(no subject)

[lovely_ambition]

It’s been eight days now and there’s still no signs of Bones on the planet. There have been missives from Starfleet asking them to leave, but Jim refuses. He’s also begun to come around to the notion that Bones might be lost to them forever, but it’s still not reality and he won’t grieve just yet. He still has the pressing issue of the crew’s frustrations to deal with in addition to their travellers and he’s begun to seek out ways to make Sam feel better about the fact that she can’t remember anything about her past.

This is how he ends up in Sulu’s greenhouse.

“What flower is right for ‘I’m sorry you’re an amnesiac and I hope these brighten your day’,” Jim asks immediately as he peruses through geraniums and chrysanthemums, sniffs roses and daisies and studies them all with the perplexed air of a man who’s never brought flowers to anyone before in his life.

He lets his fingers trail along the petals of flowers and sniffs at them precariously as if one of them is either going to suddenly smell right or is going to give him an allergic reaction. Given Jim’s history, he’s sadly leaning far more towards the latter of the two.

Sulu is staring at him strangely and Jim’s not sure what to make of it.

“Look, I’ve never done the flower thing before in my life,” Jim sighs out the words with heavy frustration. “I just…want to do something nice for Sam. Things have been really weird for her ever since we beamed her on board and she seems so sad at night and I just want to make her smile. I want to give her something from me that makes her happy,” he says awkwardly, stopping by a set of petunias and staring at the way their petals curve.

Something he said must have clicked because Sulu is beginning to arrange flowers together. “I’ll give you green-complementary colours,” Sulu says decisively. “They’ll go well with her eyes and you can pin one to her hair or to her clothes and it will match.” Sometimes, Jim doesn’t understand why Sulu uses botany as his hobby, but he seems so smoothly serene as he arranges flowers that Jim is beginning to see the benefits. “What message are you trying to get across, Captain?”

“I’m sorry?”

Sulu gives a soft laugh, almost condescending, almost pitiful. “Flowers send messages, sir. From a family member or a friend or from someone who wants something more.” He looks very carefully at Jim and wields his scissors expertly and quickly, like a small sword engaged in battle. “Which would you be?”

Jim’s gaze stays on the glint of the light off the scissors as he tries to figure out just what kind of message he’s supposed to be sending and what kind of message he wants to send. He wants to tell her that he feels safe when she wraps her arms around him and she makes the grief of losing Bones seem almost tolerable. He wants to promise that he’s willing to go slow and if some husband turns up, he’s willing to back off if she really and truly loves him, but he’s clinging to the optimism that because there’s no ring on her finger, there’s no man out there awaiting her return. He looks at pinks and reds and purples, his gaze skittering over roses and landing on the daffodils.

“Those.”

He doesn’t know what they mean, but when Sulu mentions something about them being a Narcissus flower, Jim has to snort and that inner-Bones voice that won’t go away is all too happy to point out, “well, that’s just perfect, Jim-boy”. He watches Sulu trim the stems off and wrap them up slowly.

“Do you want me to have one of the yeoman’s bring them up?”

Jim’s shaking his head as he digs through his pockets for some credit chips. He knows that Sulu has insisted that the crew needn’t reimburse him for his work, but Jim wants to set a precedent of an economy on board and walks out of the room with the flowers in hand and refusing to hear any arguments about the money.

It’s not a very long walk until he arrives at his quarters, but it’s long enough that he has a chance to practice his speech in the meantime.

I know it’s not much...

I don’t even know if you like flowers...

So, my botanist had too much supply and he thought I might...

I wanted to do something nice for you and I thought of this.

He stops in front of the door and for a moment, he wonders whether she’ll even be inside. Sam doesn’t stray very far. She goes to the mess hall and she goes to the Clinic, but she spends the majority of her time hiding away in Jim’s room like it’s the safest place on the ship. The truth is that it’s probably at the bottom of the list when it comes to safety, but Jim doesn’t want to drive her away by saying that aloud.

