Big Bang 2010 - If Wishes Were Horses 12/18
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: 5180
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?
“So, Mark wasn’t right for you,” Gaila said a few days later as they sat eating breakfast in a quiet corner of the mess.
“No,” said Janice, smiling and waving at the man in question as he gallantly carried the tray of a pretty security ensign to a table. “The break up was one of my easier ones though.”
She had continued to see Mark a few more times after their first night together; he was good in bed and had spurred her on to some adventurous positions she had never tried before. He was pleasant and charming, but Janice had just known intuitively that they were never going to feel anything more than lust for each other. Thankfully, he had felt the same way, and they had parted amicably.
“Never mind,” shrugged Gaila. “I’ve got somebody else lined up for you.”
“What makes you think that I want somebody else?” Janice sighed.
Gaila looked at her, confused.
“I thought the whole point of the exercise was for you to be sexually satisfied so you wouldn’t obsess over the captain,” Gaila said. “Unless you’re happy masturbating, you’re not sexually satisfied.”
“Do you think you could keep your voice down?” Janice hissed, blushing to her roots.
“Oh, I forgot you humans don’t like to talk about sex in public. That’s so sweet!” said Gaila, scrunching her nose and grinning at her like Janice was a particularly adorable kitten.
Gaila looked around before leaning closer to Janice and dropping her voice.
“Anyway, like I was saying, I think I’ve found somebody you might like.”
“How?” asked Janice, suspiciously.
“Research,” Gaila said quickly, and left the explanation there. Janice decided that it was probably better not to ask any further.
“His name is Lucas, and he’s in security. He’s sitting at the table closest to the door, on the left.”
Janice peered over Gaila’ shoulder, and found the man Gaila had pointed out.
Wow. Nice.
“He goes to the gym at the end of his shift,” Gaila told her, eyes sparkling.
“Then maybe I will too,” Janice told her, and the thought of getting further acquainted with the handsome, burly man gave her a reason to smile all the way up to the bridge.
“I know that smile,” Kirk said as soon as she settled into her seat and began the usual explanation of the schedule. “You have another date with Buckley.”
“Bennett,” corrected Janice calmly. “And no, I don’t. The lieutenant and I aren’t involved any more. Did you want to meet the engineering section chiefs today or tomorrow?”
“Today,” Kirk told her, without a glance at the briefing material she had uploaded onto his data screen. “Before lunch, if you can manage it. So, Bennett is no more? Shame.”
Janice let it go. He had no right to probe into her personal life like this, and he knew it. But the way he did it was so charming that he always got away with it; it was why McCoy was his best friend and Spock was so tolerant of him despite being on the receiving end of a heavy amount of playful teasing.
“So, who is it that’s put a smile on your face, Janice? Now that you’ve crushed poor Bennett’s heart under your shiny boots, that is.”
“Is this really appropriate, captain?” Janice asked, softening her words with a smile.
“I am being concerned for the wellbeing of my crew,” he insisted with a roguish smile. “And my friend, which I think you’ll remember agreeing you were.”
“An off-duty friend,” Janice reminded him. “And as we’re very much on-duty, I’d like to remind you that you have an appointment with the cultural services officer in ten minutes to go over the briefing packet for the upcoming away mission to Gamma Xion Five.”
“She hates me,” Kirk said gloomily, acknowledging his fate.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Janice said, feeling for all the world like the mother to the world’s biggest child. “She would just prefer that you listen to her advice occasionally. You never know, it might stop you getting shot at so much, then Dr McCoy will stop yelling too.”
“I think that’s just too optimistic for me, Janice,” he said, smiling.
“Stranger things have happened on-board, sir,” she reminded him.
“True, but that’s due to the hallucinogenic pollen that escaped from the arboretum. Twice,” he said, frowning as he remembered crewmembers dancing naked in the hallways and smearing themselves with chocolate pudding.
“It made for a good letter home,” Janice said, then before Kirk could reply the door chime sounded.
Lieutenant Darrow, the ship’s cultural services officer, came in when Kirk acknowledged the chime. She carried a colourful bundle of cloth and what looked like giant carnival masks and had a determined attitude. Despite Kirk’s pleading look, Janice escaped to the admin control room and left him to it.
She put in a full shift at her desk in the busy room and managed to finish up her work in time for the shift change. She was in her room getting changed into exercise clothes when the door chimed and Uhura, also wearing her work-out clothes, came in.
“Gaila told me,” was all she had to say, and Janice was glad of the company.
“Which one is he?” Nyota hissed as she and Janice started their warm-up stretches on the mats.
Being as subtle as she could, Janice indicated Lucas, who had finished his warm-up and was already building up a sweat on one of the running machines. Nyota ran a practiced eye over the man and nodded, impressed.
“Go talk to him,” she instructed.
“I can’t run and talk at the same time!” Janice protested.
“Improvise,” Nyota ordered. Janice sighed and went over the machine next to her intended target. She entered her code into the machine, but instead of it starting up with her prescribed exercise programme, it made a rude series of beeps instead. She frowned and entered it again, but was given the same result.
“Problem?”
Janice turned around, and smiled at Lucas, who had paused his machine to help her.
“I’m sure I was doing this right,” she said. “But the machine won’t respond.”
Lucas hopped up onto the treadmill with her, casually putting an arm around her body to grip the handle on the opposite side.
Smooth, she thought.
Lucas started pressing the buttons in the same sequence she had, but he was given the same rude noise.
“You were doing it right,” he assured her with a smile. “The machine must be faulty. I’ll reboot it for you.”
“Thank you,” said Janice, doing her best damsel-in-distress act. “You know a lot about how all these work. Are you stationed here?”
“No, but I may as well be, I spend so much time off-duty here,” Lucas replied, grinning. “I’m Lucas Hill. I’m in security.”
“Janice Rand, yeoman and definitely not someone who spends enough time at the gym!” she told him, laughing.
“No, I’d have recognised you if you came in here before. You’re too pretty to forget,” he told her, flashing a smile of white teeth that stood out against his dark skin. Janice blushed and looked away, which was all she needed to do to get Lucas to chuckle and ask her to meet him later for a drink in one of the rec rooms.
The machine finished its reboot then, and accepted the code she entered.
“See you later,” Lucas told her, and abandoned his machine for the free weight room at the back of the gym.
