Big Bang 2010 - If Wishes Were Horses 3/18
Title: If Wishes Were Horses
Author: fringedweller
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Primarily Kirk/Rand, with background McCoy/Chapel and Pike/One and others, het and slash
Warnings: None
Length: 2273
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything recognisable in this fic and I’m not making any money from it.
Notes: Beta by seren_ccd
Summary: All her life Janice Rand had wanted one thing - to figure out just what she was supposed to do with herself. She drifted into Starfleet on a whim, and to her surprise, found a niche to fill. But being assigned to the Enterprise brings with it a challenge to her neat and ordered way of life, and Janice is unsure as to how much she's willing to let James T. Kirk affect her. But since when has love ever been easy? And will Janice let her heart stand in the way of her career?
Testing at Starfleet headquarters wasn’t what Janice had imagined - large rooms, banks of individual monitors, strict assessors and regimented rules. In fact, the first test occurred as soon as she docked at the shuttle bay.
A large crowd of people of her own age had gathered around a harassed looking official, all waving acceptance letters identical to her own. The cause of their complaint was clear; there were too many people booked onto transport to the Academy. Normal civilian shuttles weren’t allowed into Academy airspace, and all transport to and from the base had to be on Academy-owned transport. Except the shuttle they had sent to San Francisco International didn’t have enough seats; testing began in forty five minutes, and at this rate nobody would make it there in time.
The inundated official was trying to be heard over the angry shouts of the would-be recruits, but was failing. Janice looked around and spotted a voice amplification unit lying unused by the side of the official. Tired after her journey, anxious about lying to her parents and nervous about the upcoming tests, the bounds of politeness and civility snapped. Janice grabbed the amplification unit, switched it on and yelled for quiet.
The shock of the noise got the attention of all the struggling recruits; in the brief moment of calm that followed Janice relied on the tricks that got her through the hellish week of teaching practice. Speaking in a voice that radiated authority and calm, Janice ordered the recruits to form a line alphabetically. Reacting to the sound of authority in her voice, they jumped to obey her. While they were arguing amongst themselves, she walked over to the relived official and asked him how long it would take to get another shuttlecraft from the Academy to the dock.
“I’ll comm them now,” the official said hastily. “It should be ten minutes, tops.”
“Get them to acknowledge that the latecomers won’t be penalised for missing the first test,” Janice urged, and the man nodded.
As he bustled off, Janice used the amplification unit again.
“All recruits with family names from A to N will board the first shuttle. The second group will remain until further transport arrives. Nobody will be penalised for missing the starting time of the first test. Remain quiet and calm until the shuttle arrives. First group, you may board the transport.”
As half the people moved towards the waiting shuttle, Janice clicked off the amplification unit and stepped back. She bumped into somebody, and turned around to apologise. Standing behind her was a man in Starfleet uniform. Time with Maggie and Tara and their collection of photographs helped her to identify the uniform; he was a Chief Petty Officer.
“I’m sorry, Chief; I was only trying to help,” she apologised as he scrutinised her with harsh brown eyes. Then he smiled, turning his dark, craggy face into a handsome one.
“No need to apologise, Miss Rand; you have passed the first test.”
“First test?” Janice repeated, completely lost. Around her, the waiting crowd turned and started to listen in shamelessly to the conversation.
“Life in the fleet is unpredictable,” he told her, raising his voice so it carried to the crowd. “Things never go as planned, and at any time your experience may be called upon to solve problems. Any one of you could have assisted Petty Officer Phillips with crowd management and organisation, but it was Miss Rand that stepped up. Congratulations, Miss Rand. You and you alone passed the first test. Ladies and gentlemen, your shuttle is waiting at the next docking gate. Gather your things and board.”
He strode off in the direction of the docking bay and the crowd scrambled to follow him. Janice blushed under the onslaught of more than a few jealous looks and snide comments as she followed the pack, but a subtle clap on the back and murmured, “Wish I had thought of that!” from a fellow nervous looking applicant made her feel better.