As the doors slide open, he wanders in to find her curled up with an anatomy textbook. An old lewd joke stays trapped on Jim’s tongue, but he makes his way inside and leans over to present the flowers in her vision.

“...Jim? What’s this?” Sam asks warily, eyes on each petal as if there’s some hidden message inscribed therewithin.

This could go wrong in a myriad of ways. After they had shared a bed, things have been slightly tense between them followed by good moments -- periods in which Jim thinks he should encourage more closeness the likes of which they had experienced that night. Right now, he’s got a too-tight grip on some flowers and is staring at Sam like he’s back to being a thirteen-year-old boy and he doesn’t know if the girl is about to punch him or kiss his cheek (or maybe both).

He kneels down on the couch next to her and lays the flowers on the small table in front of them. “They’re for you. They’re an apology and a gesture because I’ve been acting a bit like a demanding jerk sometimes and you don’t…you don’t deserve that,” he gets out, tripping slightly on his words. “I’m sorry that you’re an amnesiac who got tortured and that Bones isn’t here to tell you that it’s not your fault.” His fingers drift and toy with the petals as he stares at them instead of looking up to see Sam’s reaction. “I wanted you to have something as…as beautiful as you are,” he gets out.

Back in the Academy, he used to be able to say these things with ease, and hadn’t even paused between the first kiss and the fall into her bed. Sam’s different because it’s deeper than that. She’s not just some conquest.

He finally dares to look up and sees a fond look in Sam’s eyes. She reaches over and rests her palm over his. “I think he mentioned you,” she finally says. “I can’t be sure if this is a memory or some hopeful dream that I’ve confused for reality,” she clarifies, using both hands to make an emphatic statement. “But I remember someone, him, saying that you would save us. That Jim would save us,” she says slowly and gives him a look of heavy confusion. “And you did. You saved all of us.”

“Not him.” The grip on his hand tightens until it’s almost painful and he lets out a yelp of pain as he glares at Sam. “Fuck! Sam! Quit it!” Jim protests sharply.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You saved a hundred and thirty-one lives,” she snaps at him and there’s no softness in her eyes or in her expression now. It’s all cold fury and determination and Jim feels something in his stomach turn as he realizes that he’s not feeling anything but fierce adoration and arousal at this particular side of Sam. “You saved me. And we’re not done searching yet. There’s a fourth of the planet left to search, a whole fourth.”

She releases his hand and scoops up the flowers, cradling them to her chest alongside the PADD. Delicately, she sniffs at the bouquet, burying her face amidst the delicate white petals and she’s overcome by a delighted smile.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had flowers brought to me ever,” she says thoughtfully. “I feel like maybe, just maybe, you’re the first.”

He watches her the whole time that she smells the flowers and seems to drift off into her own little world, somehow taken there by some supposed memory or some scent-association that Jim’s evoked by giving her the flowers. He thinks that he should leave her alone in this moment, but it’s not before Sam can lean up and press a fond kiss to his cheek. Jim flushes and scrubs his hand over that skin like he’s a teenager all over again and stares at the ground.

This close, he can smell the flowers and the shampoo she uses (something that they’d uncovered in one of the vacated rooms, from a cadet that had decided to stay back on their last shore leave planet for her vacation). It’s citrus and there’s something to her smell that makes her seem familiar. Jim only takes a moment before realizing that she smells so good because she smells like safety, like waking up to the promises of something good in the morning.

He flashes the legendary Captain Kirk smile and leaves her to her reading. There are a dozen places that he can go as Captain of the Enterprise while wandering aimlessly. He can put in some extra hours on the bridge or go to the mess hall to check on staff morale. He finds himself wandering to Engineering to listen to the hum of the engines and to feel the steady constant of the ship under his fingers. It’s the one place outside of his bedroom with Sam that he feels any kind of peace and he doesn’t feel the grief of losing Bones tearing at him. He needs that right now, to soothe his troubled mind and to try and sedate the strange feelings he can’t exactly contend with.

He half-expects Scotty, but he definitely doesn’t expect him to have company.