Seconds later, Nyota scurried over and inputted her code into the free machine.
“Well?” she puffed as the machine quickened.
“Date later tonight,” Janice replied, breathing heavily as her machine got her moving quickly. “Have to borrow dress.”
“Whatever you need,” Nyota promised. “Can’t talk. Dying.”
The two women wheezed through the treadmill, and then decamped to the abdominal exercise station where they could rock back and forth and manage a conversation simultaneously.
“I have got to be fitter than this,” Janice groaned at the end of their hour in the gym. “It’s ridiculous.”
“At least they have unlimited water showers here,” Nyota consoled as they stripped in the changing room.
“I might come back then,” Janice allowed as the hot water cascaded from the ceiling. “When my water allowance runs out, anyway!”
Gaila’s research, whatever it was, turned out to be strangely accurate. Both she and Lucas had a passion for art, although his interest was mainly in sculpture rather than art on canvas. They spent a happy evening talking about museums and collections they had visited on Earth and Lucas asked Janice to spend the next evening with him on the holodeck in a recreation of the Louvre. He beat Janice to it by a few minutes, and he smiled warmly when she told him that.
Their date the next evening was delightful; there was something wonderful about being able to wander through the halls of the museum without having anybody else there. Lucas had taken her small hand in his much larger one as soon as the programme materialised around them, and had pulled her in for a sweet and gentle kiss when they paused to admire Rodin’s The Kiss. Janice started to tell him the story behind the statue, about Dante’s Inferno and Francesca da Rimini, but Lucas’ handsome face started to register boredom. Janice left the topic, and they continued to wind their way through the impressive sculpture collection.
Janice sailed into the captain’s ready room the next morning with a happy smile on her face. She tried to tone it down, but Kirk spotted it immediately.
“Who is he?” he demanded.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Janice replied. “Health and safety forms today, captain.”
“Oh, have a heart, Janice,” Kirk frowned. “Those things are lethal in themselves. Next time the Klingons attack we should just load up a photon torpedo tube with them and blast them with the paperwork.”
“Have you quite finished?” Janice asked, stylus in hand.
“For every one of those damn forms I fill in, I get a question,” Kirk demanded.
“No,” Janice said plainly.
“I am your captain,” Kirk pointed out. “I could order you to tell me about your personal life.”
“You could,” Janice replied, looking at him over her PADD. “But you wouldn’t, not unless it had significance to the running of the ship.”
Kirk, looking annoyed, nodded.
“Damn my chivalrous nature,” he muttered, and Janice laughed, taking pity on him.
“You get one question for every five forms you fill in,” she told him. “And you’d better hurry because we’ll be arriving at Gamma Xion Five soon.”
Kirk worked his way through the paperwork in record time.
“What’s his name?” he demanded triumphantly as the first five reports pinged their way into Janice’s inbox.
“Lucas Hill,” Janice told him evenly. Kirk cackled and punched the name into his data screen.
“And exactly what do you and Ensign Hill have in common, Janice?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You’ll find out after another five forms, sir,” Janice told him, beginning to enjoy the game.
Fifteen forms and a judicious use of questioning later, Kirk had found out about the date in the Louvre.
“I bet he kissed you by the Rodin sculpture,” Kirk said knowingly.
Janice refused to comment, but her blush was eloquent.
“Did you know that Rodin wanted to call the statue Francesca da Rimini?” Kirk said, out of nowhere. “It’s after a character from...”
“Dante’s Inferno!” Janice interrupted, looking pleased. “Yes, I did know. Such a sad story.”
“Francesca and Paolo, immortalised in stone, locked together but forever denied their actual kiss,” brooded Kirk. “Utter torture, don’t you think Janice? To be so close to what you want, but to be forbidden from leaning that little bit closer and just taking it?”
His piercing blue eyes found hers and she lost the power of speech for a few moments. The air in the room was heavy and full of things that should never be said. She could see the tension in Kirk’s muscles and he stood suddenly, but then the communicator sounded and Spock’s calm voice rang into the room.
“We have arrived at Gamma Xion Five, captain, and have assumed a standard orbit.”
Kirk exhaled loudly before acknowledging the report.
“Mr Spock, have Ensign Hill report to the transporter room on the double. I’ve decided to include him on this away mission.”
“Aye, sir,” was Spock’s only reply and the room fell silent.
“Why are you taking him?” Janice asked, a little concerned.
“His service record shows him to have little experience with diplomatic missions. I want to give him a chance to see how security officers should behave off-ship when we’re not under attack. Besides, Darrow told me yesterday that the inhabitants of the planet value artistic expression. It’ll be useful to have someone like Hill around.”
“I’m sure he’ll enjoy it. Thank you, sir,” Janice said, feeling relieved but unsure as to why.
“Don’t worry, Janice, your boyfriend will return safe and sound,” Kirk said, grinning as he left the room.
“It was only one date!” Janice called after him, but the doors to the ready room shut before she could catch his response.
It was supposed to have been a standard meet-and-greet, she found out afterwards as she sat numbly by Kirk’s bedside in sickbay. A diplomatic team had already initiated first contact, and there had been a succession of successful meetings and exchanges. Gamma Xion Five even had a trade agreement for dilithium ore with the Federation. The Enterprise’s stop there was just a reminder to the planet that the Federation held their new friends in high respect - an exchange of news and gifts.
Instead, Kirk and his party had beamed smack into the middle of an assassination attempt on the leader of the planet by a section of her people that did not want to have anything to do with visitors from the stars.
The Enterprise team had been pinned down by a ruthless gang of terrorists, but several of the security contingent had risked their own lives to retrieve the frightened leader of the Gamma Xion people from where she was trapped. In the heavy exchange of fire, Hill had been separated from the main group, and was the target of the full assault of the terrorist fire. In an action so typical of him, Kirk had rushed to his injured crewman’s aide, drawing the attack away from him.
By the time communication had been established with the Enterprise and the entire landing party beamed straight into sickbay, Kirk was unconscious and bleeding heavily. It took McCoy and his team much longer to stabilise him than it ever had before, as his injuries were the most severe he’d ever received while on an away mission.
“The initial bomb blast brought down the wall closest to him, and he was buried in debris for a while, before he dug himself out,” Christine told an anxious Janice when Kirk was transferred from the surgical unit into a recovery bay. “That’s why there’s so much bruising and general damage to his back. Then he took some nasty burns from energy weapons fire while he was rescuing Hill. Security says that when he went down again, there was some physical attack by members of the terrorist group, which explains the broken bones and internal bleeding, and the head injury.”
