Work Text:
“Red alert. All hands, battle stations.”
The alarm blared just as La’an entered the Transporter Room to receive Enterprise’s guests. Immediately, her communicator chirped with a connection from Captain Pike. “Lieutenant Noonien-Singh, are our guests on board?”
La’an locked eyes with Chief Kyle, who immediately threw the switch to energize. “They’re coming aboard now, Captain.” Two figures materialized in in the transporter, and just as the materialization process was complete, the entire ship lurched sideways as it was hit, hard and violent. La’an grabbed hold of the nearest handle to keep steady, but their guests had no such luck and immediately fell over. “Jam- Lieutenants Kirk and Kirk, welcome back!” she shouted over the alarm, as figures in yellow and blue tried to disentangle themselves from each other.
“Reporting for duty, sir!” Sam shouted back, righting himself and pulling his younger brother to his feet. They already looked distinctly dishevelled, with Sam rubbing the shoulder that had caught his fall. James looked little worse for wear, running his hands through his hair.
La’an nodded at Sam, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop her eyes from being pulled to the younger Kirk, who was, inexplicably, smiling. “Is there something funny, Lieutenant?” La’an said, unable to help herself. This was going to be a problem; they were in the middle of a crisis (apparently) and her feelings were overwhelming her.
James shook his head, still smiling. “Just…never a dull moment with you, Lt. Noonien-Singh!” La’an rolled her eyes, feeling her face heat up, noting from the corner of her eye the bewildered look Sam was throwing them. The ship lurched again, and they all grabbed the Transporter Console to stay upright. “What’s going on?!”
La’an shook her head. “I don’t know, it came out of nowhere! Lt. Kirk, to your battle station!” she yelled at Sam, who immediately nodded and left. “We can’t send you back to the Farragut as long as our shields are raised, Lieutenant!”
James nodded, taking a step towards her, but before he could say anything, another boom echoed through the ship and the entire room seemed to lurch. He stumbled forward, nearly overbalancing, and then grabbing hold of her to steady himself. “What can I do to help?” He looked at her with an open expression, and La’an had trouble focussing for a second, because his hands were still on her shoulders.
La’an shook her head a little to clear it, feeling her survivor exterior snap into place. Emotions were of no use to her right now. “I don’t know what’s going on yet. Just…follow me!” Then she tore out of the room, not giving him time to respond. The ship was already quite a mess, with several crewmembers down – dead or unconscious, she did not know, but she saw Nurse Chapel already working swiftly to help. Kirk slowed down to help, but La’an said tersely, “We can’t help them, Lieutenant, medical personnel is already doing triage! We need to get to the Bridge!” She saw a pained expression flit over his face, and she remembered the conversation they had the last time he’d been on the Enterprise. The type who can’t walk past a stranger in need. “James, I promise they’ll get the help they need!” Hearing his name seemed to snap him out of it, and he nodded, continuing to match her pace. “Bridge!” she yelled at the computer as soon as they’d lurched into the Turbolift. James was breathing heavily, looking focussed as the Turbolift raced towards the Bridge.
The doors opened to chaos. Several conduits seemed to have sprung and had flooded half the Bridge with gasses, Una was in the pilot’s seat as Erica had moved to operate firing control, and Captain Pike was helping Uhura to her feet, who was bleeding profusely from a head wound. But what caught her attention more than anything else in the room, was the view screen. Hurtling through space, firing an endless stream of plasma torpedoes at them, was a Gorn hunter ship. For a moment, everything around her went very, very quiet, her breathing stopped, and her brother appeared beside her. He looked at her with a smile on his face, but blood was pouring down the side of his face. “La’an?” he said, his smile widening. “La’an!” Then she noticed the voice was not coming from him at all, but from James, who had grabbed hold of her shoulders and was shaking her. Her eyes focussed on him; his brows furrowed as he held her tight. “Are you alright?” All noise slammed back at once, and she sucked in a deep breath. James was looking at her with a look of distinct worry on his face, but she gave him a curt nod and then took a step away from him.