Jim pauses in the doorway when he hears feminine laughter trickling out from around the various mechanical structures. He’s not exactly about to hide, so he pokes his head around one of the tubes and arches his brow in his best Bones approximation when he sees Scotty explaining the various mechanics of the Enterprise to one of the women that they had picked up from Chrysenthia. She’s got the heaviest smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks that Jim’s ever seen on a person with sleek blonde hair and is wearing a sundress that Jim’s pretty sure used to belong to Janice at some point.

Jim ought to be aware that Sam’s not the only refugee, but sometimes in the privacy of his cabin, it’s easy to forget.

“Captain!” Scotty greets him cheerfully. “Aliana, this is Captain Kirk. He’s the one that saved the lot of you from the prisons.”

Aliana glances up and before Jim can even say a word of protest, she’s bounding forward on bare feet and launching into a hug with Jim, letting out a delighted ‘thank you, thank you, thank you!’ Jim can’t help but laugh in return, settling her on the ground and staring at her with something like wonder. “Honestly, we’d all given up hope. I kept wondering if I was going to wake up with no memory one day,” she says, voice anxious.

“You remember everything?”

“I wish I didn’t?” she offers. She’s got a faint brogue, as if she’s somehow been adopting Scotty’s mannerisms and tone. She glances over her shoulder and wanders back to Scotty’s side. “Your crew’s been so kind to me. Mr. Scott’s offered to help me apply to be a yeoman, you know,” she says, eyes sparkling.

For a brief moment, Jim stops to think about Sam staying on the ship, of her staying with them and of waking up to her every morning. His breath catches and he starts to come around to the thoughts that he’s been trying to deny for so long.

“Good,” Jim praises, feeling breathless. “That’s good. You have to stay in the place that feels like home. Scotty, can I…talk to you for a second?”

“Aye, Captain, of course.” Scotty’s on his feet and pressing a kiss to the back of Aliana’s palm before he and Jim begin a slow walk outside of Engineering. “Something on your mind?” he asks, while Jim’s attention is still behind them on Engineering and the woman that’s waiting for Scotty within those doors.

“Are you and she…romantic?”

Scotty pauses and stops to study Jim, as if he’s not sure about the answer and facial tics and cues will give him a clue as to the expected and the right response. Jim’s not trying to disapprove. He only wants to know and he wants the answer to be ‘yes’ so he can ask his own advice.

“Scotty, it’s okay if you are,” Jim hurries to add before he gets a defensive engineer on his hands and his own problem just spirals down into more confusion and chaos. “I just…need to ask you something if that’s the case.”

Suddenly, Scotty seems to understand all of it and something like comprehension dawns on his face.

“The lass in your quarters?” Scotty asks suspiciously. “Didn’t think you were thinking about anything but the Doctor, I hate to say, Captain. The whole ship is on pins and needles waiting for your punishment of the day seeing as we haven’t found McCoy. We’ve not stopped looking, sir, we swear, but it’s not as if your life has to stop. And she’s a bonny lass.”

“She has no memory of who she is. She could have a husband.”

“Could. Aliana says that most of the Chrysenthian wives wear a piece of jewellery to recognize the marriage. Does she have any, this Sam of yours?”

Jim opens his mouth to say that she’s not his, but he stops because a strange caveman part of his brain wants her to be. There is a part of him that wants nothing more than to have her as his own. While Scotty’s being helpful, Jim feels a keen sense of loss because the one person who’d understand him best of all is the one who he can’t talk to. Bones would understand this given his history and his family and would know how to comfort and confront him. Bones always knew exactly what to say, even if it wasn’t what Jim wanted to hear.

Jim thinks he might be falling in love.

It’s kind of the most terrifying thing he’s ever experienced and he wants to talk about this paralyzing and fearful feeling.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jim insists. “We’ll probably drop her off on Earth when we get around to it, when we find Bones,” he goes on stubbornly. “Besides, what would she want with me?”