Janice had a flashback to another captain lying broken and bleeding on a biobed, and once again Christine had to get her sitting with her head between her legs.
“How is he?” Janice asked quietly.
“Sedated,” Christine said firmly. “He’ll heal, Janice, don’t you worry about that, but he’ll do it faster for now if he’s not moving about.”
“And Hill?” Janice asked belatedly.
“He got a bump on the head when the ceiling collapsed, but the captain prevented him from much further injury. He’s being seen to now, and then he’ll be discharged.”
“He’s ok?” Janice said, her lip trembling.
“Thanks to the captain, yes,” Christine told her, holding her hand comfortingly. “If the captain hadn’t broken cover to get to him, it might be a very different story indeed.”
“Can I see him?” Janice pleaded.
“I’ll send him over when his treatment is finished,” Christine soothed.
“No, I meant the captain,” Janice said.
A look passed over Christine’s face so quickly that Janice couldn’t identify it.
“He’s asleep,” she cautioned. “And we can’t get started on healing the bruising until his internal injuries are completely dealt with.”
“I get it, he looks like hell,” Janice snapped irritably. “I just need to see him, Christine.”
Christine nodded, and led Janice down to the recovery area. She dismissed the junior nurse who was monitoring the readings from the machinery Kirk was hooked up to and took over the job herself while Janice stood at the side of the bed. Checking to see that Christine had her back turned, she reached out a finger and gingerly stroked the only patch of undamaged skin she could reach, a small area on his forearm.
“He’ll be better very soon,” Christine said firmly. “These machines will mostly be gone in the next twelve hours, and he’ll be brought out of his sedation in another twelve. Give him a week, and you won’t be able to tell there was anything wrong with him.”
Janice let Christine’s no-nonsense tone of voice calm her inner terror.
“I should go and assist Commander Spock,” Janice said eventually. “He’ll need my help.”
“Aren’t you off-duty now?” Christine asked.
Janice shook her head. “Not when he’s like this, no, I’m not. Thank you, Christine. I’ll come back later.”
“I’ll tell the duty nurse to bring you through,” Christine told her.
Janice brushed a kiss to the tired woman’s cheek and left sickbay. She was on the bridge and taking orders from Spock before she remembered Lucas, but by then she was too busy to do anything other than hope he was feeling better. She had too much work to complete to do anything else.
Once she had completed tasks set by Spock, he pronounced her off-duty and she didn’t dare argue with him. She went back down to sickbay and sat in Kirk’s private room, watching the machines record and register his heartbeat and brainwaves. Aware that this was probably the only time she’d be able to do this, she perched awkwardly on the side of his bed and ran a hand gently through his hair. Dust and tiny particles of debris fell out, and she found patches where blood had matted his hair together.
“That won’t do,” she told him in low tones. “Can’t have the captain looking less than his best, can we?”
The room was equipped with a small sink and some personal hygiene basics. She filled a small bowl with warm water and began to gently sponge the matted sections of his hair. Her salty tears dropped into the bowl that was rapidly turning pink with his blood, but she didn’t stop until she had washed his hair. She gently ran a comb through his hair, careful to avoid any obvious injuries. She then emptied the bowl, rinsed it clean and filled it with warm water again and started to clean off smudges of dirt that remained on his visible body.
“There,” she said eventually. “All clean.”
She sat in the small chair in the corner of the room, unwilling to leave him alone completely. She must have eventually fallen asleep, because when she came to, somebody had draped a blanket over her and wedged a small pillow under her head.
“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice croaked.
Janice’s eyes snapped open. While she was asleep, somebody had disconnected almost every machine that had been hooked up to Kirk. They had raised the end of the biobed slightly, to allow him to see more than just the ceiling.
“I could say the same for you,” she told him pointedly.
He shrugged, then by the look of pain on his face, immediately wished that he hadn’t.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did anybody die?”
“No,” she said, moving towards him. “You were the hurt the worst.”
“Tell me from the beginning,” he said. “I don’t remember much about it.”
“I’ve only read the reports from the security team and Lieutenant Darrow,” she told him. “I haven’t spoken to anyone myself. Should I be getting a doctor for you?”
“Bones has been and gone,” Kirk said, swallowing hard. “But I didn’t want to go back to sleep. Could you pass me that glass of water?”
“Of course,” Janice said, supporting the glass as Kirk’s fingers wrapped around it carefully. “Slow sips.”
After a few moments, his voice was slightly clearer than before.
“Tell me,” he repeated, and so Janice carefully recounted the facts as they had been reported to Spock and collated for his report back to Starfleet Command.
“We’ll have to leave their space until they have this sorted out,” Kirk said when she had finished.
“We already have,” Janice said, fussing with his bedclothes. “The First Minister of the planet was well enough to be beamed back down a few hours ago. The last I heard we were waiting at the edge of their solar system for orders from Command as to how to follow up.”
“How are you doing?” he asked, and she looked at him incredulously.
“Me?” she said, astounded. “Why are you asking me? I wasn’t the one who had a ceiling land on me, or took energy weapon fire, or got beaten to a p..p..pulp.”
She stammered the last word out and a hot tear escaped, blazing its way down her face.
“Shh,” he said ineffectually, but his concern just made her cry harder.
“Don’t you dare do this again,” she said through her tears. “Do you hear me, Jim? Don’t you dare, I’ve been so worried about you, we all have.”
His hand shifted about on the bed until it found hers, and he gripped it tightly.
“I’m fine,” he said, trying to reassure her. In return she just gestured at his body, covered with cuts and bruises and surgical bandages.
“Well, I will be fine,” he amended, squeezing her hand again. “Bones will have me up and running in no time.”
“In a week, at the very least,” interrupted a gravelly voice. “Unless you stay in bed and do as I tell you, it will take longer.”
Janice jumped at the unexpected entrance of the doctor, and tried to pull her hand away from Kirk’s. Kirk’s grip remained tight, and she couldn’t move away from him. Part of her was very glad of the fact; part of her was mortified to have been found holding hands with him in front of a senior member of staff.
However, the senior member of staff seemed more interested in laying down the law to the captain about his recuperation than worrying about whose hand he was holding.