“Gorn ship is firing another volley! La’an, take firing control!” Erica shouted, who was a decent shot but a better pilot. La’an took her spot at phaser control and immediately started mapping out complex firing patterns.
“Lt. Kirk, welcome aboard!” Pike said, having helped Uhura to stop the bleeding. “Sorry we couldn’t give you a warmer welcome, we weren’t expecting our other guests here to show up! Would you mind helping out around here while we deal with these bastards that are shooting at my ship?”
James, who smiled despite himself, nodded, and immediately went to work on one of the damaged conduits. The battle was brutal, and they were, once again, outclassed. “Captain, we need to find cover!” La’an said, her jaw tense as she shot another volley of plasma torpedoes out of space. Immediately after, she threw a couple of photon torpedoes at the hunter ship, which it dodged deftly.
“Working on that, Lt. Noonien-Singh,” Spock said, infuriatingly calm as always. “Sir, I have a Class J planet on our sensors that seems to emit some kind of dampening field. If we hide in the upper atmosphere…”
“The Gorn shouldn’t be able to detect us,” Pike finished, nodding. “Erica, set a course.”
“Aye, sir.”
As they were coming about, La’an spotted a plasma torpedo heading straight for them, and try as she might, she couldn’t shoot it out of space. “Shit…brace for impact!” she yelled, and then held on tight to her station.
For a second it felt like the whole ship exploded around them. Even more alarms started blaring, sparks flew, and so did people. La’an barely managed to hang on to her console, as the ship shook and lurched with the force of the impact. When the worst of it died down, the ship was still there, sort of. “Damage report!” Pike shouted.
“Shields at 43%, Captain!” Spock said loudly, retaking his place and wiping blood out of his eye. “Phasers are not operational.”
La’an cursed, tapping wildly at her screen to find a way to reset them. “I need those phasers online if we want to get out of this alive, Captain!”
“I can fix it,” Kirk said, suddenly by her side and looking intently at her. He was barely visible through the gases still billowing through the bridge, but he looked alert and seemed generally unhurt, so she knew he wasn’t just saying that. “La’an, I can fix that, but we need to go now.”
La’an didn’t hesitate. Standing up so quickly that Kirk took a startled step back, she paced over to Captain Pike’s side, who was now hauling a dazed ensign off the floor. “Sir, permission to bring Lt. Kirk with me to the phaser banks. We can fix them.” Behind her, Erica had taken La’an’s spot again and Una, who looked distinctly ruffled, had retaken her position at the helm.
“Granted. Do it quickly!” Pike said, barely glancing at her and Kirk as he checked the ensign for signs of concussion.
“Aye, sir,” La’an and Kirk both shouted, as they ran towards the Turbolift. La’an ordered it down to the phaser banks.
Kirk shot her a worried look. “You alright?”
La’an frowned, annoyed. She had no time to focus on feelings when the situation was this extreme, because if she did, she would become completely useless. “Of course. I’m fine.”
Sighing, Kirk turned and looked at her until she got the message and turned to look at him as well. “You didn’t seem fine back there. You seemed panicked.” He was standing in his best First Officer stance, his hands on his hips and a stern expression on his face.
Goddamn it, why was this man so good at reading her? The strange connection that had been buzzing between them ever since she’d first called him flared up again, like it had in the corridor all those months ago, like it does every time they swap stories about their perspective jobs. La’an sighed. “Look, everybody I loved died on a Gorn breeding planet when I was young. Seeing that Gorn ship brought back…unpleasant memories.”
Kirk’s face blanched, and his face was full of sympathy, something she distinctly did not need right now. He lowered his hands and had the good sense to look sheepish. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t – ”
“Of course, you didn’t,” La’an said flatly, but before he could do anything else ridiculous like try to put a hand on her shoulder, the Turbolift doors, mercifully, opened and La’an could escape this conversation. “Alright, lieutenant, let’s fix the phaser banks so we can all die another day.”
