A/N:

#notdead

Happy (early) Valentine's Day! I cannot believe I got this done, even if the timing is completely backwards (I was writing about summer nights after slipping on black ice, twice- Sheffield is a death trap in the winter, and whoever grits and salts the footpaths needs a demotion; also, these past two mornings it has snowed on my way to lectures). But exams are over, the new semester has begun, and here it is, at long last! I wanted to put far more in, but this chapter was topping 10K before I'd even finished the first section, so I'll have to split it in two, and this is still a monster, capped at just under 14K. (Writing pure romantic fluff was harder than I anticipated, and I've got at least two more chapters of the stuff to work up before we turn to the mixed-blend of plot and pleasure.)

I also had to grind out that 2,500 word essay for noon on January 17, and finished literal hours before the deadline- never cut it that close before. Never drunk that much coffee. Probably never been that delirious with sleep deprivation. I wanted to die.

For those who didn't see the updated notes I slipped into the last chapter: no, I'm not writing a sequel, because I don't need to. This story is only about 45% complete. Probably less, actually, once the loose ends get tied up. We're plunging into darkness soon enough.

Updates, additional notes and some review responses at the bottom, but for now, let's get on with the show.

PS. My writing playlist for this one was Panic! At the Disco's L.A. Devotee, Train's Drops of Jupiter, and Sinatra's Fly Me To the Moon- the latter because a reviewer said they imagined it playing while reading the last chapter, and I got inspired.

(Also, shout-out to the super sweet guest reviewer who checked in just to say hi on Christmas! It was completely unexpected and made me smile.)

Interlude

you could, 'cause you can, so you do

XVIII
Courting Rituals

July 4, 2258 – Starfleet Academy; California, Earth

"Seriously, what is with you, Raven?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Valravn said blandly, lounging back on her elbows, her mask of indifference concealed by the reflective lenses of her silver aviators. She had kicked her sandals off- little more than a flat sole and a few interlocking strips of fine leather- cauterising sunshine bearing down on her skin, cool sea air whisking away the worst of the heat.

"What do you mean, you have no-"

Uhura hushed him lazily, waving a placating hand in Amrit's direction. "Shh, don't scare her off, this is rare."

Gaila hummed in agreement, sprawled hedonistically on the campus lawn to soak in as much of the solar radiation as possible, photons recharging her cells and giving her an extra boost of glucose. Hai, tucked under the shade of their parasol, sipped on their ice-water nonjudgmentally, turning their face into the bay breeze.

With only a handful of days left until the end of their final semester, they had congregated on a sun-drenched spot by the bayside, idly watching hovercrafts and boats cross the water to examine the ocean trench bored out by the Narada. Valravn guessed that they were likely to leave the deactivated plasma drill where it lay for another month or so, given that there appeared to be nothing toxic about the metal that would poison the waters or wildlife; if there had been, the first surveys would have noted it, and efforts to raise it from the seabed would have been underway within a week. Besides, as of now, the wreckage was equalising the water level, which was an odd instance of serendipity.

"You are kidding me though?" Amrit pressed incredulously. Uhura scoffed in exasperation, shoulders slumping, probably grinding grass stains into her pretty white sundress in the process. Valravn simply ignored him. Though a fair friend and a gifted xenobotanist, Amrit had a tendency to seize the closest trivial subject and beat it into submission with excessive analysis. "Raven Winter is out here, in the middle of summer, not looking like she's considering murdering someone- and nobody else is weirded out by this but me?"

"Pretty much," Gaila shrugged.

Valravn's mouth quirked.

"But- but she's a vampire!"

"Hey," Gaila propped herself up with a scowl, glaring over the rim of her sunglasses, "there is no need for that kind of language." She turned to Uhura, dropping to a stage whisper. "What's a vampire?"

"A creature from traditional Earth mythology," Valravn explained through a flat sigh, kicking up and crossing one leg over the other, dredging up the research from the back of her mind- as a child with too much time and an insatiable intellectual hunger, looking into the origins of her first name had branched off in a few different directions. "A supernatural monster, or demon, or reanimated human corpse, depending on which version you're reading- the common theme is that they drain the blood of the living. The corpse version rose from the grave at dusk and was forced to return to their coffin before dawn, or else be turned to ash by the sun. The superstitious found ways of keeping a suspected vampire in their grave: staking through the heart, burying the corpse upside-down or at a crossroads, or tossing a handful of mustard or poppy seeds into the coffin- they would be obsessed with counting the exact number of grains, and run out of time to emerge before dawn, only to wake at the next dusk and perpetuate the cycle forevermore. To kill one, you'd have to catch it in direct sunlight, or decapitate it and burn the remains, preferably scattering the ashes into running water."

The deluge of information left their group in momentary silence.

"How do you know all this, Raven?" Uhura eventually asked.

Valravn smirked. "People accuse me of being a vampire occasionally. I should be aware of my theoretical weaknesses, shouldn't I?"

"So," Gaila said slowly, slotting each word into place with careful precision, as though she was constructing code, "Amrit is calling you a nocturnal undead- thing- that drains blood, is obsessed with numbers, and will turn to dust in the sun?"

"Essentially."

She heard the sound of a smack somewhere off her right shoulder, harmless but not painless, and Amrit giving an indignant noise. "Rude!" Gaila rebuked, before pausing uncertainly. "It is, right?"

Valravn let her smile widen wickedly, otherwise not moving an inch. "He is suggesting that I look like and behave like a mindless rotting corpse."

She heard another smack, and Gaila hissing like a cobra through gritted teeth. "I know that's not a compliment!"