Jim doesn’t understand how to decipher the look that Scotty’s giving him, but he can deal with the clapped hand of support on his shoulder. He feels bad, suddenly, for disturbing Scotty from what was probably a date. He feels bad because he ought to be in his quarters reading his own PADD while sneaking glances at Sam as she furrows her brow and worries her lower lip in abject concentration. He focuses on that image instead of thinking about wives and widows or missing persons or hearts falling into a never-ending abyss.

“Go back to Aliana!” Jim says, putting aside his own issues like he had one day in a shuttle bay while Bones walked away from him to a battle so far away. “Go on, go,” he says, even though it breaks him up to isolate himself like this. “Beautiful woman like that and you’re roaming the halls with me?” he jokes.

Scotty just grins at him in turn. “Captain?”

“Yeah?”

“Give her a chance. Give yourself a chance.”

*

The people of Chrysenthia have been living on the Enterprise for almost ten days. Jim wakes blearily to a message over the communicator about an event they plan to hold that evening and shifts slightly with his arms around Sam’s small frame – he’d almost forgotten that they’d gone to bed together because she had a severe pain in her back. He had offered her the bed and she had stubbornly refused to let him sleep on the floor or the couch, seeing as she’s sure that it’s the cause of her distress.

His hair is poking out in five different directions at once and he rubs his eyes blearily, tucking the covers up to Sam’s chin before climbing atop and over her to answer the message. It’s simple at the core of it. It starts with:

We wish to hold a cultural dance this evening, Captain. Your permission is required.

--and goes on to detail the requirements and purpose of such an event. He signs off on it and skims the further information about how it’s a fertility festival of some kind. The gist is the same as Jim’s seen on many planets before. Gourds are carved, flowers appear in wreath-form, girls wear white, and dancing is had around a fire or light-source of a kind. He turns off the computer and slowly crawls back under the covers to curl up with Sam’s warmth, trying not to take advantage of the fact that she lets him cling to her when the thoughts of Bones get too heavy for him to bear on his own. She understands that he just wants to stay quiet and not talk about it and experience the tangible comfort of another human being. He wishes that he isn’t so conflicted with the two halves of his heart and his mind going at it.

One side is screaming at him that he needs to be searching harder for Bones.

The other side insists that Sam is there and if Jim doesn’t do something about it, she’s going to be leaving the ship and he can’t just let her go. He can’t lose her, not when he’s just started to feel something he’s never exactly experienced before. He wants to ask Uhura if falling in love always feels as scary as this. He wants to know if there’s any end to the endless plummet. His other side wins out as he spoons Sam from behind and presses his nose to her bare shoulder – she’s migrated from Jim’s t-shirts to his tank-tops – and closes his eyes tightly, relying on the familiar smell of her to get him through the first thoughts of his waking hours. Bones is still gone. Bet he’d laugh his ass off if he could see me now.

Jim smiles fondly as he thinks about the diatribe Bones would let loose on him.

Jesus Christ, Jim, you’re going to unleash your panel of STD’s on some poor unknowing woman? Just because your dick’s gone and fallen in love doesn’t mean your heart has.

Jim closes his eyes tightly. He misses Bones too much and he wants to hear that speech and a dozen more like it. Some distant and fantastical part of his brain conjures up a dream in which he is wearing a perfect tux and she’s clad in a dress and Bones is there, alive and well and dressed up in his finest, earning the appreciative gaze of all those around. He’s giving them his best man speech and...

“Jim?” Sam’s starting to rouse and she stretches, leaning back against him. “You’re smiling against my shoulder. And drooling,” she points out evenly.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, wiping at the corner of his mouth. “Half-awake. Thinking about Bones.”

She just smiles at him fondly as she stretches and turns over. Jim forces himself not to watch the way her shirt rides up and reveals a strip of pale skin. He fights the urge to brush his fingers against that patch and resettles in the bed so that his arm is draped over her shoulder and she’s idly tucked against his side, using him as a pillow.