They set to work, first clearing out the rubble from the phaser tubes, the latter of which were thankfully still intact. Then La’an watched as Kirk crawled behind a bulkhead to find the reset switch. “La’an, can you check the status back there?” he asked, his voice muffled from behind the wall. La’an ran a system’s check, but still got a few reds.
“Not working yet!”
“Damn it, I see the problem, I’ve got a severed powerline. I need to reroute. Hang on.”
Several anxious moments later, some more lights started flashing green. “Got it! There are a few things not working, but…” She was cut off by another shock going through the ship, this one quite different. James appeared from behind the bulkhead, hair dishevelled and a few burn marks on his uniform, looking alarmed. “That wasn’t a plasma torpedo,” La’an said softly.
Kirk shook his head. “That was docking.”
La’an’s blood ran cold. “They’re trying to get in. We need to stop – ” At that exact moment, a different alarm blared. “Intruder alert. Intruder on deck 4.” La’an closed her eyes, fear running through her veins. “They’re inside…” She immediately grabbed her communicator. “Captain, they’re inside, I’m heading to deck 4 to head them off.”
“Acknowledged, sending Spock and any and all security personnel to you. Pike out.”
Kirk made his way over to her side, looking determined. “I’ll go, too.”
La’an shook her head, glad to have a great excuse for sending him as far away from deck 4 as possible. “You’re of much more help on the Bridge, we need a good shot up there and no offence to Erica, but you’re better. I’ve seen your file.”
James smirked at the compliment, causing La’an to roll her eyes. The man never passed up on opportunity to flirt. But then his face turned serious again. “La’an, please…”
“James, I’m Head of Security on Starfleet’s flagship, I think I can handle myself. I’ve done it before,” she said, curtly, proud of how steady her voice sounded when, in actuality, she was freaking out inside. Knowing that Spock was on his way with his logical mind and more-than-average strength was a relief.
James raised his hands in surrender. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
La’an opened her mouth to say something, couldn’t find any fitting words – how could she ever explain the depth of her feelings for him without breaking the temporal general directive? – and closed it again. Instead, she nodded, before heading out, towards deck 4. When she was almost at the Turbolift, she suddenly felt a hand close around her wrist. For a split second, her instincts nearly vaulted him over her shoulders, but Kirk was fast. He spun her around to face him, and she got a glimpse of his determined face before he kissed her.
Oh.
It was embarrassing how easy it was for La’an to completely forget the crisis they were in right now. James was kissing her, after months and months of wondering, longing, and trying to separate that James from this James in her head. He was kissing her, and it felt just as right as it had done with the other Kirk. His arms slipped around her waist, pulling her closer, and she sunk into it for a moment, giving as good as he did, but the alarms were insistent and loud. They broke apart, panting slightly. “What was – ” she began, as his forehead rested against hers briefly.
“For luck,” James said quietly, his eyes closed as if he was steeling himself for what was coming. Then he took a step back. “Be careful, La’an.” Please, his eyes seemed to say.
Mouth slightly agape in shock, La’an nodded, watching him turn away from her and jog in the other direction. It took a second or two for her mind to reboot, but then she said, “You, too!” to his retreating back. He turned around before turning the corner and smiled, as if to say of course, you know me. Which was worrisome, because she did know him, and he generally didn’t give a rat’s ass about his own safety.
Although she was about to run headfirst into a (pack of?) Gorn, so she didn’t really have grounds to talk. The Turbolift arrived and in the several seconds it took for the lift to go up to deck 4, La’an had time to panic, put herself back together and steel herself for what was to come. As the Turbolift opened, La’an immediately went to her knees and ripped open a panel behind which phasers were stored. Taking two, she stashed one in her uniform and held the other out in front of her, setting it to maximum. Then she opened her communicator. “La’an to all security personal and Mr. Spock, what is your status?”
“I have just arrived at deck 4, Lieutenant Noonien-Singh, and making my way to you now. No sight of the Gorn.”
“Do we know if it’s one Gorn or more?”
“Sensors detected a slight life sign as we were boarded but have not picked up any life signs since then. It is impossible to know how many there are.”