“You’ll stay here even if I have to sedate you for the whole damn week,” he growled.
“But I’ll be needed on the bridge!” Kirk protested.
“Bullshit,” was the firm response. “Spock’s Acting Captain until I declare you fit for duty. Now you know as well as I do that I’ve no wish for the pointy-eared bastard to be in charge, so do us all a favour and get well before he decides it would be logical for us all to become meditating vegetarians and takes meat off the menus!”
“Well, god forbid you don’t get your steak,” Kirk muttered, the tiniest hint of a smile on his lips.
“I work damn heard for that steak, stitching together gung-ho idiots like you. So yes, I would prefer it if it wasn’t replaced by a salad.”
The look of distaste on McCoy’s face showed his thoughts on the value of salads very clearly.
“I’m going to want to know what’s happening on my ship,” Kirk said, looking mutinous at the thought of a week in sickbay.
“Fine, then Yeoman Rand can act as your liaison,” McCoy said, acknowledging Janice’s presence for the first time. “Maybe she’ll have more luck than I do at keeping you in one place!”
And that became Janice’s role for the next seven days. She would spend forty five minutes at the start of shift conferring with Spock, who had a remarkably different attitude towards paperwork than Kirk did. It was a refreshing change, although not one that Janice would want long-term. After that, she was free to go down to sickbay where she would fill Kirk in on the ship’s business and then spend as many hours as he could stay awake amusing him. That meant anything from reviewing the information she had just given Spock to discussing her ongoing first contact training, as well as talking about Janice’s past. He was keen to know all about her before she joined Starfleet, and when he discovered the fact that she could draw, he immediately badgered her into sketching for him.
Once he regained proper use of his fingers, which had been crushed by the heavy boots of his attackers, Janice began to give him some drawing lessons.
“Admit it,” he said, his tone reflecting his disappointment. “Five year olds can do better.”
“You’re just annoyed that you’ve found something that you can’t master immediately,” she teased. “It’s not bad. You just need to remember what I told you about depth of field. Try again.”
She read to him, sometimes, old favourites they had in common and some newer things that her mother sent once a month, regular as clockwork. Tara and Maggie also wrote and sent presents, including more of the retro chocolate bars. Janice made the mistake of bringing one for him to sample, and had to put up with his begging for more for the rest of his time confined to bed in sickbay.
He had more than enough visitors to allow her to slip away and get some time on her own, but he always seemed to be glad to see her when she returned, which was gratifying. All this enforced proximity did her crush no good whatsoever, and she found herself longing for a world where he was more than her captain, and her friend. She wanted to be able to touch his hand freely, and not mask it by pretending to correct the position of the pencil he was holding. She wanted to take him home and introduce him to her family and Maggie and Tara instead of showing him photographs and telling stories. She wanted to kiss him hello and goodbye openly, instead of having to wait until his medication made him sleep and she got to drop an illicit kiss on his forehead as she adjusted his covers.
If wishes were horses then beggars would ride, her grandfather had always said; once Janice was old enough to understand it, she always remembered it. You can’t always get what you want, a long-dead lyricist had sung. But sometimes you might just get what you need.
What Janice needed was to get over this ridiculous crush and move on. Lucas had been strangely distant after his release from sickbay; perhaps he had been angry with her for not checking on him immediately, perhaps he thought that he would never have been included in the landing party if not for her influence with the captain. Either way, after she was rebuffed quite coldly in the mess one day, she decided that she was better off without him.
Her next date was a few days after Kirk had been pronounced fit for duty by McCoy, who was desperate to get him out of sickbay. Kirk had bounced onto the bridge in a fine mood, glad to be up and about after such a long rest period, and then had gone on a tour of the ship from top to bottom. Somewhere around the biology labs he had decided that he didn’t need Janice’s company, and had sent her off for lunch. She had found a quiet table at the back of the mess and was halfway through her sandwich when one of the sickbay orderlies appeared, carrying two slices of caramel apple pie.
“It’s been quiet in sickbay without the captain there,” he had said, by way of greeting. “And I don’t get to see you every morning now.”
“You must be desolate,” she replied, nodding her head to indicate he could sit down. In return, he slid a slice of pie across the table to her.
“Heart-broken,” he said gravely. “I’m not sure that I’ll make it through the day.”
“Oh, I’m sure that one of the doctors could prescribe you something to help you out,” she bantered, taking her first bite of the delicious dessert in front of her.
“No, I think I’ve got my medicine right here,” he returned, winking at her as he dug into his own slice of pie.
Janice couldn’t help it; the line was just too cheesy. She lost her composure and started to laugh.
“I knew I should have stopped at heart-broken,” he said, shaking his head. “Now you’ll never agree on a date.”
His name was Peter, she knew; he had been one of the team assigned to help Kirk with his physical therapy. He was a little shorter than the captain, his hair slightly more brown, his eyes a slightly less intense blue colour. But he had always been cheerful, even in the face of the captain’s less-than-professional ‘I hate sickbay’ rants.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, smiling. “There’s something to be said for a cheesy pick-up line. It lets a girl know that she’s worth the effort of sounding ridiculous.”
“For you I’d even tell bad jokes,” he promised, and Janice grinned.
“Save them for the date,” she advised.
“How about tomorrow?” he asked. “There’s going to be a double-bill of movies shown in the main rec room. Recent releases too, not some boring old 2-D rubbish from the twenty first century.”
If Janice had just come out with the fact that actually, she quite liked some of the boring old 2-D films, she may just have saved herself from a drama-ridden three-week relationship that eventually ended in a crescendo of angry voices and a flying paint palette. But they were still locked in the pre-date flirtation stage, so she kept her mouth shut.
“If it’s any help, you got him good with the palette,” Christine told her three weeks later, just after the break-up had happened and the emergency alcohol was being consumed. “He’s going to have a real shiner.”
“Didn’t a doctor heal it?” Janice sniffed, feeling very sorry for herself.
“Unfortunately, the nurse on triage duty didn’t think his injury was serious enough to warrant medical intervention,” Christine said blithely.
“Really,” Uhura said sarcastically. “How convenient.”
Christine shrugged.
“Life works in mysterious ways, and he’s an ass.”
“Amen,” said Janice, holding out her glass imperiously. “More, please.”