“You’ve already been up,” she notices drowsily as she glances around the room and sees the telltale signs that Jim has left in his wake. The vid-screen is still on and the memo has gone out. He’s draped clothes over the chair and he’s sent a page to Janice to ask her to bring clothes for Sam so that she can attend the ball that evening. “Did I miss much?” When she’s just waking up, all her words stick together with this pleasant joy, as if the day has hope left in it. Jim thinks it’s kind of adorable to listen to. She sounds, constantly, like she’s just about to drop back to sleep.

Jim shifts and stretches out his legs, trying not to notice when she does the same and manages to get their ankles temporarily intertwined before apologies are said and they withdraw back to their separate sides. “Your people want to hold a dance tonight to appease some fertility god. I gave them the recreation hall and I think Chekov’s going to play music. Or DJ. I’m not sure which one is less frightening.” He pauses and approaches the forbidden and tetchy subject with slight caution. “Do you…remember these festivals from the planetside?”

She still doesn’t know her name. Jim’s not exactly banking on her recalling the agenda of a simple autumnal dance.

“Never mind,” he insists rapidly because it doesn’t matter if she knows the waltz or the doe-see-doe. It just matters that he’s going to get her a beautiful dress and accompany her to the dance and make sure that she has a wonderful time. “Janice is bringing you something. Yeoman Rand? She’ll be here in a couple of hours while I’m on shift. I’ll pick you up at 1800?” he asks while he rubs his fingers in soft circles against her bare shoulder.

“You really want to be my date? Thought you’d have your sights set on Chapel,” Sam says with surprise. “You look at her, sometimes.”

Jim has to swallow down his guilt and he has the choice before him of a path that splits in two. He could lie to Sam and dash away from the issue or he could tell her the truth. “Sometimes,” he says, the truth snaking its way past his throat, “I look at her as if I can make Bones reappear in her place if I stare hard enough,” he says, gaze intent on Sam as he offers an anxious smile. “The only woman I want to dance with tonight is you. And maybe Uhura the once because it’s a joke between us that goes a long way back.”

“I don’t know if I know how to dance,” Sam protests with a warm laugh.

“I’ll lead,” Jim assures her with a kiss to her temple as he vaults out of bed to start full preparations for the day. He dares a glance over his shoulder to see how she reacts to the kiss and grins even wider when Sam touches two fingers to her temple and smiles with something like wonder curving her lips upward. “You just have to follow me to the ends of the universe.”

“Oh,” Sam retorts playfully, sprawling and wriggling in bed. “Just that?”

“Just that, yeah,” Jim concurs as he bucks off his sleeping shirt and wanders around the room shirtless as he grabs his toothbrush and brushes his teeth while finding a clean shirt to wear for the day. He pretends he doesn’t notice Sam outwardly staring at him, her elbow propping her up and making more of a mess of her tousled hair. She’s taking up all of his bed and Jim can’t help but stare and think that it looks right.

Once upon a time, Jim had been a young boy who had read fairytales. Back then, all he had focused on were the aspects involving escape. As a teen, he had expressed his doubt at the thought that there was one person that could make you feel more than the rest. That there’s one person who can make you settle down and give up the kingdom if you can just have a happily-ever-after with them.

Bones had made jokes at the Academy that it would take some serious hair spun of gold and poisoned apples to get Jim to fall hard.

Apparently it’s brown hair and the smell of citrus.

He spits out into his sink as he yanks on his uniform and wanders back to the bed, leaning over and not touching Sam, not kissing her, not doing anything but swaying back and forth from foot to foot. “Did you ever read those old fairytales? About how there’s always the one? And sometimes, they get away?”

Sam just shakes her head as she collapses back on the bed. She closes her eyes and rests her hands over her stomach. “I don’t remember anything about my childhood, Jim,” she says gently. Her eyes are still shut and she looks peaceful as she goes on. “But I think that’s crap. I think that if they get away, they were never really the one. The one is always going to be there, even if they’re under some evil witch’s spell.” She peeks one eye open and gives Jim a light shove. “Go on. You’ve got work and I have another long day of roaming around and trying to pull out memories from the abyss.”