“Pray it’s only one.”
“Indeed.”
It was dead silent on the deck, as Captain Pike had obviously had enough of the alarms and had shut it all off. A sense of wrongness overcame her, as if she was being watched. La’an kept moving, knowing that she had to meet her people. Safety in numbers, even with the Gorn. It didn’t take long before she heard movement up ahead. She raised her phaser, moving slowly towards the sounds. If it was a Gorn she would shoot until the phaser was empty, that much she was sure about. Her heart was beating in her throat. “Lieutenant?” said a voice suddenly, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Spock!” she whisper-yelled, embarrassed at how easy it was to rattle her. “I thought you were a Gorn, I’d nearly emptied my phaser on you.”
Spock emerged from the shadows, a single eyebrow raised. “Then I am grateful for your level of self-control. I was on my way to the science lab. I have been thinking about the last Gorn we encountered, and how we defeated them.”
La’an nodded, immediately catching on. “Cold. Liquid nitrogen.”
Spock nodded. “Indeed. If I am not mistaken there are several cannisters of liquid nitrogen to choose from.”
La’an shook her head as they advanced, wondering where her security team was. “One of these days we’re going to have a talk about hazardous materials.”
Spock raised another perfect eyebrow. “As you wish, lieutenant. Though I feel the need to point out that warp plasma is infinitely more destructive, as it…”
La’an held up her hand. “Spare me the workings of my ship. It’s helpful that you’ve got it now.” They crept into the science lab, which was thankfully abandoned for now. They worked fast, assembling a sort of liquid nitrogen bomb to throw at the Gorn when they encountered them. As she worked, she replayed the kiss with James over in her mind. It was distracting and more than once she nearly spilled some liquid nitrogen on herself. If Spock noticed, he didn’t care to comment, which she appreciated. When they were almost done, La’an flipped open her communicator. “La’an to any and all security personnel on deck 4, where are you?”
“This is Ensign Scott, we’re trapped near the Turbolift, lieutenant, there’s one Gorn outside trying to break down the door. We’ve lost D’Jal.” La’an looked up sharply, locking eyes with Spock, who looked faintly troubled by raising a single eyebrow.
“Hang tight, Ensign, Spock and I are on our way. Try to stay as far away from the door as possible!”
“Aye, lieutenant.”
“It’s finished, lieutenant. It should at least incapacitate the Gorn enough for us to…destroy it.”
La’an remembered smashing the last one, too. She usually didn’t really enjoy violence, but that had felt good. The same fire was suddenly burning in Spock’s eyes, and she remembered how he’d lowered his inhibitions to make himself stronger against the Gorn. It seemed he was doing the same thing now. “Let’s go.”
With Spock holding the bomb, La’an took up her second phaser and used it to cover as much of their surroundings as possible, as they moved in the opposite direction to the other Turbolift. At first it was absolutely silent, and then the lights when out. “Shit,” La’an muttered, quickly turning on her flashlights. “The Gorn found a light switch.”
“I think it’s highly unlikely that…”
Was Spock being particularly Vulcan-y today, or was he always this obtuse? La’an stopped to shoot him one of her famous death stares. “Yes, obviously I meant it destroyed some conduits, Spock, it was a figure of speech.”
“Right,” Spock said, looking politely contrite. “My apologies.”
La’an turned her back on him and crept forward, slower, and more deliberate than before. Gorn could now be on literally every corner, and one false move would mean bad, possibly fatal, news. The quiet was all-encompassing, exacerbated by the darkness, and the feeling of being watched crept over La’an again.
It was an old feeling, familiar from her time on the Gorn breeding planet, and a feeling that she always tried very hard to stay away from. It usually preluded a panic attack of varying degrees of severity. She did not have time in her life for panic attacks. “Lieutenant Noonien-Singh, you have not taken a breath in at least a minute, are you alright?”
La’an took a sharp breath, the pounding in her ears suddenly proof of her lack of oxygen. “Yes. Yes, I’m – ” She shook her head, wondering how she just forgot to breathe. “No, actually, I’m not alright.”
