#cooooooooool

One side of his lips quirked up. “This is hardly the kind of place I’d take you— give me more credit than that.”

You tilted your head and kept your eyes directly on his sky-hued irises. You frowned playfully when Jim’s expression returned to Captain-mode-neutral. “So you’re saying all these questions aren’t to get to know me? That’s a slight hit to my ego.”

“You say that like you would answer any questions designed to get to know you.”

“And you say that like you don’t think you could wear me down.”

Jim was visibly fighting a smile as the corners of his lips twitched. His eyes didn’t move from yours to focus on anything else. He kept his focus on you. “Careful, or I’ll think you’re trying to charm your way out of trouble.”

“Trouble? I thought we established my lack-of-hand six questions ago.” You wet your lips. You couldn’t take your eyes from Jim’s and couldn’t let your tone reach even half an octave higher— no basic telltale signs of dishonesty would result in your being spared. You had to believe you were telling the truth. “I have nothing to do with that artifact going missing. I was beaten unconscious.”

Jim wet his lips this time. His teeth grazed his bottom lip for a moment. You imagined he was as reluctant as you were to return to artifact talk— he at least looked like he was as he reached to tap the screen of his PADD. “Cadet, are you aware of the artifact’s significance?”

You clicked your tongue and shook your head once. You kept your expression cool. “Nope.”

“Do you want to know its significance?”

He frowned and finally took his eyes from yours when you shook your head. He combed his fingers through his blonde hair, sweeping the longer strands out of his forehead. “Seven days in the medbay is no laughing matter. If I was in your place, I’d want to know what was important enough to prompt a beating like that.”

“You aren’t in my place.”

It’d been three days since your release from Dr. McCoy’s supervision and three days since the onset of the mandated questionings. In those three days, you had been given a stack of black uniform trousers that were much too big, a larger stack of black long sleeve t-shirts equipped with the Starfleet insignia at the chest, and a temporary living quarters located in what you assumed was the hell-pit of the Enterprise seeing as it was smack in the middle of Excited Ensign Village. You thought each of the accommodations was excessive but Jim insisted upon them all— including keeping you on board until the ship made her scheduled docking at the nearest starbase. He even had McCoy convince you that the Enterprise was the safest option, rather than a shuttle, given your “fragile condition.”

Although the aforementioned questionings were only a few short hours, at most, in length, they drained you of your daily energy reserves. Previously, Commander Spock would be present as well, so only having Jim in the room was a step in a more spirit-conserving direction. But it didn’t do away with your nerves and exhaustion entirely— as evidenced by your flipping stomach, tightening throat, and silence-prompted restlessness that probably came as a result of the Starfleet regulation requiring that these sessions be recorded and transmitted to the Starfleet Academy Board for review.

Jim didn’t leave the recording device on all throughout, however, and only activated it when either of you mentioned the artifact explicitly. It partially satisfied you that he was as uncomfortable with the regulations as you were— while he played the part of a skeptic well, you knew he trusted you.

Unfortunately it was precisely that which knocked at your conscience most— Jim’s trust. It kept you from sleeping and eating adequately and you found yourself fearing the look in Jim’s eyes if he learned the truth more than you feared a Starfleet Academy expulsion. You attributed it all to guilt despite this being the only occurrence of such an emotion in all your life. You didn’t think it was possible to attribute it to anything else, nor did you feel at all comfortable doing so.

Three too-leading-to-be-admissible questions later, Jim tapped the screen of his PADD and sighed. He sat back and offered you a lazy smile. “Bet you regret recovering now.”

“Not as much as I regret leaving Earth.”

“You did it for love.”

“Huh?” you hummed questioningly until your stomach flipped in realization. You then let out a bark of sarcastic laughter and sat back as well, releasing your steel grip on the seat to set your arms in your lap. You snorted for good measure. “Love, sure. Good one.”

“You went to a different planet for this guy and you weren’t in love with him?”