"Hey! Stop hitting me!"

"Keep hitting him, Gaila," Valravn urged, shaking with silent laughter. "Defend my honour."

Turning over onto her stomach, Uhura supported herself on her forearms, her mouth twisting. "You're diabolical."

"I am pragmatic, and Gaila is a good friend," she replied imperiously.

Uhura shook her head, her photo-perfect smile betraying her.

Despite his lacklustre phrasing, Amrit had a point; Valravn wasn't made for summer. Summer meant heat, which made it harder to think- much like a computer's processor, the human brain operated at its optimum capacity in lower temperatures, which probably explained why she preferred colder climes- and it meant vacation, which meant the expectation for her to leave half-finished projects on her desktop and socialise. Combined with the unbearably short, muggy nights, Valravn was usually in a foul mood and ready to lock herself in a cellar by early August.

She still didn't quite understand the appeal of a Californian summer- not in comparison to frost and snow and rainfall, ivory days and icy nights and sheer dawns; how anyone could prefer laboriously long days and garish sunbeams to that, Valravn would never understand- but she could tolerate it. Later she might have to half-drown herself in the bay to cool off, but there were worse things, and plenty of reasons to let happiness take hold.

Valravn straightened, feeling her communicator vibrate. Jack-knifing herself upright, she extracted it from the pocket of her shorts, vaguely aware of Uhura talking Gaila down from her passionate tirade as she flipped it open and checked the caller identification.

Speaking of reasons to be happy. Her body tightened like a bowstring, an uncontrollable fluttering in her chest as she answered, reacting at even the slightest imagined proximity of him and lighting up with the force of the National Grid.

"James, hi."

Under ordinary circumstances, Valravn would have winced at how her voice practically sang like the refrain of a love song. However, finally dating the person you've been in love with for over a year hadn't been entered into her codex of ordinary circumstances yet, so she didn't hear how her words should have been accompanied by soaring violins and harp glissandos- although she did sense Uhura and Gaila smirking at her on her periphery.

"Dinner," he declared in an effusive rush, as though he had recited it into perfection, "tonight. Are you free? Thought it was about time I took you out properly."

Tamping down an electric jolt of rose-gold anticipation, Valravn schooled her tone into one of nonchalant amusement. "Considering how you've recently had your tongue in my mouth, that's very reasonable."

The illusion of privacy shattered abruptly with a choke, and the sound of sputtering.

She turned sharply to see Hai- usually the image of dignified reserve, at least when they weren't in a competitive mood, which saw them with gritted teeth and a slightly crazed glint in their eyes- coughing harshly, parasol rattling, their drink spilled and spattered down the neckline of their dress, droplets blooming into darkening stains. Amrit took their glass as they recovered, waving away his concern, staring across at Valravn.

Arching a brow at them in askance, Valravn refocused on the presence on the end of her communicator. "Where do you want to meet?"

"Reservations are at seven, if that's okay. But, there's, um- something- hey, can we meet somewhere else? About six-thirty? I'll send you the coordinates."

Valravn shifted, one knee propped up and her arm resting across it, the canvas of her shorts tautening over flesh. "Someone with a cynical mind might think that you were plotting something, James."

"Plotting?" Kirk scoffed, the grin audible even as he attempted to sound affronted. "V, you wound me."

"So you are plotting something." She struck back dryly.

"I'm hanging up now."

"You do that," Valravn returned casually, examining her fingernails with feigned disinterest, despite knowing that he couldn't see her.

There was a long pause, embroidered by the traces of background noise- the rush of vehicles and open air, the occasional photoflash of a voice or strum of footsteps. Steadily, as second by second trickled by, Valravn began to smirk at the lack of call termination.

"I don't want to hang up," Jim admitted, sheepish.

Valravn tried not to let her core melt, pressing her tongue to the inside of her teeth and scraping a nail across the case of her communicator, trying not imagine running it across his jawline instead. She failed miserably. In her defence, the way he hummed and gasped into her mouth when she did that was obscene.

"You don't hear me hanging up either," she replied, soft as a breath.

She heard him give a short laugh that sounded as though it was filtered through a grimace and an exhale, and ached to taste it. A thrill spiked behind her abdomen at the glut of recent memories- he kissed like honey and rum-fire, the pulse in the hollow of his throat flickering like a frantic drumbeat under her fingertip.

"I have a compromise," she proposed, absently running her fingers across the jut of bone in her ankle.

"Oh?"

"I will hang up now, but we meet at six-twenty instead of six-thirty."

"Six-fifteen," he negotiated shrewdly, and Valravn let a reflexive smile escape her.

"Done. See you tonight."

"See you tonight," Kirk echoed, breathless anticipation painted across each syllable like sunshine.

The connection cut, and Valravn snapped her communicator shut.

"You're dating Jim Kirk?"

Glancing up, Valravn found that Hai was still staring at her as though she had begun spewing fluent Bajoran in the middle of a conversation in Federation English.

Amrit, leaning away to set Hai's glass aside, snorted and threw them a slightly pitying look. "And this is why you should keep up with campus gossip, Hai. They've been secretly dating for months."

"I'm sorry, what?" Valravn asked flatly, arching an eyebrow, noting that Gaila and Uhura were both throwing off similar incredulous looks. "Months?"

He blinked. "What, was it longer? Lo'ok bet you'd been together since last August, you were just getting worse at hiding it- Michael Canna went for two years, the madman. We have a pool going. I had February, by the way. Actually, now that it's all out in the open, when did you two get together? We need to figure out who won."