She felt more than saw Spock nod behind her. “The Gorn are a violent species, and you’ve had more run-ins with them than most. Perhaps some comfort can be gleaned from the fact that you have survived them three separate times now.”
La’an scoffed, shaking her head to clear it. “It’s called luck. And it is going to run out.”
“Perhaps. I, myself, have never believed in luck. I must – ” But La’an cut him off with a quick hand motion and a hiss. Nearby, she could hear clicking and pounding. The Gorn, trying to get to her security team. Not today, monster. She motioned for Spock to get on the other side of the corridor with the bomb, so the Gorn would have nowhere to go, and in that formation, they approached the noise, which got more violent and louder with every step they took.
And then she saw it. A recently hatched, but already quite large Gorn was scratching and pounding at a door, which was slowly losing integrity against the onslaught of a hungry Gorn. Her breath stilled again, her heart pounding in her ears, and for a moment she froze. A soft gasp escaped her throat before she could stop herself, and the Gorn snapped its gaze towards them. “Now!” she screamed at Spock, as she locked eyes with the hungry, dead eyes she’d seen most often in her nightmares. The Gorn leapt towards them just as Spock threw the liquid nitrogen bomb at it.
The bomb exploded in mid-air, straight in the Gorn’s face, and it screeched in pain as the immediate cold washed in waves over its body and through the corridor. La’an leapt back, because though the cold should’ve frozen it solid immediately, the Gorn was still moving, and fast.
“Lieutenant, be careful – ” Spock’s shout pierced the air at the same time La’an felt something long and sharp slash across her chest. “Lieutenant!” The pain was immediate and overwhelming, and La’an fell to the floor. Someone was screaming, she registered dimly, and it took her a moment to realize it was her. The Gorn, she realized. It was still behind her. The pain was blinding her, her vision narrowing, time slowing down, but she had to get away, had to make sure the Gorn wouldn’t infect her. Letting out another scream when she moved, the pain excruciating, she turned around, only to find the Gorn right in front of her, frozen solid, its claw outstretched, parts of her uniform hanging from the talons.
“Die – you monster,” she managed to spit out, before everything went black.
--
The first thing La’an was aware of was that she was lying on a soft bed. The second thing she was aware of was…oh, she wasn’t dead. That was nice. Being alive was nice. She was warm and comfortable.
“Mr. Kirk, I assure you she is going to be all right. You do not need to stand vigil here.”
“I’m fine, Dr. M’Benga.”
That didn’t make sense. How was James here, on the Enterprise, when he was stationed on the Farragut? No, that wasn’t right. He’d come over to the Enterprise to drop his brother off after his shore-leave. And something had happened… Her brain was foggy, the sedative dr. M’Benga had given her obviously doing its work, but she was forgetting something, something important.
The Gorn.
Gasping wildly, La’an opened her eyes and sat up straight, her eyes wide. “Where is it?!” she shouted, barely aware of the pain that pierced through her sedative and shot through her body.
“La’an, it’s okay!” James was there, right next to her, his palms facing towards her to show his calm. “It’s okay, you’re safe. You’re all right.” He took a step closer, putting his hands on her shoulders, which were heaving.
“James?” she asked, her voice high pitched. Her brain was addled with drugs and panic, so she was slow on the uptake.
He nodded, smiling gently. “It’s me, La’an, it’s all right. Trust me.” His voice was soft, calm, and if the Gorn was still at large, why would he be so calm?
“It’s dead?” she said, her voice shaking as the panic slowly subsided. James nodded, raising a hand to her face, and stroking her hair back. “We killed it?”
James nodded again, leaning forward to put his forehead against hers. “Yeah, you did. It nearly took you with it.” La’an closed her eyes, the last of her panic subsiding in his calming presence. She remembered now. The liquid nitrogen bomb, the gashes, the pain. “It’s all right, La’an. You have to lay back down now, you’re still healing.” La’an looked down. She was dressed in her standard issue tank top and shorts, and she could see the gashes the Gorn had made across her chest. Dr M’Benga had done a good job on them, she thought, as she remembered in a flash how deep the cuts had been. “Please, La’an, or Dr M’Benga will have my head, I told him I wouldn’t let you overexert yourself.”