“I’m Janice,” she said, extending a hand. She gasped as a smooth, gold tentacle curled around her wrist and shook it.
“Namara,” said her new friend. “Sorry about the tentacle, but my hands are full with my luggage. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” said Janice, trying not to sound provincial. “Not at all.”The truth was, for an inhabitant of the twenty third century she was woefully lacking in experiences with races other than human. Namara was the first tentacled being she had ever spoken to, let alone touched.
“They certainly seem useful,” Janice ventured as Namara released her wrist. As well as having two arms that looked similar to Janice’s, four long, thick tentacles emerged from Namara’s torso. They were all mobile and currently engaged in holding a mirror for Namara to check her hair, a comb that she was poking her hairstyle with, a PADD that was displaying the latest issue of a fashion magazine and a brightly coloured lipstick that she was dabbing at her lips.
“Oh, they are, until you get one jammed in a sliding door, then it’s agony,” Namara told her with real feeling. “Or one of your brothers decides to knot them together when you’re sleeping. “
Janice laughed. “My brothers used to do that with my shoelaces,” she told her.
“Brothers,” Namara said heavily, “should be banned.”
They sat together on the shuttle, and bonded with stories of being the only girl in the family. Namara’s race laid their eggs simultaneously, and Namara had been the sole girl in a clutch of eight children.
“Of course, I had to hatch last,” she grumbled. “So they all treat me as if I’m a baby, when I’m really just as old as they are.”
“Well, I am the baby,” Janice told Namara. “There’s seven years difference between myself and my oldest brother, and five between my other brother. As they’ve told me on numerous occasions, they were perfectly happy before I came along; there was no need for my parents to bother giving them a sister!”
“That’s so weird,” breathed Namara, looking at Janice as if she was an exhibit in a zoo. “I just can’t get over the fact that you humans have one baby at a time.”
“Well, some people have twins, or more, but they’re uncommon,” agreed Janice. “The thought of being hatched seems pretty weird to me!”
“I don’t know,” said Namara, running her hands over her slender body. “At least that way I’ll keep my figure!”
They laughed, and before they knew it they had docked at Starfleet headquarters and were being divided into pairs and allocated rooms. Because they had been sitting together on the shuttle, Janice and Namara ended up assigned together, which seemed to please both of them. Waiting in their rooms were standard issue recruit uniforms and Janice got a real buzz of excitement when she tugged the red dress on.
“Bugger,” muttered Namara from somewhere inside hers. “The tentacle holes aren’t big enough.”
“Hold on, I’ve got a pair of scissors somewhere,” Janice told her, and rummaged in her bag for the small emergency kit that Maggie had given her.
“One of these saved my life once,” Maggie had said seriously. “Keep it on you all the time, Janice.”
There were all sorts of items crammed into the small box, but Janice had remembered seeing a small pair of surgically-sharp scissors in there. Using them, she cut carefully around the holes already in Namara’s uniform and her tentacles popped free.
“Thanks Janice, you’re a life saver,” Namara told her gratefully.
“Why didn’t your uniform fit?” asked Janice, stashing the scissors away. “Did they get the wrong measurements?”
“No,” sighed Namara, smoothing her red dress across her body. “I gave them the wrong measurements. I was hoping to tone my tentacles up a little before I came, but I was so nervous about the testing that I’ve been comfort eating like crazy.”
She looked in the room’s full length mirror gloomily.
“Whenever I put weight on it goes straight to my tentacles,” she complained.
Janice snorted with laughter.
“What?” demanded Namara.
“It’s just that you sound exactly the same as me, only my weight goes straight to my hips and backside,” Janice laughed.
A smile twitched across Namara’s pretty face.
“I suppose we’re not all that different, are we?” she said, sounding hopeful that Janice would agree.
“No,” Janice replied, smiling at the gold-skinned, multi-tentacled alien standing in front of her. “No, I think we’re pretty similar, actually. Want a chocolate bar?”