He goes at her push, knowing that there’s no reason to linger when he’ll achieve nothing but staring at Sam and wondering what fairytale ending he can give to her. Jim spends all day thinking about fairytales and of breadcrumbs that must be somewhere on Chrysenthia’s surface that are just waiting to lead him back to Bones. He thinks of true love’s kiss, poison apples, glass slippers, and evil witches and he can’t place his finger on it, but he knows that he’s getting closer to the truth of everything he’s feeling.

“Spock!” Jim calls over when he grows tired of checking the clock every two seconds to see if alpha shift is over. “Will you be attending tonight’s gala?”

“While Lieutenant Uhura is insistent that neither she nor I are in need of fertility rituals to aid us, we will both be in attendance.”

Jim freezes on the spot. “…she’s not…”

“No, sir, she is not,” Spock immediately replies, his answer overlying Jim’s words. Somehow, that’s a relief and Jim doesn’t know whether that’s because he doesn’t want to lose Uhura to mothering just yet or if he feels that way because he’s not sure what he feels about his future, but he has to admit that a Kirk to carry on his legacy had always been there in the back of his mind as something of a plan. He puts it aside and continues to discuss preparations with Spock, the latest star charts, and is delighted when the shift is officially over and he can go get ready.

He’s heading to the turbolift at what might be breakneck speed if the entire crew hadn’t seen Jim move at faster speeds in a crisis. “I’ll see everyone at the party. Remember, bring your own booze and wreaths,” he teases before punching in his destination and fidgeting while the ride takes longer than he’s ever recalled it taking. He whistles to himself as he waltzes down the corridor and plans his outfit in mind while chattering idly to the computer as he goes, asking it to open the door and to have his suit ready.

He’s not sure he can ask the computer to provide words for him as he comes to a stop and sees Sam twisting her hair up and staring studiously in the mirror, letting out a huff of frustration. Jim drifts to her side and looks at her reflection in the mirror and notes the way that her slightly less-than-pale skin shines in the light of the room. The pink dress cuts a pretty picture and clings to her waist before descending in dozens of layers, the bodice showing off her chest and hiding broad shoulders with short sleeves.

Jim can’t breathe for a moment and he panics. He almost runs, almost leaves, but then Sam looks up in the mirror and catches his gaze in the glass. “Hey, Jim,” she greets ruefully and her smile looks unsure, like she’s not really confident about the clothes. “Think I’ll find a Prince at this party of yours?”

He’s so close that if he exhales, she’ll feel his breath on the back of her neck. Slowly, his hands glide up her back and his thumb brushes past the clasp of her bra, making his stomach tumble with nerves as his mind drifts and thinks of a fantasy in which they don’t make it to the dance because he’s too busy spinning her around, lifting her atop the desk and kissing her until all her pink lipstick smudges against Jim’s lips.

He forces his mind to push past the fantasy and his hands slowly twine with the strands of her hair, helping her fasten the small clips up and allowing the graceful curve of her neck to show.

“I think my crew would be crazy not to fall in line for your glass slippers,” he ekes out, still feeling vaguely nauseous and breathless at once.

He forces himself to take a step back and to offer her a hand, wanting to coax her through the halls of the ship and onto the dance floor where they can just spend their moments together. He wants her all to himself and when he pulls her into the crowded room, he has the feeling he’s going to have to fight for that. The Chrysenthian men are all staring at Sam with interest in their eyes and some of his own crew are tipping their heads as she passes, even though Jim is glaring and glowering heavily.

He doesn’t waste any time before asking her to dance with a hand to her back and a whispered plea in her ear. “Dance with me,” he murmurs, as if he’s actually ready to cede control and is willing to let her loose to the wolves of her own people and to Jim’s. He trusts them all, but he’s not sure he trusts himself in that situation.

It doesn’t seem to matter because she’s agreeing to a dance with a graceful nod of her head, clasping his hand with one of her own while sliding the other around his neck.