“Nope. The sex was just that good.”

He laughed through his nose. “Still a noble reason to leave Earth.”

“You think sex is noble? God, where were you when I was being shamed for sleeping around?”

“Leading a parallel life, apparently.”

You laughed and shook your head at Jim, groaning lethargically as he rose from his seat and nodded towards the door. “No.”

“Come on.”

“No, I'm tired.”

He narrowed his eyes in return, walking past three chairs to round the table and approach you. He sat back against the edge of the table and crossed his arms over his chest, staring down at you expectantly.

You blinked back up at him. As discreetly as you could, you traced his features with your eyes— the slope of his nose, the dip of his cupid’s bow, the sharpness of his jaw— and stayed silent.

“Come on. I’ll walk you back to your quarters.”

“No, Jim, I’m tired.”

His eyebrows came together. “I order you to get up.”

You offered him a deadpanned expression. “I’m not on your crew— you can’t order me to do anything.”

“Actually, I can. You’re a cadet, I’m a captain.”

“Don’t pull rank on me.”

“Don’t be a pain when I’m so clearly trying to be gentlemanly.”

You scoffed a sound of discontent and stood, stretching your arms in front of you as Jim retrieved his PADD. “Don’t be a pain,” you repeated imitatively while his back was still turned. “You’re the one that’s a pain.”

“Good one— write it down so you don’t forget it.”

You bared your teeth at him as he walked beside you, to which he responded with a chuckle. He slapped his hand against the control panel beside the door so the metal barrier slid open with a hiss, his posture once again pin-straight and tense as soon as he stepped out of the conference room.

“You know, the taste of synthesized food is really making me rethink my career goal of ending up on the Enterprise.”

As you walked down the cavernous corridor to the closest turbolift, Jim glanced at you with a broad smile. “Never let the synthesized food deter you from the Enterprise— we keep Bones around to do that.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve developed a newfound fear of spaceborne bacteria.”

He stepped into the empty turbolift and smiled down at his feet. He leant his shoulder against the left wall. “A week in his care will do that.”

You tried to concentrate on the decks you speedily passed. You took a breath. “So no more questionings, right? We’re done with them?”

“Depends on what Admiral Barnett says.”

“What do you think he’ll say?”

Jim turned to face you entirely, leaning his back against the wall instead. He crossed his arms over his chest. “That it’s enough. You were just at the wrong place, at the wrong time— questioning you isn’t getting us any closer to finding the artifact.”

“Why would he care about finding the artifact? He’s the head of the Academy’s board—”

“He just needs to make sure no one in the Academy is breaking any laws, withholding any information, ruining any interplanetary relations, —”

“Tampering with the Kobayashi Maru test,” you continued in the same tone with which he spoke, smiling at him and raising your hands in innocence when he tilted his head with an exaggerated look of bewilderment. “I’ve been on this ship for ten days, I don’t offer any personal information, I’m a very good listener, and I’m a terrible gossip. You really shouldn’t be surprised.”

After he clicked his tongue and reached over to push your shoulder so you stumbled back a few inches, you snorted a laugh. You spared him more than enough glances and allowed for his smile to shrink before you spoke again, “D’ya think he has enough to make sure?”

The turbolift doors slid open on your floor and Jim motioned for you to exit first. “Yeah, I do.”

You felt yourself smile as you sighed. You were tired of being the restless, nervous mess you would become the moment the conference room door shut. You liked who you were around Jim when he was just Jim, not Captain Kirk. “Good, I’m glad.”

“Spending time with me, one on one,” he began, looking at you as you walked through the halls, “can’t be bad enough to merit relief like that.”

You shrugged and continued to stare straight ahead. The hall was empty excluding the few ensigns that tried to smile and nod at Jim— his attention was otherwise occupied, however. “I take issue with the questioning. Spending time with you, one on one, isn’t bad at all. I’d just prefer if it was for something else.”