For an uncomfortably protracted moment, Valravn stared him down, waiting patiently until he had withered to her satisfaction.

"You had a pool." She said icily, shifting the atmosphere as quickly as a sudden early frost, as though she had forced the clock forward by several months and plunged them into October.

Amrit shifted. "I, uh. Yeah."

"How many people?"

"I, er- just- just a few-"

"A few?"

He swallowed, stiffly, eyes darting to Uhura and Gaila for help. Both simply looked back at him, sitting up a little straighter and waiting for his reply.

"A few… hundred…?" Amrit ventured cautiously, grinning nervously.

Valravn inhaled slowly. Hundreds. Hundreds of people had been betting on the outcome. That was a lot of people to track down and terrify into respecting her privacy, but not impossible.

"Did any of them bet on three days ago?"

Amrit's tension released into shock, snapping like loosed elastic.

"Three da- three days? But- how? Why? What took you so long? You've been hung up on each other since forever! Kirk, especially, and man, he was not subtle-"

"Well it would have been greatly appreciated if someone had told me that," Valravn bit down into the inside of her cheek.

"But you were all over each other at the Bacchus house parties!"

Upon hearing that, Valravn felt herself blush, glaring darkly.

The accommodations blocks of Starfleet Academy were split more by temperament than by gender or academic course; there were exceptions, of course, by chance or by design, but most were based on who could live best together without chaos ensuring. Napir Block was known as the night-owl dorm, Xihe had a reputation as the studious block, Apollo Block was crammed with socialites, Anwaynu had the armchair philosophers- and Horus Block was, of course, the party dorm.

Not that anyone knew it as Horus Block. It had been unofficially renamed Bacchus long ago by someone with a witty sense of humour and a decent working knowledge of Ancient Roman deities. Its house parties were legendary: the equivalent of historic frat parties, without the Greek letters and fewer of the nastier consequences, such as alcohol poisoning, life-threatening injuries or sexual assault- which, upon further consideration, was probably why Starfleet Academy more or less turned a blind eye. So long as everything was reasonably under control, they let the cadets have their harmless fun, with only a few token reprimands for noise disturbances and littering. The block was on the furthest fringes of campus, so there was little danger of anyone losing sleep or study time.

There were always at least three parties every semester. It had been inevitable that Valravn would be persuaded to go to at least one by Jim Kirk- the most well-known, well-connected, widely liked cadet in their year, excelling at beer pong and knowing his way around an interstellar liquor cabinet.

He had lured her in the first time with the promise of having fun watching drunk idiots do stupid stuff. Valravn had initially expected to task herself with preventing Kirk from becoming one of those idiots- she hadn't known yet that his brand of stupid stuff was usually connected to reckless nobility- and agreed to go after ascertaining that Leonard McCoy wasn't, meaning that there was no one else to stop him from breaking too many bones.

But Kirk had surprised her. He had drank in moderation- at least for him, staying pleasantly buzzed on what could have rendered almost any other human in the room comatose- and kept close, steering her out onto the front stoop and into the brisk mid-autumn chill when things got too airless and she started to tense up from the sensory overload. The rest of it, they spent doing exactly what he had promised. Jim had doubled over when one idiot tried to surf on a slip of mud created by recent rainfall (predictably, the board slid out from underneath them and they had face-planted the puddle with a gurgle). Valravn hid her laughter in his shoulder when a different idiot tried to devour crackers to sober up and brush her teeth simultaneously, and then became confused as to why her toothpaste was crunchy and slightly salty. Two people got into an argument when a one called the other's experimental AI a pasta-pushing shady bitch, whatever that meant, resulting in two rival clans arguing over AI personalities and superior pop-tart flavours. Then there was the infamous chilli vodka shot challenge, which rivalled the infamous Catherine Wheel Incident (Kirk had taken the blame for that one, despite Valravn arguing that it was partly her fault for provoking him when she knew nothing good would come of it) for the title of Worst Ideas Ever to Actually be Executed on Academy Grounds.

The next summer, just after exams, was what Jim called Bacchus 2.0. That time, someone had been dared into juggling kitchen knives. Valravn had prevented loss of limb or life by snatching the blades clean out of the air and throwing them into the wall- leaving them embedded so deep that no one could get them out- and walking away calmly. Kirk had sobbed with laughter as cadet after cadet tried in vain to yank the knives out, like competitors for the Sword in the Stone, applauding Valravn with tears beading at the corners of his eyes.

That same night, they had stayed until dawn, ending up on one of the few sofas that wasn't sticky with beer of cluttered with discarded cups and plates, tangled in a matrix of limbs as the block grew quiet and the adrenaline wore off, making last-minute adjustments to their road trip that they were due to leave on in less than a week.

At Bacchus 3.0, her fingers had threaded through his when he draped an arm around her shoulder, keeping her tucked comfortably into his side no matter where the current of people, music and alcohol led them. Kirk had rested his mouth against her crown a few times to see over the top of her head, his smile sparkling down at her when she shot him a look of askance.

So, alright, fine. Maybe Valravn could see where people had got the idea from.

"I have more important things to deal with right now than you," she glowered at Amrit. "I have a date tonight, and nothing to wear."

"Nothing?" Uhura shifted to sit upright, gentle with concern. She was taking the revelation better than Valravn had anticipated, at least compared to her previous opinion on James Kirk. Then again, saving the world with a person tended to soften you towards them.

Valravn mentally rifled through her wardrobe, finding nothing but denim, leather, cashmere and cotton, all in varying shades of black and indigo. The flicker must have shown in her expression.

"Did he say where this date is?"