“La’an, you’re awake!” Christine entered Sickbay and immediately rushed over. “You let her get up?” she said, glaring at James, who let go of La’an reluctantly and stepped back.
“Let her? Have you met the lieutenant before, Nurse Chapel?” He locked eyes with La’an and winked at her, and La’an, inexplicably, laughed.
Christine rolled her eyes with a smile, and gently guided La’an back down. Then she set to work on examining her wounds, while James hovered nearby, leaning against the next biobed with one arm and his other hand firmly planted on his hip. La’an almost had to laugh, the man had a way with ridiculous stances in every timeline. “You’ll be all right, lieutenant. The cuts were very deep, and it was a bit touch and go for a while, but we managed to stem the bleeding and repair most of the damage. The rest must heal on its own. We can use a dermal regenerator for the scars when…”
“No,” La’an said curtly, causing both Christine and James to look at her in surprise. “No dermal regenerators. I need to remember this.”
Christine looked like she wanted to argue, but then thought better off it. “Alright. Well, there’s nothing more you can do but rest. I’ll give you another small sedative and leave you in the capable hands of your guard here.” She shot an amused look in James’s direction before administering another hypospray to La’an and heading off to M’Benga’s office. La’an was in too much pain to really object to the sedation, so instead she turned to look at James, who pushed off from the biobed to stand next to hers. He looked down at her with the softest expression she’d ever seen on his smug face. “My guard?” she asked, bemused.
He laughed sheepishly, scratching behind his ear with a blush on his face. She’d never seen him this shy before. “I – I may have been here nearly non-stop for two days?”
La’an’s eyes widened. He’d done what? “Why? Wait, two days?” There were too many questions swirling in her brain at once, and she suddenly felt very dizzy. “Ow,” she muttered, grabbing her head.
He was kneeling beside her in a flash, his hands stroking her arm gently, his eyebrows furrowed in frustration. “What can I do?”
La’an laughed despite the pain, and she turned her head to look at him. She lifted a single hand to rest on his cheek, a gesture of affection she would not usually deal out so easily, but her inhibitions were lowered, and this man had been at her bedside for two whole days. “You’re already doing it, James. Thank you.” She closed her eyes and let the feel of his soft hands running up and down her arm lull her into a superficial slumber. She was warm, and she felt safe, and it was probably the sedatives starting to work, but it felt nice. It wasn’t often that felt safe.
When she next woke up, James was asleep on a chair beside her, his head resting on her biobed, one hand resting in hers, and it was dark in Sickbay. She smiled. She wasn’t sure how long she’d slept, but somehow, she was very sure that he hadn’t moved much except to get a chair. “James,” she said, rolling on her side to face him properly, and squeezing his hand. “James, wake up.”
He woke slowly, and blinked into the semi-darkness as he looked up. “La’an,” his voice was rough with sleep. “How are you feeling?” He lifted a hand to her face, letting his thumb trace the side of her face gently.
La’an closed her eyes to enjoy the sensation. “’m fine.” They gazed at each other for a while, and as they did so, at least twenty different questions popped into her head. “James, why did you…kiss me?”
James averted his gaze with a smile, before looking back up and letting his thumb trace lower, across her bottom lip. “I admit, it was slightly dramatic in the heat of the moment, but…I’ve been wanting to for quite some time, ever since you called me James even though we had barely spoken more than 5 minutes. And then we got that drink, and I got to know you, and I just…I really like you, La’an Noonien-Singh. So when it was a crisis situation and you were about to run headfirst into danger, I thought…now or never.”
“Mmm. Quite presumptuous of you, Lt. Kirk,” she said, her voice teasing and a smile on her face. She moved a bit closer to him, and he slid his hand in her neck, their noses now almost touching.