“Ooh,” said Namara, drifting closer to the confectionary that Janice was unpacking. “What’s chocolate?”
Janice took a deep breath, and in her own small way, pushed forward the frontier of knowledge and exploration.
“Janice,” Namara said eventually, wrappers littering the floor around the women where they had ended up, leaning against their bunks. “I think I’m willing to hatch your eggs.”
Janice’s laughter was interrupted by an announcement that called all potential recruits to the main auditorium for an address by the Chief of Support Services, and arm-in tentacle, Namara and Janice followed the crowd of excited young people towards their future.
Medium Dave had been right, a fact that Maggie and Tara had known as soon as he had told them about his opinion of Janice’s potential. During the battery of tests that ran for the next day and a half, she consistently tested at the top of the group in organisational ability, time management and problem solving. At the end of the two days, Janice was offered a place at the Academy on a six-week training course to prepare her for a job in the Administrative support team. Namara, to her shock, had been offered a place in the Catering Corps.
“It’s those tentacles,” Janice told her over a celebratory drink. “You’ll be faster than anybody else in the kitchen.”
“I suppose so,” Namara mused. “But Janice, I know nothing about cooking!”
“You’ll learn,” Janice replied. “I have some friends that you might want to talk to, though. Just to settle your nerves.”
The training course started in a week, not long enough for Namara to travel back to her homeworld and back again, a fact that she had known before she applied to Starfleet. Her family had been very proud of her in her comm messages, although her brothers had all promised dire threats to any man that even looked at her in the wrong way. She had dealt with them with a mixture of disdain and annoyance, although Janice could tell that there was real affection reaching both ways across the galaxy.
Janice had sent a comm message to Tara and Maggie, who had immediately offered to host Namara for a week, and give her some practical experience at working in a kitchen. They travelled back to Janice’s hometown together, both still wearing the Starfleet training uniform. Janice stopped at the now-bustling cafe first, introduced Namara to her friends, then had gone home to break the news to her parents that she had finally decided on a career.
“Oh, thank God,” her mother said heavily when she appeared at the door of the living room in her uniform. “I thought you were actually going to go through with that secretarial course.”
“Pardon?” said Janice, confused. She had expected arguments, recrimination, even outright hostility towards her career choice. Her father was actually opening a bottle of champagne!
“Oh, Janice, we knew you hated the idea of coming to work with us,” her father said, kissing her on the cheek as he handed her a glass of champagne. “We just didn’t want to interfere. As soon as you told us you were helping Tara and Maggie at their cafe, we knew that something was up.”
“You know Tara and Maggie?” Janice was still confused.
“They came to pay a visit the day that you left for your testing, to let us know what was going on. They had an idea that you’d do well, so they wanted to pave the way for you, so to speak. Charming people,” her mother said. “I like them a lot.”
“I’ll be going into space,” Janice clarified for them. “Where there are space-type dangers.”
“Yes,” her father agreed, sitting next to her mother and taking her hand in his. “And obviously, we’re not keen on you being fired on by rampaging aliens. But you’ve got to live your life, Janice. Your mother and I love our lives, but it’s not for you. We can see that. For the first time in a very long time, you’re excited about something. We love you, baby girl. We want you to be excited.”
“Really?” sniffed Janice, trying not to cry.
“Really,” said her mother, who had lost her battle with tears. “But this isn’t license to go and do anything dangerous, do you hear?”
“Mom, I’ll be in administrative support,” Janice told her, swabbing at her eyes. “I’ll be filling in forms and chasing shipments of uniforms. No danger in that.”
“To Janice, then,” said her father firmly. “And her future career in space exploration and form-filling!”
They drank to her father’s toast. Then her brothers and their families arrived, hugged her fiercely and promised deathly vengeance on any man in uniform that even looked at her in the wrong way. That made Janice remember Namara, and the entire family, nieces and nephews and all, trooped down to the cafe where Maggie and Tara had been expecting them. With Namara’s help they had prepared a celebratory dinner, and all of Janice’s family, her blood relatives and her Starfleet ones, sat down to eat together.