She shook her head, staring down at her communicator, still resting in her palm. "Just dinner reservations, at seven."

"Call him back and ask," Gaila suggested with a shrug. "Or message him."

"That would make me seem nervous," Valravn said rigidly, "and I am not nervous."

"No?" Gaila teased, dragging the single syllable out until it matched the width of the sly grin sidling across her mouth.

Valravn stared back, flat and inscrutable as the Pacific Ocean. "No."

"Have you two ever been to dinner together before?" Uhura cut a meaningful look towards Gaila, who let her mischievous expression slip away, sobering and pressing her lips together. "Maybe we can use that as a baseline."

Valravn traced rapid circles against the inside of her index finger with the pad of her thumb. "Not often," she replied, pensive. "He did take me to Seasalt once, to thank me for working with him on something."

Amrit whistled low. "Seasalt, really? Nice."

"Let's go shopping!" Gaila decided, shifting onto her knees and gathering her mass of red hair into a twist. "You never go anyway so this is a great excuse. Besides, as I understand it, choosing clothing and adornments for a first date is a central part of human courting rituals-"

"Courting rituals-?!" Valravn repeated incredulously.

Gaila paused. "Mating rituals?" She offered guilelessly.

"Worse," Valravn replied flatly.

"Oh, come on, I thought we were going to the beach today," Amrit griped. Despite his complaints, he was already visibly gathering himself to leave.

"We can do that tomorrow," Uhura replied, springing to her feet and stretching herself out like a length of fine cotton. "It's not like summer is going anywhere. Besides, the outlets have air conditioning, and we can get lunch at that deli you like."

Giving a long sigh, Amrit adopted a resigned expression. "Guess you've twisted my arm."

Abruptly, Valravn found Gaila and Uhura levering her to her feet, pestering her to fasten her sandals and herding her towards the central path, with all the unexpected force and efficiency of a wave crashing to shore.

"Wait-" she objected, elbow hooked by Gaila's, simultaneously untwisting one of her sandal's leather straps and attempting slow the pace of the group, "fine, but this is not going to be like one of those ridiculous movie montages where I try on everything in the store and model them for you in the dressing rooms-"

Uhura's grin was devious. "It is now."

"No it is not." Valravn dug her heels into the turf, forcing them to a halt. "Absolutely not. We are not becoming clichés-"

"Oh, it's way too late for that, Raven-"

"Yeah, I don't wanna hang up either, seriously?"

"I hate you all."

July 4, 2258 – Parking Complex, San Francisco; California, Earth

Saying that Kirk was somewhat nervous would be like calling the Phoenix Cluster a quaint little collection of stars.

Almost throwing himself off a cliff in a sixties-era Corvette? Sure. Attempted mutiny when he was already technically suspended from active duty? Absolutely. Confronting yet another genocidal maniac after surviving the horrors of Tarsus IV? Hell yeah, just give me a phaser and point me in the right direction, I've got this.

First date with a sharp-tongued goddess who had been his friend for years and could probably take over a starship solo with a five-minute time limit and one hand tied behind her back?

Mayday. System failure. Red alert.

He was hidden behind a pillar of concrete- leaning back against its icy surface as he waited, thoughts ravelled in uncertain knots- when he heard the crisp snap of heels echo across the floor, ricocheting through the empty space.

"James?"

Kirk straightened, tense.

Fuck. Don't fuck this up don't fuck this up don't fuck this up-

"Strange choice for a meeting place, but you have me intrigued," he heard her call out again, echoing with a hint of arch humour. "And at a disadvantage, which is rare, so congratulations on that achievement."

Jim tipped his head back to rest on the freezing concrete and let up a huff of laughter, leaving a pleasant swoop of anticipation and terrified conviction in its wake.

He shouldn't have been nervous. He had a multitude of perfectly valid reasons, but overriding them all was the simple fact that the person standing behind him, waiting, was his smart, sarcastic sweetheart who let him call her V and was very particular about her coffee and wore cashmere sweaters in the winter. She could navigate the planet using the stars and liked seafood dishes and still wasn't used to the idea of someone lashing out in her defence; she didn't like stilettoes but liked heeled shoes and didn't understand the appeal of baseball and hid paper books under her pillow; she had never painted her nails and liked writing messages by hand and had smothered the shudder of a gasp when he bit her lip during a kiss.

She already had his heart. There was little enough chance of getting it back, so there wasn't really much left to hesitate over.

Breathing deep, he stepped out from behind the support pillar, a brilliant smile splashed across his face as he adjusted his cufflinks for the fifth time this evening.

"Well, it doesn't look like much, but the view is-"

He stopped dead, as though he had slammed into a forcefield.

On the night of the Starfleet-sponsored diplomatic ball, she had looked like something supernatural and untouchable- like the dark between the stars, brushed with stardust like highlighter across cheekbones.

Tonight, she looked- human. Mortal, like she was deliberately placing herself within reach. The dress she was wearing could have been taken off the rack in Grace Kelly's wardrobe- or Valravn could have passed as Princess Grace's reincarnation with some black hair dye, fresh ice and expert combat accreditation thrown in. The fabric was ephemeral, dreamlike, delicate as mist and shredded tissue, and gathered and wrapped around the bust into off-shoulder sleeves and a slim waist; the flare of the skirt was less dramatic that the typical fifties style, with fewer layers and a lower volume of petticoats, but the classic silhouette held, hem skimming above the ankle and revealing a pair of simple strap-heels. Bleeding through the layers of almost raw-toned silk were moments of steel-blue and violet.

