gotgreenmagic | 98

98 - Spam

[There was still something subtly 'off' about waking up in Kirk's room while not hungover or death tolling or recovering from an especially traumatic flood - and about waking up in Kirk's bed while the man himself was actually in it and not asleep on the couch.

Shego stared blearily at his back for a few moments. Vaguely, it occurred to her that it was Christmas morning, although after it had been spring in Gotham and God-only-knew-when on the Enterprise, her perception of time was still kind of distorted. It wasn't as if the date and time didn't feel completely arbitrary on the Barge anyway. (And she identified more as a Scrooge than a Grinch - she didn't actively hate Christmas, she just didn't care about it, and she wasn't invested in making anybody else's easier for them either.)

She slid out from under the sheets and stumbled off towards the bathroom, noticing on the way that 'Santa' had not graced Kirk's cabin with his presence in any noticeable way. Maybe he just hadn't shown up on time to get included in anybody's lists, or - like her - they hadn't decided whether they hated him yet. Although she was probably unique in that she was sleeping with him while that was still a topic under debate.]

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"Wasn't that what I gave you the phaser for?"

"Yeah, occasionally problems arise on the Barge that can't be dealt with by stunning them? You may have noticed."

"That could be solved with melting?"

"I wanted to keep my options open, sue me."

She glanced at him.

"Are you mad?"

There was an ambivalence in her tone that suggested she might actually care about the answer.

Edited 2011-12-27 03:07 (UTC)

"Kind of," Jim answered. "But it's a little too late to do anything about it so it doesn't matter."

"For what it's worth? I think having it actually helped."

She closed her eyes, relaxing marginally.

"After I started work in the engine room, I started drawing up a schematic of the engine. The Wardens wouldn't actually let me look at theirs, so it was a bit-by-bit kinda thing. I just paid attention. Every couple days I'd ask Harper what something did, and so long as I was wearing a tight shirt and sounded bored enough, I don't think he realized I was memorizing the answers. And then I was working in the library overnight, working out how I could use the engineering structure to reach the controls on the bridge. Forty-eight hours would have been more than the time I'd have needed to spend cutting through the walls. After I got to the bridge I could have repaired the damage, emptied out my cabin. Nobody would have known any different - just another spontaneous disappearance, right?

"By the time October happened, I had my plans ready to go. I could have taken control and nobody would have known about it. Then all I would've needed to do was find a halfway decent world, make port, vanish. Then November happened, and..."

She opened her eyes, glancing over at him.

"Then I realized I didn't want to any more. It wasn't a hypothetical decision. I had everything ready to go. And I didn't."

If everything had gone according to plan, and he'd gone back to Enterprise for good after her graduation... he never would've known all of this. He wasn't delusional enough to think that she didn't have any secrets but he didn't think that she had actually been planning something that large. And hell if she'd done that while he was her Warden he would've been so livid. He was still kind of ticked off about it but what was he supposed to do besides glare at her.

"Why didn't you want to go?"

"After watching another of Lewis' plans crash and burn? I guess it was just a look at everything I didn't want the rest of my life to be. If I'd escaped, if I'd run, again....I would have just fallen back into the same old problems. Wound up like him or working for some other loser like him. And I guess if nothing else I'd learnt to not want that any more."

She laughed under her breath.

"You were actually right. Working for Drakken and his peer group was demeaning and stupid. It took me a while longer to realize that."

Sure Shego, make him mad and then tell him that, where even if she hadn't said that he was right, he would've felt kind of proud of her. Being told he had been right was a real perk though.

"Ah hell, we all have stupid moments," Jim answered, begrudgingly giving her a smile. "I'm just glad you figured it out."

She smiled lazily. Even though her stupid 'moments' could last for months or years on end (and she wasn't sure that lying here in Kirk's bed wasn't the start of another one) and she felt mildly condescended to, she couldn't really avoid the fact that she had needed to grow up and get over herself. She couldn't even say that was a process that was all the way over with yet.

She twitched the sheet aside in a silent 'come back to bed, loser' gesture.

"Just keep this high point in mind when you've spent another year with some other jerk who's got their heels dug in and hates you."

"Sorry that was two years that I spent with you," Jim pointed out, holding out for a half minute before he gave up and crawled back under the covers. "And you never really hated me."

"Yeah, but I'd guess it got frustrating around the halfway point."

She rolled onto her side.

"I really did hate you, y'know. At the start."

"And how long did that last?"

"Six months or so? It was a little while after the first - " Her throat constricted. "Last January." Fuck talking about the first mirror flood, fuck it forever.

"You didn't really get less irritating but I guess I adjusted."

That was actually longer than he had expected. "That's a lie. You find me utterly charming."

"Do I really," she drawled. "You're tolerable on a good day. Maybe if you'd ever attempted to actually charm me."

"Sorry I was confused by the fact that you're in my bed right now," Jim grinned at her as he leaned over her. "I think I deserve more than tolerable."

She laughed. "Oh, we're fishing for compliments now? That is so not charming." She gave an unnecessarily long pause for thought. "How about 'satisfactory'?"

Kirk laughed. "You're a real charmer yourself. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want to be and you know it."

"Yeah, you got me. I'll just keep coming back because I'm totally in love with you."

"Knew it," Jim answered, but he was completely joking. "You're welcome any time you want. For the record."

"Any time, huh." She arched an eyebrow. "Are you gonna hang a tie on your door when you've got other company? Because otherwise that might get awkward."

She'd been joking at the start of that question but by the end of it, she was beset by the unpleasant realisation that it might be a legitimate concern.

"I would probably lock the door for once," Jim pointed out. "But I feel like this isn't a problem right now."

She knew it would have been naive to expect anything else, but fidelity by way of a lack of other options was probably the worst kind.

"And when it is, I'll just start spreading rumors about all your gross space diseases," she said lightly.

Probably was but he hadn't ever exactly been the best at fidelity period. But now the conversation made him pause a little and look at her curiously.

"You want my tolerable and satisfactory self all to yourself then?"

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