Author: fringedweller
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Primarily Kirk/Rand, with background McCoy/Chapel and Pike/One and others, het and slash
Warnings: None
Length: 2273
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything recognisable in this fic and I’m not making any money from it.
Notes: Beta by seren_ccd
Summary: All her life Janice Rand had wanted one thing - to figure out just what she was supposed to do with herself. She drifted into Starfleet on a whim, and to her surprise, found a niche to fill. But being assigned to the Enterprise brings with it a challenge to her neat and ordered way of life, and Janice is unsure as to how much she's willing to let James T. Kirk affect her. But since when has love ever been easy? And will Janice let her heart stand in the way of her career?
Testing at Starfleet headquarters wasn’t what Janice had imagined - large rooms, banks of individual monitors, strict assessors and regimented rules. In fact, the first test occurred as soon as she docked at the shuttle bay.
A large crowd of people of her own age had gathered around a harassed looking official, all waving acceptance letters identical to her own. The cause of their complaint was clear; there were too many people booked onto transport to the Academy. Normal civilian shuttles weren’t allowed into Academy airspace, and all transport to and from the base had to be on Academy-owned transport. Except the shuttle they had sent to San Francisco International didn’t have enough seats; testing began in forty five minutes, and at this rate nobody would make it there in time.
The inundated official was trying to be heard over the angry shouts of the would-be recruits, but was failing. Janice looked around and spotted a voice amplification unit lying unused by the side of the official. Tired after her journey, anxious about lying to her parents and nervous about the upcoming tests, the bounds of politeness and civility snapped. Janice grabbed the amplification unit, switched it on and yelled for quiet.
The shock of the noise got the attention of all the struggling recruits; in the brief moment of calm that followed Janice relied on the tricks that got her through the hellish week of teaching practice. Speaking in a voice that radiated authority and calm, Janice ordered the recruits to form a line alphabetically. Reacting to the sound of authority in her voice, they jumped to obey her. While they were arguing amongst themselves, she walked over to the relived official and asked him how long it would take to get another shuttlecraft from the Academy to the dock.
“I’ll comm them now,” the official said hastily. “It should be ten minutes, tops.”
“Get them to acknowledge that the latecomers won’t be penalised for missing the first test,” Janice urged, and the man nodded.
As he bustled off, Janice used the amplification unit again.
“All recruits with family names from A to N will board the first shuttle. The second group will remain until further transport arrives. Nobody will be penalised for missing the starting time of the first test. Remain quiet and calm until the shuttle arrives. First group, you may board the transport.”
As half the people moved towards the waiting shuttle, Janice clicked off the amplification unit and stepped back. She bumped into somebody, and turned around to apologise. Standing behind her was a man in Starfleet uniform. Time with Maggie and Tara and their collection of photographs helped her to identify the uniform; he was a Chief Petty Officer.
“I’m sorry, Chief; I was only trying to help,” she apologised as he scrutinised her with harsh brown eyes. Then he smiled, turning his dark, craggy face into a handsome one.
“No need to apologise, Miss Rand; you have passed the first test.”
“First test?” Janice repeated, completely lost. Around her, the waiting crowd turned and started to listen in shamelessly to the conversation.
“Life in the fleet is unpredictable,” he told her, raising his voice so it carried to the crowd. “Things never go as planned, and at any time your experience may be called upon to solve problems. Any one of you could have assisted Petty Officer Phillips with crowd management and organisation, but it was Miss Rand that stepped up. Congratulations, Miss Rand. You and you alone passed the first test. Ladies and gentlemen, your shuttle is waiting at the next docking gate. Gather your things and board.”
He strode off in the direction of the docking bay and the crowd scrambled to follow him. Janice blushed under the onslaught of more than a few jealous looks and snide comments as she followed the pack, but a subtle clap on the back and murmured, “Wish I had thought of that!” from a fellow nervous looking applicant made her feel better.