You felt his eyes stay on you. “Yeah?”

You only nodded once. You tried to keep the disappointment from your features as you approached your door.

“And what would you prefer it was for?”

You stopped in front of the door to your temporary living quarters and leaned against it. You shrugged and smiled a bit as you let yourself face Jim. “Chess. I’m very good at it.”

“Chess,” he repeated, taking a step forward. His height, inches above yours, and proximity rendered it necessary for you to tip your head upwards. You felt his breath fan over your cheekbones as one of his hands came to rest at a spot on the door just above your shoulder. “Nothing else?”

You watched his pupils dilate ever so slightly and bit down on your bottom lip as you shook your head. “Do you have something else in mind?”

He hummed out a sigh as your fingertips touched his chest, the vibrations of his voice ringing through the vacant corridor. He leaned in more, his nose brushing yours. “A lot of things, actually.”

He stopped a centimeter or so in front of your lips and his eyes flashed to yours as if to give you the chance to push him away. When you didn’t, he closed the short distance between the two of you and pressed his lips to yours.

His lips were somewhat chapped from the cool air that circulated through the Enterprise, but soft nonetheless. He tasted of apples and coffee— an odd mixture you never would’ve thought you’d enjoy until it made you so lightheaded. His arm found your waist and pulled your body into his, his chest collapsing in what you assumed to be relief the instant you kissed him back and splayed your fingers over the command gold fabric he wore.

He broke the kiss first, much to your dismay, and took his hand from the door to place his palm at the side of your neck, his fingers holding you in place gently as his thumb moved back and forth against your jaw. His pupils had dilated further, rendering the blue of his irises to be mere rings. “We could play poker.”

You laughed as he kissed you again, the sound a bit shaky and appearing almost foreign to you.

“Or tongo.”

You hummed as he leaned his forehead against yours. “Don’t know how to play that.”

“I could come in and teach you.”

You could feel vibrations of his voice from the tips of your fingers to the balls of your feet, pinching the material of his shirt before smoothing it out again. You focused on the fabric rather than look into his eyes again— you knew looking in his eyes meant your self control didn’t stand a chance. “Maybe another time. I really am tired.”

He took his forehead from yours and tightened his hold on your waist pointedly so you would meet his gaze. He had a small smirk pulling at his lips. “It’s a card game— doesn’t require much effort.”

“Trust me— you come into that room with me and that’s not all we’d do.”

He made a soft hissing sound through his teeth, his hand leaving your skin and his arm loosening as he took a small step back. “Another time, then?”

You felt cold as soon as he released you entirely while he took steps back and toward the turbolift you’d only just vacated. “Another time.”

“Soon?”

You nodded once more. “Soon.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” he said with a smile, already a few doors down.

“Not if I hold you to it first.”

“Cadet,” he sighed out so the final syllable faded with his breath, shaking his head with a grin that wrinkled the bridge of his nose and the skin beside his eyes.

You sighed out in a similar fashion, “Captain.”

He made a short humming noise before turning around so his back faced you. “Have a good night,” he called.

“You, too.”

You were smiling as you entered the code on your door’s control panel, shaking your head at yourself. It was odd the way your stomach flipped and your hands shook— you were used to that happening only in fear, in restlessness, in anxiety. It was the first time your stomach flipped and your hands shook not because of the prickling in your eyes and the tightness in your throat, but because of the smile on your lips and the warmth in your chest.

When your door slid open, though, you saw the soft orange glow the artifact usually emitted against the far left wall of the room was a much brighter, angrier red than you’d ever seen. Immobile, you watched it for a few seconds.

Minutes later, you swallowed thickly and took a calculated step inside, the hissing of the shutting door behind you sending your pounding heart, that had probably re-cracked your healed ribs, into your pelvis. You assumed the almost unbearable humidity exasperating the sheet of sweat over your skin was a result of the hot glow and quickly felt your stomach flip and fingers shake for reasons you were more accustomed to.