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Author: fringedweller
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Primarily Kirk/Rand, with background McCoy/Chapel and Pike/One and others, het and slash
Warnings: None
Length: 5180
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?
“So, Mark wasn’t right for you,” Gaila said a few days later as they sat eating breakfast in a quiet corner of the mess.
“No,” said Janice, smiling and waving at the man in question as he gallantly carried the tray of a pretty security ensign to a table. “The break up was one of my easier ones though.”
She had continued to see Mark a few more times after their first night together; he was good in bed and had spurred her on to some adventurous positions she had never tried before. He was pleasant and charming, but Janice had just known intuitively that they were never going to feel anything more than lust for each other. Thankfully, he had felt the same way, and they had parted amicably.
“Never mind,” shrugged Gaila. “I’ve got somebody else lined up for you.”
“What makes you think that I want somebody else?” Janice sighed.
Gaila looked at her, confused.
“I thought the whole point of the exercise was for you to be sexually satisfied so you wouldn’t obsess over the captain,” Gaila said. “Unless you’re happy masturbating, you’re not sexually satisfied.”
“Do you think you could keep your voice down?” Janice hissed, blushing to her roots.
“Oh, I forgot you humans don’t like to talk about sex in public. That’s so sweet!” said Gaila, scrunching her nose and grinning at her like Janice was a particularly adorable kitten.
Gaila looked around before leaning closer to Janice and dropping her voice.
“Anyway, like I was saying, I think I’ve found somebody you might like.”
“How?” asked Janice, suspiciously.
“Research,” Gaila said quickly, and left the explanation there. Janice decided that it was probably better not to ask any further.
“His name is Lucas, and he’s in security. He’s sitting at the table closest to the door, on the left.”
Janice peered over Gaila’ shoulder, and found the man Gaila had pointed out.
Wow. Nice.
“He goes to the gym at the end of his shift,” Gaila told her, eyes sparkling.
“Then maybe I will too,” Janice told her, and the thought of getting further acquainted with the handsome, burly man gave her a reason to smile all the way up to the bridge.
“I know that smile,” Kirk said as soon as she settled into her seat and began the usual explanation of the schedule. “You have another date with Buckley.”
“Bennett,” corrected Janice calmly. “And no, I don’t. The lieutenant and I aren’t involved any more. Did you want to meet the engineering section chiefs today or tomorrow?”
“Today,” Kirk told her, without a glance at the briefing material she had uploaded onto his data screen. “Before lunch, if you can manage it. So, Bennett is no more? Shame.”
Janice let it go. He had no right to probe into her personal life like this, and he knew it. But the way he did it was so charming that he always got away with it; it was why McCoy was his best friend and Spock was so tolerant of him despite being on the receiving end of a heavy amount of playful teasing.
“So, who is it that’s put a smile on your face, Janice? Now that you’ve crushed poor Bennett’s heart under your shiny boots, that is.”
“Is this really appropriate, captain?” Janice asked, softening her words with a smile.
“I am being concerned for the wellbeing of my crew,” he insisted with a roguish smile. “And my friend, which I think you’ll remember agreeing you were.”
“An off-duty friend,” Janice reminded him. “And as we’re very much on-duty, I’d like to remind you that you have an appointment with the cultural services officer in ten minutes to go over the briefing packet for the upcoming away mission to Gamma Xion Five.”
“She hates me,” Kirk said gloomily, acknowledging his fate.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Janice said, feeling for all the world like the mother to the world’s biggest child. “She would just prefer that you listen to her advice occasionally. You never know, it might stop you getting shot at so much, then Dr McCoy will stop yelling too.”
“I think that’s just too optimistic for me, Janice,” he said, smiling.
“Stranger things have happened on-board, sir,” she reminded him.
“True, but that’s due to the hallucinogenic pollen that escaped from the arboretum. Twice,” he said, frowning as he remembered crewmembers dancing naked in the hallways and smearing themselves with chocolate pudding.
“It made for a good letter home,” Janice said, then before Kirk could reply the door chime sounded.
Lieutenant Darrow, the ship’s cultural services officer, came in when Kirk acknowledged the chime. She carried a colourful bundle of cloth and what looked like giant carnival masks and had a determined attitude. Despite Kirk’s pleading look, Janice escaped to the admin control room and left him to it.
She put in a full shift at her desk in the busy room and managed to finish up her work in time for the shift change. She was in her room getting changed into exercise clothes when the door chimed and Uhura, also wearing her work-out clothes, came in.
“Gaila told me,” was all she had to say, and Janice was glad of the company.
“Which one is he?” Nyota hissed as she and Janice started their warm-up stretches on the mats.
Being as subtle as she could, Janice indicated Lucas, who had finished his warm-up and was already building up a sweat on one of the running machines. Nyota ran a practiced eye over the man and nodded, impressed.
“Go talk to him,” she instructed.
“I can’t run and talk at the same time!” Janice protested.
“Improvise,” Nyota ordered. Janice sighed and went over the machine next to her intended target. She entered her code into the machine, but instead of it starting up with her prescribed exercise programme, it made a rude series of beeps instead. She frowned and entered it again, but was given the same result.
“Problem?”
Janice turned around, and smiled at Lucas, who had paused his machine to help her.
“I’m sure I was doing this right,” she said. “But the machine won’t respond.”
Lucas hopped up onto the treadmill with her, casually putting an arm around her body to grip the handle on the opposite side.
Smooth, she thought.
Lucas started pressing the buttons in the same sequence she had, but he was given the same rude noise.
“You were doing it right,” he assured her with a smile. “The machine must be faulty. I’ll reboot it for you.”
“Thank you,” said Janice, doing her best damsel-in-distress act. “You know a lot about how all these work. Are you stationed here?”
“No, but I may as well be, I spend so much time off-duty here,” Lucas replied, grinning. “I’m Lucas Hill. I’m in security.”
“Janice Rand, yeoman and definitely not someone who spends enough time at the gym!” she told him, laughing.
“No, I’d have recognised you if you came in here before. You’re too pretty to forget,” he told her, flashing a smile of white teeth that stood out against his dark skin. Janice blushed and looked away, which was all she needed to do to get Lucas to chuckle and ask her to meet him later for a drink in one of the rec rooms.
The machine finished its reboot then, and accepted the code she entered.
“See you later,” Lucas told her, and abandoned his machine for the free weight room at the back of the gym.
