promise.”
“Especially not the Klingons,” he joked.
“I don’t know,” Janice said lightly. “Have you ever read any Klingon love poetry? Heady stuff.”
“Really?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“Oh yes. In their culture, apparently, men court their women by reciting love poetry to them.”
“What do the women do?” he asked, curiously.
“Throw heavy objects at them, from what I’ve been able to gather.”
His lips quirked.
“Not a million miles away from our sickbay, then?”
“Ah, ah, be fair,” she scolded. “She only threw the osteoregenerator once, and she claimed that it slipped out of her hands.”
He laughed, and she joined in, tension dissipated.
“How are we going to know if it’s worked?” he said suddenly, as she prepared to leave.
“I assumed we would ask them,” she said, pausing by the door.
“We could do that,” he said. “Or, we could, you know, monitor the rec room doors.”
“Monitor them?” she asked suspiciously. “How?”
He shrugged. “Join me for coffee in the rec room? We can sit in the corner. They won’t notice us when they stumble out in a hormonal haze.”
“Coffee,” she repeated. “Yes, I can manage coffee.”
“It’s a date!” he said brightly.
“A date where we’re going to be speculating on the sex lives of our friends,” she pointed out.
“Oh, come on, I do that all the time,” he said, winking.
She shook her head. “Fine, coffee. But you know you have a pretty tight schedule tomorrow, to make up for today?”
“It’ll be worth it,” he said firmly.
It hadn’t taken much convincing to get Christine to take a look at the holo-program. The combination of “brand-new” and “first one to try it” was pretty much all it took, which was a shame because Janice had spent the twenty minutes she had allowed herself for lunch thinking up excuses to get Christine in there.
“Dancing, Christine! Dancing! You know, those old-fashioned, out-of-date English country dances you learned in that elective class? The theatre club loved you, remember?”
“Oh, and not only that-but dancing with broody Darcy types-if they’ll have you. Or you can exchange witty repartee with other gentleman. All as a proper lady, of course. Don’t forget your manners.”
She mentioned “dancing” after her first introduction to the program and Christine had squealed in delight. Well, as much as the head nurse would allow herself to sound like an eight-year-old girl when someone might overhear. Someone being McCoy, who was giving them the eye from two biobeds over, oblivious that he was next.
Janice was lurking in the corner of the rec room when McCoy turned up looking positively edible in knee breeches and a large white shirt. She had no idea how Kirk had got him there, but he looked grumpier than usual and was muttering to himself as he inputted his access code. The doors opened and he stamped his way in, already in character as the irascible wealthy American gentlemen who accidentally ended up in Meryton, Hertfordshire.
The doors closed and locked with an audible thump, and that’s when the captain appeared out if nowhere and surprised her.
“It’s done!” he said gleefully.
She jumped and spilled her glass of fruit juice down the front of her uniform. “Captain!” she said in surprise, before catching sight of herself and groaning. He picked up a napkin and started to dab at the stain, but stopped when he realised he was effectively groping her breasts in public.
“Sorry,” he said, not sounding apologetic at all. “And it’s Jim, remember?”
“Vividly,” she muttered, getting the worst of the juice out of her clothing.
“I’ll get you another,” he offered, and before she could refuse he was back with a drink that had something other than fruit juice in it.
“Relax,” he told her. “You’re off the clock. Live a little.”
“I’m not sure captains are supposed to ply their yeomen with alcohol,” she teased, sipping the fruity cocktail in front of her.
“It’s a good thing that I’m Jim and you’re Janice then, isn’t it?” he said, blasting that smile that wiped away any lingering doubts she had about her sanity, or sense of propriety.
They were there for hours, although it really didn’t seem so long to Janice. Despite his informality, they usually spent their time together working, so being on the receiving end of his attention was a heady rush. When Jim Kirk paid attention to something, he gave it fully, and those azure eyes were both magnetic and hypnotic.
By the time the doors opened in the near-empty room much later, Janice was sitting very close to Jim, his arm thrown lazily across the back of their couch.
“Look,” he whispered in her ear, pulling them both back into the shadows.
McCoy stuck his head out, and obviously thought the room was clear because he stepped out and extended his hand for Christine. He was naked to the waist but grinning like a lunatic.