Kirk sent up a silent plea for help, and a quick prayer of gratitude that he had gone for an Armani silk-blend suit- deep royal blue, beautifully cut, sans tie, the first few buttons of the crisp white dress shirt left undone.

He doubled his prayers when he saw the appreciative flick of Valravn's eyes, keen as a knife.

"Well. I would say that Armani is a-" she paused, deliberate and a little seductive, her mouth curving just so- daubed rich claret, flicks of gold paint at the corners of her dark lashes, "very good look on you. Be careful though, darling- wouldn't want Apollo getting jealous and throwing some divine misfortune down on you."

Kirk's brain promptly short-circuited.

He became dimly aware that he was fixed in place when Valravn took a few steps closer, catching his mood like the way that a wild creature scented danger.

"James? Are you alri-"

"You look like oxygen to the drowning."

Valravn froze.

It took Kirk a whole five and a half seconds to realise what he had just said.

"I mean-! I- did I- yeah, I said that out loud, didn't I," he said, laughing nervously, rambling and barely short of hyperventilating. "That-that's not what I meant to- I mean you do look- just that- sorry, that was- too much, way too much- er. You look nice?" Kirk finished lamely, flustered, desperately trying to salvage something out of the fact that he had practically spouted poetry at her on a first date. Within the first thirty seconds.

First dates were apparently not his forte.

Valravn was looking at him in the same way that he had watched her examine a particularly complex equation, mentally computing each line and decoding each symbol until she extracted its value, her gaze as powerful as a sucker punch to the trachea.

"My mother once told me never to date anyone with a smooth tongue," she mused, folding one arm around her waist, the other at the small of her back, faultless as synthetic marble.

Kirk swallowed. Valravn rarely talked about Dr Karin Winter, and he never knew what to expect when she did. "She did?"

"Yes. She said that I should pick someone who liked me enough that they got nervous, and stumbled over their words every once in a while when they were around me," Valravn said, coolly serene. "Strange, but Keval never once stuttered when we were together."

Jim felt an irrational little sting of gratification at the implicit comparison.

"Guess it was never meant to be," he said lightly, closing the distance between them, unable to bear the abyss when every nerve in his body had been on edge all day, vibrating in demand of her, like a withdrawal symptom. He dared to add, sotto voce, quietly enough that she could ignore it if she wanted, "Luckily for me."

Valravn hummed, gazing indifferently at his shoulder even as the angle of her body inclined towards him, belying the remnants of her cold, perfect mask. They were standing so close that Kirk couldn't help but reach out for her waist, skimming his fingertips across back of her hand.

She shivered, and moved closer.

"Of course," she continued, her voice a little unsteady- and Kirk couldn't withhold a brief smirk, looking down at her through his lashes raptly and brushing over her knuckles, "I never thought that you would say something that would put Keats to shame and then blush and try to backpedal-"

"I am not blushing-" Kirk blurted out, completely aware that he was a hypocrite.

Valravn opted not to call him on it. "Yes you are, and it's almost as good a look on you as the suit," she replied, sharp and crisp as frost, eyes snapping to his with an almost playful smile.

Kirk's mouth moved wordlessly for a moment- before breaking into a delighted grin, and sliding his hand beneath hers and around her waist. This was real. "You- you're flirting with me, aren't you?"

"I'm allowed to," Valravn riposted, slightly defensive, contouring into him willingly as he drew her in. "You're courting me-"

"Courting you?" Kirk echoed, bemused and a little elated by the antiquated term.

Valravn winced, absently lifting a hand to toy with his lapel. "I- Gaila wouldn't stop using the word today. Somehow it has attached itself to my vocabulary."

"No, it's- it's fine. Just not the word I would have used, is all. I mean, personally-" Finally giving into the agonising temptation, Kirk put both hands on her waist and tugged Valravn against him, not missing her intake of breath and the way she immediately relaxed against him through the frothy silk of her dress and how her pupils bloomed and lips parted- stars, he was so completely gone, "personally, I would have called it romancing."

She made a soft, incoherent noise that almost redirected Kirk's blood flow south and succeeded in tearing his thoughts clean between please don't make that sound and please never stop making that sound.

"You don't have to romance me," Valravn breathed.

Kirk stroked his thumbs across her ribs. "What if I wanted to?"

Valravn looked away, tense.

He immediately loosened his hold on her, leaving enough slack for her to step back- he had probably pushed too far. The mutual borders that they had constructed over the years they had known each other were a decimated confusion, after spending at least an hour using their mouths for a completely wordless conversation- but Kirk still knew Valravn and her edges. She was pragmatic, guarded, oblique. Every hint at her heart was glimpsed from between her ribs, through the scars in her intercostal space, given multiple facets and alternate interpretations. Blatant displays of affection weren't her element, and anyone who wanted her friendship had to learn to accept that.

Kirk had learned to read between Valravn's incredibly fine lines, and if he had to bite his tongue, then he would.

To his pleasant surprise, Valravn only fell back by an inch, her hand still lingering treacherously close to his heart- as though, any second, she might grasp his lapel and yank him into her possessively.

Hesitating, and careful not to move any closer, Kirk cautiously reached up and swept a lock of dark hair back from her browbone with a single finger. She looked up, the near-violet of her irises stealing the breath from his lungs briefly. He dreamed in that colour, sometimes.

"You okay?" He asked gently.

Valravn inhaled unevenly. "I'm just not," she wavered, words halting where they normally poured as smooth as music; she turned her face into his fingers, hovering in invitation between her jaw and the curve of her neck, "used to this."