“I always hate these fertility festivals,” Jim complains, lips pressed securely and softly to her cheek. “Honestly. The dancing’s nice and all, but it feels like it’s your grandmother’s function because all people ask you is ‘well, are you having kids yet?’” he continues speaking as they sway and he puts on a crotchety old voice that depicts no one’s grandmother that’s ever been alive. At least, not the way Jim is mimicking it.

It still gets a laugh out of Sam and Jim can’t help feeling like he’s accomplished something by doing that. “I know I don’t remember, but from the talks I have with the other Chrysenthian women, fertility is a corner point of our culture,” she explains. “The superior beings need us because we can procreate faster than they can. We maintain their population and that means their farming economy can thrive. So these festivals are very important so that the gods will bless the women and give them twins or even triplets if they’re lucky.”

“That’s lucky?” Jim echoes with a scoff.

“You don’t want children?” Sam asks curiously.

Jim hasn’t really put much thought into it. He’s been too busy with the ship and it isn’t like there’s been a woman in his life that he’s wanted to have kids with. “I guess I always thought about it in the way that maybe I’d meet someone who I’d click with. And she and I would have a kid to further the Kirk name, but I wouldn’t really be an active part in the kid’s life. And then sometimes I think that maybe I’ll meet someone, I’ll fall in love, and we’ll do the happily ever after thing.”

Sam just laughs and glances down between them. It sounds like a piteous laugh, something that’s sorry for him.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, but…I’ve known you for ten days,” Sam says, looking up and delivering the words in a critical fashion. “And I just can’t see you accepting domestic bliss and giving all of this up.”

“If I met the right person, I would,” Jim argues defensively, not sure why he’s so adamant about this. Maybe it’s because he’s had this conversation before over beers with Bones and he’d been defensive then, not wanting to be told what he wants out of life because of Bones’ bad experiences. Maybe it’s because he can look into Sam’s eyes and want that with someone like her. And maybe it’s just because he’s tired of being told what he wants.

She looks sheepish and presses closer. “Fine, you want kids, I take it back.” As the dance winds to a close, she slowly steps away from him and drifts into the crowd. Jim is beginning to get the feeling that he’s done something very wrong, but he lets her go. He lets her go and instantly starts thinking up a dozen apologies for a crime he’s not sure he committed.

Instead of chasing her down immediately, he sets himself to his Captainly duties and greets guests with a warm handshake and greeting, trying to make everyone feel welcome. Sam is in his peripheral vision and there’s an apology bubbling on the tip of his tongue the whole time, but he doesn’t make it back to her so much as she drifts back to his side in the middle of his conversation with an elder that’s gotten out of control.

Somehow, the topic of sex has come up, but Jim’s not entirely aware of it, so when he suggests that stimulus can come from many food objects, even steak, he’s not sure why he’s getting the looks he is. Then suddenly there are cries of outrage and accusations flying around between young Chrysenthian men and old ones when Jim feels a tug on his hand.

“What’d I do?” he hisses at Sam, a lost look on his face.

“Well, I think you might have just strained diplomatic relations,” Sam offers.

A glass is thrown at a wall and suddenly there’s something like a bar brawl going on that would fit right into the chapters of Jim’s youth. He just never expected that part of the story to revisit while he’s on the Enterprise.

“Run!” Jim commands, giving Sam a light push towards the exit.

They run, they run as fast as they can like madfolk down the empty halls of the Enterprise because it wouldn’t do for Security to discover that Captain Kirk and Sam No-Last-Name (in her pink dress of silk and cotton floating in layers to the ground while curled brown hair cascades down her back) had been the ones to accidentally start the riot in the social hall.

“It was an accident!” Jim’s insisting, his laughter palpable and thick. If he really thinks about it, it’s the first time he’s genuinely been laughing since they lost Bones on the surface. He grasps at Sam’s elbow when she lingers, clutching her stomach while howls of laughter come out. “Oh, come on! How was I supposed to know he was talking about sex?”