Christine, dressed in his white shirt and not a lot else, came out of the programme with the glow of a woman who was extremely satisfied. They kissed, long and hard, before he rumbled something low in her ear that got him a bone-fide giggle and a playful shove, then another kiss. With one arm firmly around her shoulders, McCoy guided her from the room. When the doors to the rec room shut behind them, Jim and Janice were the only people left in the room.
“Our work here is done,” Jim said in a satisfied tone of voice.
“They looked so happy,” Janice said, trying to keep the wistfulness from her voice. “It was a great idea, Jim.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said softly.
There was a pause, and if this was a romance novel, Janice thought, on the verge of hysterics, this would be the moment that he draws me close and kisses me in a way that I’ve never been kissed before. There was a silence she felt desperate to fill, so she stuttered out a shamefully stupid , “It’s late, I must be going,” and immediately wished that she hadn’t, as the brightness in his eyes dimmed for just a second. She forced herself to release the breath she was holding, and move away from the heat of his body. Right now they were Janice and Jim, but tomorrow they had to be Yeoman Rand and Captain Kirk, and you couldn’t live your life like a romance novel. No matter how much you wanted to.
She left the rec room, and forced herself not to look back.
Provided by website-hit-counters.com .
Authors: fringedweller and izzyfics
Pairing: Kirk/Rand
Rating: PG-13 - they talk about it, but they don't do it...yet
Warnings: None
Summary: Prequel to Project Corset Removal, where McCoy and Chapel are locked in a Pride and Prejudice-style holo-programme by their well meaning friends. Not really necessary to read, but it's very hot.
Word count: 3878
Disclaimer: Nothing that you recognise here belongs to us in any way.
Beta: seren_ccd
The captain wasn’t in his ready room when she arrived on schedule to complete the last of the personnel evaluation forms that Starfleet Command needed this week. Janice sighed, and tapped at her PADD, requesting the location of the captain from the ship’s computer. It had him located in Jefferies tube twenty seven-epsilon, which meant that the captain of the ship was currently inching his way through a narrow maintenance tube directly above the ship’s swimming pool.
Janice really didn’t want to know why he was doing that, but her primary job was keeping the captain‘s administrative paperwork to manageable levels, and it was hard to do that when he wasn’t on the same deck as she was.
“Rand to Captain Kirk,” she said, activating the comm unit in the wall. “Captain Kirk, please respond.”
He didn’t reply immediately. Probably got his comm unit in his pants pocket, and those tubes are tight, so he’s going to have to wriggle around a bit... The mental image of her captain wriggling and writhing, snaking his hand down his body to retrieve the comm unit was quite a pleasant one, and before long she was quite lost in a little fantasy about being called down there to join him in the tight space, wriggling against him and finding-
When he did finally respond, his voice, panting with exertion, snapped her out of her heated reverie.
“Oh shit, Janice, I’m late, aren’t I?”
“You are, sir,” she agreed. “Starfleet Command needs these evaluations as soon as possible.”
There were a few exasperated puffs of air and some metallic noises before he spoke again.
“It’s going to take me a little while to get out of here,” he admitted.
“Are you stuck, sir?” she asked, humour creeping in at the edge of her voice.
“No!” he said indignantly. “Wedged, possibly...” His voice trailed off and there were a few more metallic noises.
“Shall I reschedule for later, sir?” she asked, holding back a sigh as she pulled up his schedule and tried to find another window for the meeting.
“No!” he said firmly. “It’s my fault I’m down here and not up there with you. You stay put. Order some lunch, for the two of us. We can eat while doing the reports.”
“Understood, sir,” she replied, bringing up the menu on her PADD to see what he had chosen for lunch over the last few days. Too much fat and salt, she thought as she noted the burgers and the pizza, and ordered up some healthy grilled chicken and a large, tangy salad. Knowing that he’d complain otherwise, she also added an ice-cream sundae for dessert, but she substituted the ice -cream with lower-fat frozen yogurt. Resisting temptation to order up a big bowl of fries and some garlic bread for herself, she doubled the order so she would have the same as him.