"Okay," Kirk replied calmly, offering an easy smile, "that's okay, me neither, we can-"

"Yet."

Jim blinked. "What?"

"Yet. Not used to it yet," Valravn clarified, eyes closed against the world, but her cadence ran a little steadier. "But I can be- somewhat intractable- when it comes to things I want. I won't tolerate anything getting in my way." She cracked open her eyes tentatively, revealing slivers of silver-blue and wide-blown pupils between the flick of her dark lashes, looking directly up at him. "Not even me."

Anticipation tautened in his chest, tense as a bowstring but fluttering desperately, and he found himself thumbing her jaw until she was tilted at the perfect angle for a kiss. "V…"

"Romancing sounds good," she breathed, "on the condition that it's mutual."

Kirk couldn't help his roguish smirk, even as he tenderly touched his forehead to hers. "You want to romance me?"

Valravn's hand slid up an inch, resting firmly over his heart, her palm flush against the echo of its beat through flesh and bone- Kirk's next quip vanished with the hitch of his breath.

Everything about Valravn was, for just a second, pulled apart by the heartstrings.

"If you'll let me."

Kirk swallowed down the first reply that his mind offered up- it's far late to ask permission now, sweetheart- and sank the tips of his fingers into her dark hair, each strand like satin and some deliberately styled to slip loose from its braid against the curve of her neck. It was a crime, Kirk decided headily, that his mouth wasn't more acquainted with its lines yet.

Later, he told himself sharply.

"I would love to be romanced by you," he said softly.

Kirk watched her bite the inside of her cheek, glowing like fresh snow- there was an ancient fable, he suddenly remembered, about a princess with snow-white skin, ebony-black hair, and a mouth the hue of the three drops of blood that had fallen when her mother pricked her finger on a needle. When he had first heard it, he had been a little disturbed by the description- the stark colours made her sound more like a painted corpse rather than the paralysing beauty that the tale described- but Kirk had to admit that he could see it now. The fairytale had simply forgot to mention that the snow was carved with smooth edges and the loveliest hint of imperfection, and that coloured light stained in the gloss of her dark hair like nebulae, and that her mouth was warm and soft and welcoming and held a tongue of silver that could slice clean or spill laughter.

They also forgot to mention that she completely stopped his heart and left him holding his breath when she looked at him like that, holding him like gravity.

"So," Valravn said, "why here?"

Because you're here. "Hm?"

A wry smile turned her lips. "The meeting place, James," she said, the nail of her index finger tapping over one of his shirt's buttons. Kirk determinedly refocused on what she was asking. "Why did you want to meet here?"

Abruptly, he remembered that they were standing in the top storey of a parking complex, just below the rooftop level.

"Oh, that," he said, casually, pulling back slightly. "I know, weird choice. But worth it."

Valravn gazed back at him sceptically, and his smile widened.

"Come look."

Kirk tugged at her to follow him, feeling her bare shoulder brushing the sleeve of his jacket, her heels ricocheting off the concrete. He steered them diagonally past one of the support columns to delay the effect- and wasn't disappointed when she halted abruptly.

The curved walls of the parking complex were half-open to the elements; the lower half was a reinforced barrier, two feet thick, while the upper half was reminiscent of long windows without a glass pane, separated by support struts.

Beyond was an incredible view of San Francisco.

With the interlocking network of sky-roads and overpasses and towers clustered and interconnected like organs and arteries, keeping the Federation's heart beating strong, it was difficult to glimpse a full panoramic view of San Francisco's true face without driving beyond the city and finding a high vantage point, or getting into a hover vehicle and suspending it somewhere- but the impact wasn't the same. As one of the tallest constructs in the immediate vicinity, however, the complex provided an unexpected rare vista: a single skyscraper soared at their left, sheets of glass leaving it as glossy and reflective as a silver mirror, but the rest of the city sprawled before them, curtained by open air, vehicles drifting through, the first hint of sunset burning the skies copper and leaving the cool steel of the city all the colder. What it would look like at dawn- or midnight- was unimaginable.

Valravn leaned forward, pressing her hands to the ledge of the barrier, gazing out.

"Oh."

"Mm-hm," Jim agreed, slipping up behind her. "I thought that too. Which is why- you see that high-rise on the left?"

Valravn turned her head to glance at it, and he caught a hit of her perfume- incense and honey, tiger orchid and belladonna, dark and powerful as opium. She edged back into him, and he didn't even try to supress the bloom of heat in his chest. "What about it?"

"It's an apartment building. There's a vacancy on one of the top floors, and I think I might get it."

She straightened. "You're getting an apartment?"

"Yeah, I know," Kirk smiled dryly, leaning into her as she settled back against him, hands pressing to the freezing barrier either side of her waist. Even in summer, the nights could be brisk, particularly when the skies were clear and the city was exposed to the wind-chill off the surface of the bay. "I don't know, I just- I saw it a couple of weeks ago, and it felt right. Is that weird?"

He could feel Valravn's humour in her reply. "With a view like this- no. I can see why you were seduced."

Jim hummed against her hair, soaking her in. He wondered if this was what satisfaction- real, bone-deep, satisfaction- felt like.

The moment held. His hands were beginning to numb from the cold concrete, but it didn't seem like a good enough reason to move; he was bracketing Valravn with warmth, the surface of her bared skin like fresh frost, and she was shielding him from the fore unflinchingly. The two of them were slotted together so perfectly that breaking away and shattering the tableau would probably feel like hurling a cinderblock into an original Tiffany stained-glass window.

Achingly slowly, Kirk dipped his head, settling his mouth at the curve of her jaw.