“You suggested he use steak as a penile stimulus, Jim! Good god, no wonder a brawl started!” she’s wheezing as her back hits the wall and she starts to slide down, collapsing on the floor while choked giggles escape her lips. “Go on without me. I’ll sacrifice myself for the cause.”

“Nuh uh,” Jim insists stubbornly, picking her up easily in his arms in a honeymoon carry and bringing her with him. “Leave no man behind,” he exhales and the grief and pain that accompany those words can’t be hidden. Her laughter stops abruptly and Jim’s smile fades away until a bittersweet echo of his good mood is all that’s left. They’re both serious as he carries her the remainder of the distance to Jim’s room and he very gently leans over the bed and lies her down atop the sheets.

Her dress gently pools at her sides and makes a soft sound as it does so. There’s one light on in the entire room and it gives her a sensuous look as it casts a dim glow across her face. Jim feels like he can’t breathe and he doesn’t even realize he’s leaning in until her hands slide up against his hips.

Sam stares at him and Jim closes his eyes as her hands slowly traverse up his back and stop just before his shoulders. “You’re so tense,” she observes. “You should let me work out the knots. I feel like…” she pauses, as if somehow something is coming back to her. “I feel like I’ve done something like that before for a man like you.”

Jim feels breathless and scared suddenly. For all his thoughts about Sam in the last ten days, he’s never thought that anything would come of them. For some reason, he feels almost as if he’s betraying Bones by daring to have feelings for her that he wants to see through to something more. He ought to be spending all of his time pacing the floor and wearing it down while worrying about his best friend.

Instead, he’s leaning over Samantha-No-Last-Name and staring at her pink lips and her green eyes and thinking how easy it would be to kiss her.

“Jim,” she murmurs against his ear, lips brushing the skin there. He can feel the touch and he knows that when he looks in the mirror, there’ll be a lipstick stain there that he’ll want to cherish. “Turn over. Let me have a go at you.”

“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that…” Jim teases in a low growl of a voice, but he adheres to her request and plops onto the bed on his stomach, resting his chin on folded hands. He holds his breath as he waits to see what’s going to happen next and he can’t deny the fact that he’s indelibly pleased when he feels Sam slide into a straddle atop him and slide her warm hands over his back, pushing cloth upwards.

She’s warm and Jim shifts slightly to get comfortable and to try and quell the stirrings of his interested cock. He tries to tell his imagination to stop pretending that she’s wet in addition to being a raging furnace atop him. Slowly, she slips her fingers beneath his dress shirt and they crawl upwards gently before pressing in, knuckles hard against his skin. His exhalations are shaky and he buries his face in a pillow, choosing suffocation over letting Sam hear his reaction to this.

His hips arch forward and he freezes them there, not wanting this to turn into something that he can no longer control.

“Is this okay?” Sam checks, digging the heel of her hand hard against his lower back, pressing against tense muscles as she uncovers and begins to fix knots.

Jim lifts his head long enough to get out a light-headed ‘mmhmm!’ before letting his cheek collapse again on the pillow. He can feel the billowing layers of her dress around his thighs and he swallows hard as he thinks about how easy it would be to spin them over and put himself on top and…

No. He can’t.

He tries to get his body to relax using the Vulcan meditation techniques that Spock’s been teaching him over the years and tries to succumb to a mantra that will keep him grounded. You can’t touch, you can’t touch, you can’t touch again and again and it inevitably takes some of Jim’s tension and unwinds it until it’s no longer a spool ready to come apart. It’s this mantra that he allows to be his lullaby as he succumbs to sleep after a long night and memories that he feels aren’t going to be quick to fade for either of them.

When he wakes in the middle of the night, he’s still in his suit and she’s still in her dress, curled in at his side and mouth-breathing against his neck.

He tucks a stray piece of her hair away and smiles down at her fondly. “You didn’t leave a glass slipper,” he tells her, even though Sam doesn’t wake up to give a retort that Jim’s not exactly Prince Charming.

act one, part three of four