The mess hall acknowledged her message, and she looked through her to-do list and cleared a few items. Still, despite this time-wasting activity, Kirk still hadn’t appeared. At a loose end, she called up the novel she was reading and settled down to get lost in the world of regency heiresses and ravishing rakes for a few minutes.
Yes, she knew they were ridiculous. They were completely formulaic and conveniently side-stepped some of the more unpleasant realities of the time period. No romance writer ever mentioned how a woman coped with her period in the days before the medication that most women chose to take to stop their bleeds. The writers also glossed over the shocking legal position of women, unless it was a plot point in their novel. As much as she loved the novels, Janice was under no illusion about how women really lived in the nineteenth century.
But there was a good reason why writers kept returning to that period of history to set their stories. On a starship where everything she wore, ate and did was controlled and regulated to be as efficient as possible, it was fun to dream about gowns whose purpose was nothing but decorative. Empire-line cuts to aid in flaunting or concealing décolletage, as many shades of colour as she wanted - dresses so intricate that she’d need a servant to get her in and out of them. Delicate dancing clippers, ornate pelisses - bonnets, damnit. Every woman deserved to wear a bonnet every so often.
And the men. Oh, the men.
Regency heroes were uniformly tall and broad, handsome of face and possessed with a voice that set heroine’s hearts a-flutter. They were masterly and commanding, yet able to be knocked completely off-course by the mere presence of the woman of their dreams. They were either rich, or titled, or both, and after some minor plot device (the big misunderstanding), they unfailingly swept the (woefully impoverished, highly virginal) women up into their muscled arms (after begging forgiveness on their knees for their stupid actions) and off to paradise. Paradise being, of course, a large country estate in Wiltshire, where they would-without fail-have lots of sex and produce lots of heirs.
Heroes were never coarse, overweight, intellectually-challenged or burdened with halitosis, acne or hair loss. They never promised a girl the moon and failed to deliver it. They always treated a lady with respect, and in the racier novels, made sure she came first.
No, there was a very good reason that romance novels set in the nineteenth century still appealed in the twenty-third, and it was the same reason that they would appeal in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth as well. They gave a woman hope that one day, out there somewhere, was their own Jack Faraday, or Alexander Cale or even Quinlan Bancroft.
Janice hoped that she didn’t have a Quinlan waiting for her, because she wasn’t sure that she could manage to moan “Oh, Quinlan!” in bed without laughing.
She got so engrossed by her novel that she didn’t hear the doors to the ready room slide open.
“What’s got you so entranced?” Kirk asked cheerfully. “I hope it’s something more exciting than personnel evaluations.”
He snatched up her PADD and scanned the screen. Janice blushed and made a grab for it, but he used his extra inches and held it just out of her reach. Like a bully. Or a bullying older brother. Not that she thought of her captain at all like a brother.
“Just a silly novel,” she said, desperately. “Nothing to be interested in, captain.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, reading the page rapidly. “It seems pretty interesting to me. Why are they in a closet?”
“Because he thinks she’s a spy for the French government and she thinks he’s stolen a priceless manuscript, and while they were searching the library for clues, a housemaid startled them and they ended up hiding in the same closet,” Janice said in a rush, her cheeks going from pink to bright red.
“I’m not sure that’s physically possible in a closet,” Kirk said, tipping his head slightly as if he was imagining the contortions that they characters were twisted into.
Oh, she knew what contortions he was thinking about as she had just reread the passage for the fourth time. “It’s just a silly novel,” Janice repeated, taking the opportunity of his distraction to grab the PADD away from him and close down the text. “Shall we get on with these evaluations?”
“There’s no need to be embarrassed, Janice,” Kirk said blithely, settling in behind his desk. “I’ve been known to read or two of those silly stories myself.”
“You have?” she asked, blinking.
Kirk shrugged, and this time it was his turn to look a little embarrassed. “I got into trouble as a kid on a fairly frequent basis, and one time my step-dad had me clean up the attic as punishment. I found a stack of real old-fashioned paper novels in a box up there. Must have belonged to a great-grandmother or something, but reading them was better than cleaning up the crap of generations past. They weren’t half-bad.”