Seconds later, Nyota scurried over and inputted her code into the free machine.
“Well?” she puffed as the machine quickened.
“Date later tonight,” Janice replied, breathing heavily as her machine got her moving quickly. “Have to borrow dress.”
“Whatever you need,” Nyota promised. “Can’t talk. Dying.”
The two women wheezed through the treadmill, and then decamped to the abdominal exercise station where they could rock back and forth and manage a conversation simultaneously.
“I have got to be fitter than this,” Janice groaned at the end of their hour in the gym. “It’s ridiculous.”
“At least they have unlimited water showers here,” Nyota consoled as they stripped in the changing room.
“I might come back then,” Janice allowed as the hot water cascaded from the ceiling. “When my water allowance runs out, anyway!”
Gaila’s research, whatever it was, turned out to be strangely accurate. Both she and Lucas had a passion for art, although his interest was mainly in sculpture rather than art on canvas. They spent a happy evening talking about museums and collections they had visited on Earth and Lucas asked Janice to spend the next evening with him on the holodeck in a recreation of the Louvre. He beat Janice to it by a few minutes, and he smiled warmly when she told him that.
Their date the next evening was delightful; there was something wonderful about being able to wander through the halls of the museum without having anybody else there. Lucas had taken her small hand in his much larger one as soon as the programme materialised around them, and had pulled her in for a sweet and gentle kiss when they paused to admire Rodin’s The Kiss. Janice started to tell him the story behind the statue, about Dante’s Inferno and Francesca da Rimini, but Lucas’ handsome face started to register boredom. Janice left the topic, and they continued to wind their way through the impressive sculpture collection.
Janice sailed into the captain’s ready room the next morning with a happy smile on her face. She tried to tone it down, but Kirk spotted it immediately.
“Who is he?” he demanded.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Janice replied. “Health and safety forms today, captain.”
“Oh, have a heart, Janice,” Kirk frowned. “Those things are lethal in themselves. Next time the Klingons attack we should just load up a photon torpedo tube with them and blast them with the paperwork.”
“Have you quite finished?” Janice asked, stylus in hand.
“For every one of those damn forms I fill in, I get a question,” Kirk demanded.
“No,” Janice said plainly.
“I am your captain,” Kirk pointed out. “I could order you to tell me about your personal life.”
“You could,” Janice replied, looking at him over her PADD. “But you wouldn’t, not unless it had significance to the running of the ship.”
Kirk, looking annoyed, nodded.
“Damn my chivalrous nature,” he muttered, and Janice laughed, taking pity on him.
“You get one question for every five forms you fill in,” she told him. “And you’d better hurry because we’ll be arriving at Gamma Xion Five soon.”
Kirk worked his way through the paperwork in record time.
“What’s his name?” he demanded triumphantly as the first five reports pinged their way into Janice’s inbox.
“Lucas Hill,” Janice told him evenly. Kirk cackled and punched the name into his data screen.
“And exactly what do you and Ensign Hill have in common, Janice?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You’ll find out after another five forms, sir,” Janice told him, beginning to enjoy the game.
Fifteen forms and a judicious use of questioning later, Kirk had found out about the date in the Louvre.
“I bet he kissed you by the Rodin sculpture,” Kirk said knowingly.
Janice refused to comment, but her blush was eloquent.
“Did you know that Rodin wanted to call the statue Francesca da Rimini?” Kirk said, out of nowhere. “It’s after a character from...”
“Dante’s Inferno!” Janice interrupted, looking pleased. “Yes, I did know. Such a sad story.”
“Francesca and Paolo, immortalised in stone, locked together but forever denied their actual kiss,” brooded Kirk. “Utter torture, don’t you think Janice? To be so close to what you want, but to be forbidden from leaning that little bit closer and just taking it?”
His piercing blue eyes found hers and she lost the power of speech for a few moments. The air in the room was heavy and full of things that should never be said. She could see the tension in Kirk’s muscles and he stood suddenly, but then the communicator sounded and Spock’s calm voice rang into the room.
“We have arrived at Gamma Xion Five, captain, and have assumed a standard orbit.”
Kirk exhaled loudly before acknowledging the report.
“Mr Spock, have Ensign Hill report to the transporter room on the double. I’ve decided to include him on this away mission.”
“Aye, sir,” was Spock’s only reply and the room fell silent.
“Why are you taking him?” Janice asked, a little concerned.
“His service record shows him to have little experience with diplomatic missions. I want to give him a chance to see how security officers should behave off-ship when we’re not under attack. Besides, Darrow told me yesterday that the inhabitants of the planet value artistic expression. It’ll be useful to have someone like Hill around.”
“I’m sure he’ll enjoy it. Thank you, sir,” Janice said, feeling relieved but unsure as to why.
“Don’t worry, Janice, your boyfriend will return safe and sound,” Kirk said, grinning as he left the room.
“It was only one date!” Janice called after him, but the doors to the ready room shut before she could catch his response.
It was supposed to have been a standard meet-and-greet, she found out afterwards as she sat numbly by Kirk’s bedside in sickbay. A diplomatic team had already initiated first contact, and there had been a succession of successful meetings and exchanges. Gamma Xion Five even had a trade agreement for dilithium ore with the Federation. The Enterprise’s stop there was just a reminder to the planet that the Federation held their new friends in high respect - an exchange of news and gifts.
Instead, Kirk and his party had beamed smack into the middle of an assassination attempt on the leader of the planet by a section of her people that did not want to have anything to do with visitors from the stars.
The Enterprise team had been pinned down by a ruthless gang of terrorists, but several of the security contingent had risked their own lives to retrieve the frightened leader of the Gamma Xion people from where she was trapped. In the heavy exchange of fire, Hill had been separated from the main group, and was the target of the full assault of the terrorist fire. In an action so typical of him, Kirk had rushed to his injured crewman’s aide, drawing the attack away from him.
By the time communication had been established with the Enterprise and the entire landing party beamed straight into sickbay, Kirk was unconscious and bleeding heavily. It took McCoy and his team much longer to stabilise him than it ever had before, as his injuries were the most severe he’d ever received while on an away mission.