"Dinner?" He murmured against her skin.

Valravn hesitated, and for a second he thought she might ask for another minute- or suggest with something only half-jesting that they skip dinner- and honestly, if that's what she wanted, Kirk would have said yes in a heartbeat.

"Dinner," she breathed, "sounds good."

July 4, 2258 – Sonander; California, Earth

Valravn had been slightly concerned (read: gut-wrenchingly worried) that she would be overdressed. She had only been persuaded into the soft tulle dress because Uhura assured her that she could pick a simpler, darker backup, just in case, and because the others reminded her of what a sucker Kirk was for classic movies. Her reflection in the mirror had been unbearably romantic, and being the sole voice of doubt in the room quickly wore down her will to argue.

She may have also seen Uhura slipping away to message Kirk while Gaila attempted to distract her with shoes- meaning that the gown couldn't be too far off the mark, or her friend would have casually steered her away from it.

Seeing where their dinner reservations were, Valravn was infinitely grateful that she had listened to their advice.

Sonander was among the lofty ranks of establishments where it was almost impossible to get a table, every review was resplendent with praise, and culinary masters from the breadth of the galaxy competed for any vacancy in the kitchens.

It was a true San Franciscan installation, bare golden bulbs strung from a black ceiling like stars, with a fusion menu that made it easier to list the absent influences than decode those that were present; nowhere was the city's rich history and voracious dedication to diversity more present than in the local cuisine. Sonander was steeped in it like no other. The matte charcoal walls were painted with artistic white reliefs, depicting significant events and locations: the campuses and crests of UC Berkley and Caltech; the original signing of the Charter of the United Nations in 1945; activists and demonstrations in the nineteen-sixties and seventies; the coalition rebellion headquarters and secret laboratories in the nineties- during the Eugenics War, San Francisco had been a bastion of the human resistance, a thorn in the side of Augment leader Alexander Newton, and the base from where many crucial counterattacks were launched.

As soon as they stepped into the foyer, the maître d' stepped forward and greeted Kirk by name, offering to show them to their table. They were led across the restaurant floor and to a curving staircase, its railings constructed of colourless, avant-garde blown glass- the mezzanine level was completely empty, but for a single private table, set with two silver chairs and a centrepiece of glass flora. It was positioned against the vast half-rose window and a glittering view of the city, lighting the scene with the colours of a Californian sunset that darkened like a deep-tissue bruise, pure romance pulled from a page and poured out like a shot of morphine into a glass.

Valravn glanced at Kirk.

"I swear I didn't arrange all this," he caught her expression on his periphery, grimacing slightly. "I called them up a couple of days ago to see if they had a reservation in the next month, and they kinda- insisted."

She cut a glance towards the extremely accommodating maître d', coolly assessing.

Valravn believed him. She knew James Kirk's fingerprints, and she couldn't see them there; he was less vitrified flowers and black chrome, more open air rooftops and impulsive gestures of affection.

They were swiftly seated, and offered the wine list. Kirk glanced to Valravn in askance before he accepted it, and she was so caught by the way the blushing light glanced off him- she hadn't been lying earlier; he looked like the illegitimate demigod progeny of Apollo, the tilt of his mouth sweet enough to taste, fitted into a classic Armani suit as though Giorgio had risen from the grave and tailored it personally- that she almost felt her spine turn to molten sugar.

Whoever had arranged their table in front of the window had the right idea, and she couldn't decide whether or not she wanted to hunt them down and strangle them for it.

"You choose," she managed, taking a moment to recover and put the steel back in her vertebrae, biting the inside of her cheek. It helped that the server was trying, and failing, not to run an admiring stare over Kirk, turning the swoop in Valravn's stomach- like she had missed a step on the stairs- into vicious focus. Valravn made an admittedly unnecessary point of staring at them steadily.

Kirk barely glanced the list over before reciting the name of a vintage that Valravn had tasted once, deep red and rich and fruity; its flavour reminded her of summer. He handed the list back with a polite smile, and Valravn glanced at him as the server left.

"What?" He asked casually, blue eyes wide and guileless.

"You researched the wine menu before tonight," she replied, turning her empty wineglass by the stem.

He shrugged, feigning shamelessness. "You can't prove that. And what if I did?"

"Then I'd be a little impressed," Valravn answered without missing a beat.

Her words, primed like a biometrically target-locked bullet, struck her target.

Valravn had once been gifted with an antique rifle cartridge, a token from an acquaintance: a .308 Winchester, manufactured circa 1972, full-metal jacket, designed to pierce through bone and body-armor, favoured in military sniping and the sport hunting of big game. The solid, powerful weight as it rolled in the palm of her hand wasn't dissimilar to the weight of the words in her mouth- but the result was more like the shock of an energy beam, absorbed into flesh and overloading the synapses. Watching the chain reaction, it was a thing of beauty, a symphonic masterpiece, colour bleeding through soaked paper. The mask of easy, cocksure charm- crisp as chilled white wine- flickered, like a flame fluttering in a draft. Kirk's features instantly became softer, the ridge of his brow relaxing and the set of his jaw mending into a pleasing line, eyes the colour and framing of bliss; the slope of his shoulders deepened, delineating into the shallows where his pulse fluttered. Had she reached across the table, Valravn probably would have found him as malleable as twenty-four carat gold against her, if she had cared to test it. He would probably catch her wrist and press her palm to his mouth, blue irises sparking with bad ideas she couldn't refuse.