“Oh,” Janice said, her blush beginning to fade. “Well, anyway, I was just killing time until you got here. And you’re here now, so let’s get these evaluations started, shall we?”
They managed four before lunch arrived, and predictably he started to complain about the salad until he caught sight of the sundae. Janice rolled her eyes, and settled down to her meal.
“They’re great for teaching you about sex,” he said suddenly, out of nowhere. Janice, mid-mouthful, started to choke. “The books, I mean,” he said hurriedly as he poured her a glass of water. “When you’re a young teenager and you’ve got no idea what women want, those books sort of spell it out for you.”
“Hmm,” Janice said, regaining her composure.
“You don’t agree with me?” he said, using the full Kirk smile. She felt parts of her that hadn’t been in circulation much recently begin to perk up.
“Well,” she began hesitantly. “The sex isn’t exactly realistic, is it? It’s all quivering bosoms and virginal fluttering, with the hero being very...dominant.”
“Go on,” Kirk said, obviously intrigued.
“Not every woman wants to be passive in the bedroom, captain.” Janice smiled. “Or the closet, for that matter. These books are fun to read, and I’d imagine that any woman losing her virginity with the man she loved would be feeling a bit like the heroines do, but they’re just escapism. Fantasy.”
Her tone of voice changed, and a harsh look came over her face before she chased it away.
“Reality is different,” she said eventually. “You can’t live your life like a romance novel.”
“No,” he said, clearly considering her words carefully. “But surely there’s room for a little fantasy in everybody’s life?”
“That’s what the rec room’s holoprogram is for,” Janice said firmly.
“That’s all the crew use it for,” Kirk grumbled. “Did you see the maintenance reports from Engineering? They’ve had to change the biological filters three times, and the decks have only been working for a month.”
“It was a bit of a stretch to think that the crew would just use them for training purposes,” Janice laughed.
“I think the only person who hasn’t been jumping off waterfalls or hot-air ballooning with Phileas Fogg, or doing...other stuff is Bones,” Kirk said, digging into his sundae. “I’ve tried to make him go, but he always has an excuse. I think he just likes staring at Chapel across the biobeds too much.”
Janice snorted, a very unladylike sound that would never make it into a romance novel.
“You don’t think he likes her?” Kirk asked, amused. “She’s always coming up in conversation.”
“He’s got a very odd way of showing that he likes her,” Janice said slowly. “I trust that this will go no further than this room? Because I’m betraying a confidence here.”
“My lips are sealed,” Kirk replied eagerly. He leant forward, as if she were about to whisper.
“She’s head over heels for him,” Janice said, leaning forward as well. “But she’s convinced that she’s invisible to him as anything other than a nurse. It’s really getting her down, but she’s so totally gone on him that she won’t look at anybody else.”
“It’s always the smartest people that are the stupidest when it comes to love,” Kirk mused. He smacked his hand down on the table authoritatively. “I’m making an executive decision,” he said firmly. “Cancel all my appointments for the rest of this shift, and tell Spock I won’t be on the bridge today. We’ll blast through the last performance evaluations then spend the rest of the day coming up with a plan to get those two idiots together.”
Janice raised her eyebrows. “Seriously?” she asked, raising her stylus to the PADD.
He nodded firmly. “Absolutely,” he declared. “What’s the point of being captain if you can’t hijack your schedule once in a while?”
“Alright then,” Janice replied, smiling. With a few flicks of her stylus she cancelled four meetings, reorganising them for later in the week, and informed Commander Spock of the captain’s decision to lead from his office today.
“Tell me, Janice, does Chapel like romance novels too?” Kirk asked thoughtfully as they finished up the last of the evaluations.
“She’s borrowed a few from me, but she’s not a big fan,” Janice said, thinking. “She does like Pride and Prejudice, although I wouldn’t call it a romance novel, as such.”
“Do you think she’d be up for a holoprogram version of it?” Kirk asked. “You tell her that you’ve got a holo copy of Pride and Prejudice, and when she turns up, she discovers it’s been altered a bit to include a grumpy American gentleman. The program won’t end until they christen a closet together.”
“It will end when they kiss,” said Janice firmly. “I don’t want to force them to do anything they don’t want to do.”