“The initial bomb blast brought down the wall closest to him, and he was buried in debris for a while, before he dug himself out,” Christine told an anxious Janice when Kirk was transferred from the surgical unit into a recovery bay. “That’s why there’s so much bruising and general damage to his back. Then he took some nasty burns from energy weapons fire while he was rescuing Hill. Security says that when he went down again, there was some physical attack by members of the terrorist group, which explains the broken bones and internal bleeding, and the head injury.”
Janice had a flashback to another captain lying broken and bleeding on a biobed, and once again Christine had to get her sitting with her head between her legs.
“How is he?” Janice asked quietly.
“Sedated,” Christine said firmly. “He’ll heal, Janice, don’t you worry about that, but he’ll do it faster for now if he’s not moving about.”
“And Hill?” Janice asked belatedly.
“He got a bump on the head when the ceiling collapsed, but the captain prevented him from much further injury. He’s being seen to now, and then he’ll be discharged.”
“He’s ok?” Janice said, her lip trembling.
“Thanks to the captain, yes,” Christine told her, holding her hand comfortingly. “If the captain hadn’t broken cover to get to him, it might be a very different story indeed.”
“Can I see him?” Janice pleaded.
“I’ll send him over when his treatment is finished,” Christine soothed.
“No, I meant the captain,” Janice said.
A look passed over Christine’s face so quickly that Janice couldn’t identify it.
“He’s asleep,” she cautioned. “And we can’t get started on healing the bruising until his internal injuries are completely dealt with.”
“I get it, he looks like hell,” Janice snapped irritably. “I just need to see him, Christine.”
Christine nodded, and led Janice down to the recovery area. She dismissed the junior nurse who was monitoring the readings from the machinery Kirk was hooked up to and took over the job herself while Janice stood at the side of the bed. Checking to see that Christine had her back turned, she reached out a finger and gingerly stroked the only patch of undamaged skin she could reach, a small area on his forearm.
“He’ll be better very soon,” Christine said firmly. “These machines will mostly be gone in the next twelve hours, and he’ll be brought out of his sedation in another twelve. Give him a week, and you won’t be able to tell there was anything wrong with him.”
Janice let Christine’s no-nonsense tone of voice calm her inner terror.
“I should go and assist Commander Spock,” Janice said eventually. “He’ll need my help.”
“Aren’t you off-duty now?” Christine asked.
Janice shook her head. “Not when he’s like this, no, I’m not. Thank you, Christine. I’ll come back later.”
“I’ll tell the duty nurse to bring you through,” Christine told her.
Janice brushed a kiss to the tired woman’s cheek and left sickbay. She was on the bridge and taking orders from Spock before she remembered Lucas, but by then she was too busy to do anything other than hope he was feeling better. She had too much work to complete to do anything else.
Once she had completed tasks set by Spock, he pronounced her off-duty and she didn’t dare argue with him. She went back down to sickbay and sat in Kirk’s private room, watching the machines record and register his heartbeat and brainwaves. Aware that this was probably the only time she’d be able to do this, she perched awkwardly on the side of his bed and ran a hand gently through his hair. Dust and tiny particles of debris fell out, and she found patches where blood had matted his hair together.
“That won’t do,” she told him in low tones. “Can’t have the captain looking less than his best, can we?”
The room was equipped with a small sink and some personal hygiene basics. She filled a small bowl with warm water and began to gently sponge the matted sections of his hair. Her salty tears dropped into the bowl that was rapidly turning pink with his blood, but she didn’t stop until she had washed his hair. She gently ran a comb through his hair, careful to avoid any obvious injuries. She then emptied the bowl, rinsed it clean and filled it with warm water again and started to clean off smudges of dirt that remained on his visible body.
“There,” she said eventually. “All clean.”
She sat in the small chair in the corner of the room, unwilling to leave him alone completely. She must have eventually fallen asleep, because when she came to, somebody had draped a blanket over her and wedged a small pillow under her head.
“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice croaked.
Janice’s eyes snapped open. While she was asleep, somebody had disconnected almost every machine that had been hooked up to Kirk. They had raised the end of the biobed slightly, to allow him to see more than just the ceiling.
“I could say the same for you,” she told him pointedly.
He shrugged, then by the look of pain on his face, immediately wished that he hadn’t.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did anybody die?”
“No,” she said, moving towards him. “You were the hurt the worst.”
“Tell me from the beginning,” he said. “I don’t remember much about it.”
“I’ve only read the reports from the security team and Lieutenant Darrow,” she told him. “I haven’t spoken to anyone myself. Should I be getting a doctor for you?”
“Bones has been and gone,” Kirk said, swallowing hard. “But I didn’t want to go back to sleep. Could you pass me that glass of water?”
“Of course,” Janice said, supporting the glass as Kirk’s fingers wrapped around it carefully. “Slow sips.”
After a few moments, his voice was slightly clearer than before.
“Tell me,” he repeated, and so Janice carefully recounted the facts as they had been reported to Spock and collated for his report back to Starfleet Command.
“We’ll have to leave their space until they have this sorted out,” Kirk said when she had finished.
“We already have,” Janice said, fussing with his bedclothes. “The First Minister of the planet was well enough to be beamed back down a few hours ago. The last I heard we were waiting at the edge of their solar system for orders from Command as to how to follow up.”
“How are you doing?” he asked, and she looked at him incredulously.
“Me?” she said, astounded. “Why are you asking me? I wasn’t the one who had a ceiling land on me, or took energy weapon fire, or got beaten to a p..p..pulp.”
She stammered the last word out and a hot tear escaped, blazing its way down her face.
“Shh,” he said ineffectually, but his concern just made her cry harder.
“Don’t you dare do this again,” she said through her tears. “Do you hear me, Jim? Don’t you dare, I’ve been so worried about you, we all have.”
His hand shifted about on the bed until it found hers, and he gripped it tightly.
“I’m fine,” he said, trying to reassure her. In return she just gestured at his body, covered with cuts and bruises and surgical bandages.
“Well, I will be fine,” he amended, squeezing her hand again. “Bones will have me up and running in no time.”
“In a week, at the very least,” interrupted a gravelly voice. “Unless you stay in bed and do as I tell you, it will take longer.”
Janice jumped at the unexpected entrance of the doctor, and tried to pull her hand away from Kirk’s. Kirk’s grip remained tight, and she couldn’t move away from him. Part of her was very glad of the fact; part of her was mortified to have been found holding hands with him in front of a senior member of staff.