James shot her a charming half-smile, his eyes flicking down to her lips a few times. “I don’t seem to remember you complaining much, Lt. Noonien-Singh.”
La’an raised one shoulder, suppressing a wince as her scars pulled painfully. “Well, I was caught by surprise.”
“Hmm, that’s not very chivalrous of me,” James whispered, his lips ghosting over hers.
La’an shook her head. “No, not very,” she murmured, and then she closed the distance. It was wonderful, to be able to kiss him freely, after having wanted to for months, having to sort out which of her feelings were real and which of her feelings were left over from the deleted timeline, and finally being unable to figure out how to even go about forming a connection with him. She let her hand wander into his hair, finding it soft and a little smushed together from sleeping against the biobed. His hand snuck into her hair as well, which was hanging loose, free of her usual braids, and she wondered if her hair was just as messy as his. Then she found herself not caring at all, because his mouth was soft against hers, and he was moving closer, moving to put his hand on the bed behind her, causing her to roll onto her back. He was standing now, one hand on the back of her head, protecting her from hitting anything, the other bracketing her, and she felt once again protected and safe.
They were lost in the kiss, were ignoring her injuries, and ignoring the trauma she’d just been through, but it couldn’t last long. A throat cleared behind from somewhere behind James, and they broke apart, gasping. Dr M’Benga stood there, looking equal parts disapproving and amused. “I’m afraid none of this comes under the heading of ‘resting’, Lt. Noonien-Singh.”
La’an felt her cheeks burning, as she lifted her hand to touch her lips, which were tingling. “I’m sorry, Dr M’Benga, we were…”
James was standing next to her biobed, looking both guilty and exceedingly pleased with himself. “This is my fault, Dr M’Benga, my apologies.”
M’Benga looked at him, his gaze stern. “You are free to remain here, Lt. Kirk, but I’ll thank you to let my patient rest.”
James nodded solemnly. “Yes, doctor.”
“Good night, lieutenants.”
“Good night,” they both said sheepishly, as M’Benga left Sickbay. James let out a slightly embarrassed chuckle. “I’m sorry,” he said, sitting back down on the chair, close enough to hold her hand but too far to continue their very pleasurable exploits. Now that the rush of adrenaline was fading again, La’an could feel her wounds throbbing with pain. “You okay?”
La’an shook her head as she pressed her hand to her chest, expecting to come away with blood, but finding nothing. It hurt like it was bleeding. “I was…a little overenthusiastic.” She opened her eyes to him staring down at her with a soft smile. “What?”
“Nothing,” James said, shaking his head as if to clear it. He leaned forward and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, so gentle that it ached. “Get some sleep, La’an.”
La’an grabbed his hand before he could pull it back and held it against her cheek for a moment. “Promise me you will, too?”
“I can sleep here.”
She squeezed his hand to shut him up, then looked up at him with her best Chief of Security-glare. “James, you’ve been here for over two days now. You need a bed. I’ll still be here in the morning, because I don’t think these wounds will heal as fast as I want them to.” Then she kissed his palm, noting with some satisfaction that his breath caught. “Thank you for not leaving me these past few days. But I will never forgive myself if worrying about me causes you to collapse from exhaustion.”
“La’an Noonien-Singh, who knew you had a flair for the dramatic?” he said with a light tease, then got to his feet and leaned over her. “Alright, I’ll go get some sleep. Good night, La’an.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, sending butterflies soaring through La’an stomach. It was very embarrassing, having feelings.
“Good night, James.” James smiled and then exited the Sickbay, leaving La’an alone with her embarrassing number of feelings.
The sedative worked wonders, however, because with no further distractions in the form of handsome men, her brain got foggy again. Her brain spooled past the last couple of days, in which James played a large part, and the Gorn was conveniently clouded in vague memories. She could still feel James’ lips pressed against hers, his fingers tracing her neck, her arm, his mouth…
She let out a giggle (La’an Noonien-Singh didn’t giggle, for crying out loud), and then sleep overtook her.