“Fine,” Kirk agreed, waving a hand in the air. “Kiss. Or get busy in a closet, whatever happens first.”
“It sounds great,” Janice said, intrigued. “But how are you going to convince McCoy to go into the program willingly? You know that they have to be wearing period dress going in there, and I don’t see him as the type to strut around the ship for hours in knee-breeches and a waistcoat voluntarily.”
“Leave it to me,” Kirk said airily. “I know how to motivate Bones. All we need to do is get our hands on a copy of Pride and Prejudice and a programming guide. Piece of cake.”
It took them four and a half hours, two bags of chocolate-covered raisins and a lot of creative cursing, but by the end of the night they had a workable, adulterated Pride and Prejudice holoprogram ready to go. It had been fun, working with the captain in close quarters for so long.
“For God’s sake, call me Jim,” he had said, after her fourth ‘captain’ in a row. “We’re hijacking a classic piece of literature for the purpose of hooking up our idiot friends. I think that means we can be on a first-name basis.”
He’d said that before, many times, trying to turn her into his friend. She had resisted, knowing deep down that the moment that he stopped being the captain and started being in any way approachable, she’d be sunk under the weight of her hopeless aspirations. But there was something about him right now, so cheerful about the chance to play hooky and help out a friend that she just couldn’t resist.
“It’ll take some getting used to,” she said quietly, looking at him from under her lashes.
“It’ll happen more quickly if you start using it,” he said seriously. “I don’t want to be Captain Kirk with you Janice.”
“Jim it is then,” she said, finally working up the courage to look him in the eyes. “But only when no-one else is around. Regulations and all.”
“Regulations,” he repeated, and looked away quickly before saying, a shade too brightly, “So, how many sisters did Elizabeth have again?”
They had bickered and joked as they worked, and if she hadn’t been half in love with him at the start of their programming session then she would have been at the end. He had provided the technical know-how, but she had been the one with the in-depth knowledge of the story and the genre. They worked well together, reining the other in when their plans got a little too extreme.
“There,” he said in satisfaction as he finished the last piece of code. “It’s all done. I’ll get Bones to the rec room at 1900 hours, you get Chapel there half an hour earlier. The program lets her play around for a while before he’s introduced.”
“I hope this is worth it,” she grumbled, stretching out tired limbs. He tugged gently on a loose section of hair that had slipped from her elaborate up-do.
“We’re trying to give our friends a happily-ever-after,” he teased. “Of course it’s worth it.”
“You really are a romantic at heart, aren’t you?” she joked, but by the way he refused to catch her eye she realised she had touched a nerve in him.
“That’s not a bad thing,” she ventured, softly.
“It doesn’t really fit the image though, does it?” he said, his handsome face slipping into a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.
No, she thought sadly. And isn’t that a crying shame for the women of the galaxy?
“Your secret romance-novel reading days are safe with me, Jim,” she said softly. “I won’t tell a soul, I promise.”
“Especially not the Klingons,” he joked.
“I don’t know,” Janice said lightly. “Have you ever read any Klingon love poetry? Heady stuff.”
“Really?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“Oh yes. In their culture, apparently, men court their women by reciting love poetry to them.”
“What do the women do?” he asked, curiously.
“Throw heavy objects at them, from what I’ve been able to gather.”
His lips quirked.
“Not a million miles away from our sickbay, then?”
“Ah, ah, be fair,” she scolded. “She only threw the osteoregenerator once, and she claimed that it slipped out of her hands.”
He laughed, and she joined in, tension dissipated.
“How are we going to know if it’s worked?” he said suddenly, as she prepared to leave.
“I assumed we would ask them,” she said, pausing by the door.
“We could do that,” he said. “Or, we could, you know, monitor the rec room doors.”
“Monitor them?” she asked suspiciously. “How?”
He shrugged. “Join me for coffee in the rec room? We can sit in the corner. They won’t notice us when they stumble out in a hormonal haze.”
“Coffee,” she repeated. “Yes, I can manage coffee.”
“It’s a date!” he said brightly.
“A date where we’re going to be speculating on the sex lives of our friends,” she pointed out.
“Oh, come on, I do that all the time,” he said, winking.