However, the senior member of staff seemed more interested in laying down the law to the captain about his recuperation than worrying about whose hand he was holding.
“You’ll stay here even if I have to sedate you for the whole damn week,” he growled.
“But I’ll be needed on the bridge!” Kirk protested.
“Bullshit,” was the firm response. “Spock’s Acting Captain until I declare you fit for duty. Now you know as well as I do that I’ve no wish for the pointy-eared bastard to be in charge, so do us all a favour and get well before he decides it would be logical for us all to become meditating vegetarians and takes meat off the menus!”
“Well, god forbid you don’t get your steak,” Kirk muttered, the tiniest hint of a smile on his lips.
“I work damn heard for that steak, stitching together gung-ho idiots like you. So yes, I would prefer it if it wasn’t replaced by a salad.”
The look of distaste on McCoy’s face showed his thoughts on the value of salads very clearly.
“I’m going to want to know what’s happening on my ship,” Kirk said, looking mutinous at the thought of a week in sickbay.
“Fine, then Yeoman Rand can act as your liaison,” McCoy said, acknowledging Janice’s presence for the first time. “Maybe she’ll have more luck than I do at keeping you in one place!”
And that became Janice’s role for the next seven days. She would spend forty five minutes at the start of shift conferring with Spock, who had a remarkably different attitude towards paperwork than Kirk did. It was a refreshing change, although not one that Janice would want long-term. After that, she was free to go down to sickbay where she would fill Kirk in on the ship’s business and then spend as many hours as he could stay awake amusing him. That meant anything from reviewing the information she had just given Spock to discussing her ongoing first contact training, as well as talking about Janice’s past. He was keen to know all about her before she joined Starfleet, and when he discovered the fact that she could draw, he immediately badgered her into sketching for him.
Once he regained proper use of his fingers, which had been crushed by the heavy boots of his attackers, Janice began to give him some drawing lessons.
“Admit it,” he said, his tone reflecting his disappointment. “Five year olds can do better.”
“You’re just annoyed that you’ve found something that you can’t master immediately,” she teased. “It’s not bad. You just need to remember what I told you about depth of field. Try again.”
She read to him, sometimes, old favourites they had in common and some newer things that her mother sent once a month, regular as clockwork. Tara and Maggie also wrote and sent presents, including more of the retro chocolate bars. Janice made the mistake of bringing one for him to sample, and had to put up with his begging for more for the rest of his time confined to bed in sickbay.
He had more than enough visitors to allow her to slip away and get some time on her own, but he always seemed to be glad to see her when she returned, which was gratifying. All this enforced proximity did her crush no good whatsoever, and she found herself longing for a world where he was more than her captain, and her friend. She wanted to be able to touch his hand freely, and not mask it by pretending to correct the position of the pencil he was holding. She wanted to take him home and introduce him to her family and Maggie and Tara instead of showing him photographs and telling stories. She wanted to kiss him hello and goodbye openly, instead of having to wait until his medication made him sleep and she got to drop an illicit kiss on his forehead as she adjusted his covers.
If wishes were horses then beggars would ride, her grandfather had always said; once Janice was old enough to understand it, she always remembered it. You can’t always get what you want, a long-dead lyricist had sung. But sometimes you might just get what you need.
What Janice needed was to get over this ridiculous crush and move on. Lucas had been strangely distant after his release from sickbay; perhaps he had been angry with her for not checking on him immediately, perhaps he thought that he would never have been included in the landing party if not for her influence with the captain. Either way, after she was rebuffed quite coldly in the mess one day, she decided that she was better off without him.
Her next date was a few days after Kirk had been pronounced fit for duty by McCoy, who was desperate to get him out of sickbay. Kirk had bounced onto the bridge in a fine mood, glad to be up and about after such a long rest period, and then had gone on a tour of the ship from top to bottom. Somewhere around the biology labs he had decided that he didn’t need Janice’s company, and had sent her off for lunch. She had found a quiet table at the back of the mess and was halfway through her sandwich when one of the sickbay orderlies appeared, carrying two slices of caramel apple pie.
“It’s been quiet in sickbay without the captain there,” he had said, by way of greeting. “And I don’t get to see you every morning now.”
“You must be desolate,” she replied, nodding her head to indicate he could sit down. In return, he slid a slice of pie across the table to her.
“Heart-broken,” he said gravely. “I’m not sure that I’ll make it through the day.”
“Oh, I’m sure that one of the doctors could prescribe you something to help you out,” she bantered, taking her first bite of the delicious dessert in front of her.
“No, I think I’ve got my medicine right here,” he returned, winking at her as he dug into his own slice of pie.
Janice couldn’t help it; the line was just too cheesy. She lost her composure and started to laugh.
“I knew I should have stopped at heart-broken,” he said, shaking his head. “Now you’ll never agree on a date.”
His name was Peter, she knew; he had been one of the team assigned to help Kirk with his physical therapy. He was a little shorter than the captain, his hair slightly more brown, his eyes a slightly less intense blue colour. But he had always been cheerful, even in the face of the captain’s less-than-professional ‘I hate sickbay’ rants.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, smiling. “There’s something to be said for a cheesy pick-up line. It lets a girl know that she’s worth the effort of sounding ridiculous.”
“For you I’d even tell bad jokes,” he promised, and Janice grinned.
“Save them for the date,” she advised.
“How about tomorrow?” he asked. “There’s going to be a double-bill of movies shown in the main rec room. Recent releases too, not some boring old 2-D rubbish from the twenty first century.”
If Janice had just come out with the fact that actually, she quite liked some of the boring old 2-D films, she may just have saved herself from a drama-ridden three-week relationship that eventually ended in a crescendo of angry voices and a flying paint palette. But they were still locked in the pre-date flirtation stage, so she kept her mouth shut.
“If it’s any help, you got him good with the palette,” Christine told her three weeks later, just after the break-up had happened and the emergency alcohol was being consumed. “He’s going to have a real shiner.”
“Didn’t a doctor heal it?” Janice sniffed, feeling very sorry for herself.
“Unfortunately, the nurse on triage duty didn’t think his injury was serious enough to warrant medical intervention,” Christine said blithely.
“Really,” Uhura said sarcastically. “How convenient.”
Christine shrugged.
“Life works in mysterious ways, and he’s an ass.”
“Amen,” said Janice, holding out her glass imperiously. “More, please.”
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