“I’m Janice,” she said, extending a hand. She gasped as a smooth, gold tentacle curled around her wrist and shook it.
“Namara,” said her new friend. “Sorry about the tentacle, but my hands are full with my luggage. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” said Janice, trying not to sound provincial. “Not at all.”The truth was, for an inhabitant of the twenty third century she was woefully lacking in experiences with races other than human. Namara was the first tentacled being she had ever spoken to, let alone touched.
“They certainly seem useful,” Janice ventured as Namara released her wrist. As well as having two arms that looked similar to Janice’s, four long, thick tentacles emerged from Namara’s torso. They were all mobile and currently engaged in holding a mirror for Namara to check her hair, a comb that she was poking her hairstyle with, a PADD that was displaying the latest issue of a fashion magazine and a brightly coloured lipstick that she was dabbing at her lips.
“Oh, they are, until you get one jammed in a sliding door, then it’s agony,” Namara told her with real feeling. “Or one of your brothers decides to knot them together when you’re sleeping. “
Janice laughed. “My brothers used to do that with my shoelaces,” she told her.
“Brothers,” Namara said heavily, “should be banned.”
They sat together on the shuttle, and bonded with stories of being the only girl in the family. Namara’s race laid their eggs simultaneously, and Namara had been the sole girl in a clutch of eight children.
“Of course, I had to hatch last,” she grumbled. “So they all treat me as if I’m a baby, when I’m really just as old as they are.”
“Well, I am the baby,” Janice told Namara. “There’s seven years difference between myself and my oldest brother, and five between my other brother. As they’ve told me on numerous occasions, they were perfectly happy before I came along; there was no need for my parents to bother giving them a sister!”
“That’s so weird,” breathed Namara, looking at Janice as if she was an exhibit in a zoo. “I just can’t get over the fact that you humans have one baby at a time.”
“Well, some people have twins, or more, but they’re uncommon,” agreed Janice. “The thought of being hatched seems pretty weird to me!”
“I don’t know,” said Namara, running her hands over her slender body. “At least that way I’ll keep my figure!”
They laughed, and before they knew it they had docked at Starfleet headquarters and were being divided into pairs and allocated rooms. Because they had been sitting together on the shuttle, Janice and Namara ended up assigned together, which seemed to please both of them. Waiting in their rooms were standard issue recruit uniforms and Janice got a real buzz of excitement when she tugged the red dress on.
“Bugger,” muttered Namara from somewhere inside hers. “The tentacle holes aren’t big enough.”
“Hold on, I’ve got a pair of scissors somewhere,” Janice told her, and rummaged in her bag for the small emergency kit that Maggie had given her.
“One of these saved my life once,” Maggie had said seriously. “Keep it on you all the time, Janice.”
There were all sorts of items crammed into the small box, but Janice had remembered seeing a small pair of surgically-sharp scissors in there. Using them, she cut carefully around the holes already in Namara’s uniform and her tentacles popped free.
“Thanks Janice, you’re a life saver,” Namara told her gratefully.
“Why didn’t your uniform fit?” asked Janice, stashing the scissors away. “Did they get the wrong measurements?”
“No,” sighed Namara, smoothing her red dress across her body. “I gave them the wrong measurements. I was hoping to tone my tentacles up a little before I came, but I was so nervous about the testing that I’ve been comfort eating like crazy.”
She looked in the room’s full length mirror gloomily.
“Whenever I put weight on it goes straight to my tentacles,” she complained.
Janice snorted with laughter.
“What?” demanded Namara.
“It’s just that you sound exactly the same as me, only my weight goes straight to my hips and backside,” Janice laughed.
A smile twitched across Namara’s pretty face.
“I suppose we’re not all that different, are we?” she said, sounding hopeful that Janice would agree.
“No,” Janice replied, smiling at the gold-skinned, multi-tentacled alien standing in front of her. “No, I think we’re pretty similar, actually. Want a chocolate bar?”
“Ooh,” said Namara, drifting closer to the confectionary that Janice was unpacking. “What’s chocolate?”