She shook her head. “Fine, coffee. But you know you have a pretty tight schedule tomorrow, to make up for today?”
“It’ll be worth it,” he said firmly.
It hadn’t taken much convincing to get Christine to take a look at the holo-program. The combination of “brand-new” and “first one to try it” was pretty much all it took, which was a shame because Janice had spent the twenty minutes she had allowed herself for lunch thinking up excuses to get Christine in there.
“Dancing, Christine! Dancing! You know, those old-fashioned, out-of-date English country dances you learned in that elective class? The theatre club loved you, remember?”
“Oh, and not only that-but dancing with broody Darcy types-if they’ll have you. Or you can exchange witty repartee with other gentleman. All as a proper lady, of course. Don’t forget your manners.”
She mentioned “dancing” after her first introduction to the program and Christine had squealed in delight. Well, as much as the head nurse would allow herself to sound like an eight-year-old girl when someone might overhear. Someone being McCoy, who was giving them the eye from two biobeds over, oblivious that he was next.
Janice was lurking in the corner of the rec room when McCoy turned up looking positively edible in knee breeches and a large white shirt. She had no idea how Kirk had got him there, but he looked grumpier than usual and was muttering to himself as he inputted his access code. The doors opened and he stamped his way in, already in character as the irascible wealthy American gentlemen who accidentally ended up in Meryton, Hertfordshire.
The doors closed and locked with an audible thump, and that’s when the captain appeared out if nowhere and surprised her.
“It’s done!” he said gleefully.
She jumped and spilled her glass of fruit juice down the front of her uniform. “Captain!” she said in surprise, before catching sight of herself and groaning. He picked up a napkin and started to dab at the stain, but stopped when he realised he was effectively groping her breasts in public.
“Sorry,” he said, not sounding apologetic at all. “And it’s Jim, remember?”
“Vividly,” she muttered, getting the worst of the juice out of her clothing.
“I’ll get you another,” he offered, and before she could refuse he was back with a drink that had something other than fruit juice in it.
“Relax,” he told her. “You’re off the clock. Live a little.”
“I’m not sure captains are supposed to ply their yeomen with alcohol,” she teased, sipping the fruity cocktail in front of her.
“It’s a good thing that I’m Jim and you’re Janice then, isn’t it?” he said, blasting that smile that wiped away any lingering doubts she had about her sanity, or sense of propriety.
They were there for hours, although it really didn’t seem so long to Janice. Despite his informality, they usually spent their time together working, so being on the receiving end of his attention was a heady rush. When Jim Kirk paid attention to something, he gave it fully, and those azure eyes were both magnetic and hypnotic.
By the time the doors opened in the near-empty room much later, Janice was sitting very close to Jim, his arm thrown lazily across the back of their couch.
“Look,” he whispered in her ear, pulling them both back into the shadows.
McCoy stuck his head out, and obviously thought the room was clear because he stepped out and extended his hand for Christine. He was naked to the waist but grinning like a lunatic.
Christine, dressed in his white shirt and not a lot else, came out of the programme with the glow of a woman who was extremely satisfied. They kissed, long and hard, before he rumbled something low in her ear that got him a bone-fide giggle and a playful shove, then another kiss. With one arm firmly around her shoulders, McCoy guided her from the room. When the doors to the rec room shut behind them, Jim and Janice were the only people left in the room.
“Our work here is done,” Jim said in a satisfied tone of voice.
“They looked so happy,” Janice said, trying to keep the wistfulness from her voice. “It was a great idea, Jim.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said softly.
There was a pause, and if this was a romance novel, Janice thought, on the verge of hysterics, this would be the moment that he draws me close and kisses me in a way that I’ve never been kissed before. There was a silence she felt desperate to fill, so she stuttered out a shamefully stupid , “It’s late, I must be going,” and immediately wished that she hadn’t, as the brightness in his eyes dimmed for just a second. She forced herself to release the breath she was holding, and move away from the heat of his body. Right now they were Janice and Jim, but tomorrow they had to be Yeoman Rand and Captain Kirk, and you couldn’t live your life like a romance novel. No matter how much you wanted to.
She left the rec room, and forced herself not to look back.
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