Janice took a deep breath, and in her own small way, pushed forward the frontier of knowledge and exploration.
“Janice,” Namara said eventually, wrappers littering the floor around the women where they had ended up, leaning against their bunks. “I think I’m willing to hatch your eggs.”
Janice’s laughter was interrupted by an announcement that called all potential recruits to the main auditorium for an address by the Chief of Support Services, and arm-in tentacle, Namara and Janice followed the crowd of excited young people towards their future.
Medium Dave had been right, a fact that Maggie and Tara had known as soon as he had told them about his opinion of Janice’s potential. During the battery of tests that ran for the next day and a half, she consistently tested at the top of the group in organisational ability, time management and problem solving. At the end of the two days, Janice was offered a place at the Academy on a six-week training course to prepare her for a job in the Administrative support team. Namara, to her shock, had been offered a place in the Catering Corps.
“It’s those tentacles,” Janice told her over a celebratory drink. “You’ll be faster than anybody else in the kitchen.”
“I suppose so,” Namara mused. “But Janice, I know nothing about cooking!”
“You’ll learn,” Janice replied. “I have some friends that you might want to talk to, though. Just to settle your nerves.”
The training course started in a week, not long enough for Namara to travel back to her homeworld and back again, a fact that she had known before she applied to Starfleet. Her family had been very proud of her in her comm messages, although her brothers had all promised dire threats to any man that even looked at her in the wrong way. She had dealt with them with a mixture of disdain and annoyance, although Janice could tell that there was real affection reaching both ways across the galaxy.
Janice had sent a comm message to Tara and Maggie, who had immediately offered to host Namara for a week, and give her some practical experience at working in a kitchen. They travelled back to Janice’s hometown together, both still wearing the Starfleet training uniform. Janice stopped at the now-bustling cafe first, introduced Namara to her friends, then had gone home to break the news to her parents that she had finally decided on a career.
“Oh, thank God,” her mother said heavily when she appeared at the door of the living room in her uniform. “I thought you were actually going to go through with that secretarial course.”
“Pardon?” said Janice, confused. She had expected arguments, recrimination, even outright hostility towards her career choice. Her father was actually opening a bottle of champagne!
“Oh, Janice, we knew you hated the idea of coming to work with us,” her father said, kissing her on the cheek as he handed her a glass of champagne. “We just didn’t want to interfere. As soon as you told us you were helping Tara and Maggie at their cafe, we knew that something was up.”
“You know Tara and Maggie?” Janice was still confused.
“They came to pay a visit the day that you left for your testing, to let us know what was going on. They had an idea that you’d do well, so they wanted to pave the way for you, so to speak. Charming people,” her mother said. “I like them a lot.”
“I’ll be going into space,” Janice clarified for them. “Where there are space-type dangers.”
“Yes,” her father agreed, sitting next to her mother and taking her hand in his. “And obviously, we’re not keen on you being fired on by rampaging aliens. But you’ve got to live your life, Janice. Your mother and I love our lives, but it’s not for you. We can see that. For the first time in a very long time, you’re excited about something. We love you, baby girl. We want you to be excited.”
“Really?” sniffed Janice, trying not to cry.
“Really,” said her mother, who had lost her battle with tears. “But this isn’t license to go and do anything dangerous, do you hear?”
“Mom, I’ll be in administrative support,” Janice told her, swabbing at her eyes. “I’ll be filling in forms and chasing shipments of uniforms. No danger in that.”
“To Janice, then,” said her father firmly. “And her future career in space exploration and form-filling!”
They drank to her father’s toast. Then her brothers and their families arrived, hugged her fiercely and promised deathly vengeance on any man in uniform that even looked at her in the wrong way. That made Janice remember Namara, and the entire family, nieces and nephews and all, trooped down to the cafe where Maggie and Tara had been expecting them. With Namara’s help they had prepared a celebratory dinner, and all of Janice’s family, her blood relatives and her Starfleet ones, sat down to eat together.