It held longer for her than it would for anyone else, the seconds pouring generously into her hands, skittering like sky-bright marbles as they spilled over. Valravn hoped that it was because he knew she would flay the living flesh from anyone who tried to use that vulnerability to their advantage.

"I really don't know how to do this," he admitted softly, glancing at the edge of the table. "You know, I have no idea what to say- what do people even talk about on first dates?"

Valravn smiled slightly, crossing her legs at the knee. "I don't know either. I was under the impression that you were supposed to get to know each other."

"See, exactly, that's the problem," Kirk said exasperatedly, leaning forwards. "We already know all that- first date trivia. I mean, you can't ask my favourite colour because you already know it's-"

"Blue," Valravn cut in, effortlessly, like your eyes, like the colour that wonder and daydreams would be if anyone thought about it, like daylight galaxies and the ceiling of the earth, "usually cerulean, but you'll take almost any shade."

Jim's grin was slow and certain, perfect as the dawn. "And my favourite flower-"

"Heliotrope, obviously," she answered, brow hitching in tandem with the corner of her mouth. They turn towards the sunshine, clusters of tiny vibrant violet and cobalt.

"Drink order?"

"Whiskey, neat, over a single ice cube." Sin-smooth as your singing voice, with a burn like your kiss. When you knock back a glass, it leaves a subtle rasp in your voice. Alcohol makes you irreverent, and reckless- or at least more so than usual.

"Coffee order?"

"Depends on the weather. Snow means vanilla chai latte, rain means strong with frothed milk, sunshine means flat white, and heat means a double-shot of expresso over hazelnut milk and ice." Changeable with the seasons, like your mood, predictable yet always unexpected.

Kirk ducked his head, laved in subdued vanilla from the late summer light, and Valravn allowed herself to bask in the pleasure of slicing at whatever had been holding him back. It pained her to think in clichés, but whenever he smiled, it lit him up, filling the entire floor like sunshine- pouring in and brimming in every crack, the residue clinging to every surface like a fine dusting of gold even after it faded, like gossamer and fairytale magic. He made Valravn think of a microcosm of a star incarnate; created out of something lighter and more insubstantial than air, put under immense pressure, and turned into something glorious rather than destroyed by it. People were drawn into him as though he were magnetic, but he rarely, if ever, obliterated them with his intensity- instead they fell in a steady orbit around him, working to their optimum, brightened into stars of their own by his proximity.

Valravn liked who she was around him. She liked who she was allowed to be around him. He was euphoric.

"Alright, challenge round," he said, a gleam in his eyes. "Favourite movie?"

Valravn scoffed, leaning to one side in her chair, projecting contempt. "As if that qualifies as a challenge- you underestimate me, pretty boy."

He smirked, provocatively, and Valravn burned to force his mouth to make good on the wordless promise it hinted at. "Money, mouth."

Classic Hollywood movies, dark undertones, rays of hope, strong female characters- too easy, James. "Fine. You tell people that it's either Inception, Breakfast at Tiffany's or the 1940 version of Rebecca, but your real favourite film is Maid in Manha-"

"Hey, ju- don't say it out loud!" Kirk hissed suddenly, looking over his shoulder frantically. The mezzanine was still empty, to his visible relief.

Valravn tried not to laugh. "James, I've told you, there are worse films than-"

"V, you and I both know that it is not a good movie."

"I didn't say that it was good. I said that worse films exist."

Kirk winced pointedly. "Not exactly a glowing review, sweetheart."

"It is a thinly-veiled retelling of the Cinderella formula in early twenty-first century New York. It's hardly cinematic gold, but it was vaguely charming and wasn't a complete loss of an afternoon." She laced her fingers together, bridging them under her jawline. "I think it's your turn."

Kirk smirked confidently. Valravn tried not to think about what she would do for the sake of that look; he was deadly, and barely even knew it, killing in small cumulative doses. "Hit me."

"Alright. Favourite book."

Valravn admitted that it was probably a little cruel of her to choose something so obscure. His expression, however, as it clouded with confusion and a hint of panic, before clearing like still water, was worth it.

"You don't have one," he declared triumphantly. "You could never choose."

Her mouth curved. "Where did I go to university?"

"You didn't. You were given an honorary degree in engineering by Oxford when you were, what, nine? I think you said you attended three classes and that's it."

"Where did I grow up?"

"Sheffield, in England- City of Steel," he added, "which is insanely appropriate- before you moved to London." Kirk straightened slightly, curiosity visibly welling, pricked by the subject. "Actually, I have a question."

Valravn arched a brow at the sudden swerve. "Oh?"

"You do know where I grew up, right?"

"Yes, on a farm in Riverside, Iowa. You country hick," she added with a teasing glint, the corner of her mouth turning up.

"Right, so," Kirk's brows were tugged together uncertainly, "you know it wasn't a ranch- right?"

"Yes," Valravn replied cautiously, unsure of where this was going, filling her water goblet from the tall bottle on the table, left by their server. "Crops rather than cattle. Mostly for biofuels and cosmetics, but also a few fields for organic foodstuffs for the market of people like me, who can taste the difference in replicated dishes and prefer something a little more authentic."

"Okay, so- so what's up with the whole calling me cowboy thing?"

Valravn stiffened, glass halfway to her mouth. "What about it."

"I mean, why didn't you just switch to calling me farmboy? Just to start with, can you imagine the Princess Bride references I could have exploited?"

She probably would have smiled at the idea of Jim rakishly echoing as you wish in reply to anything she said, had her vocal chords not been knotting so firmly.

"You- still haven't figured it out."

"Well- no?" Kirk answered, uncharacteristically guileless. "That's why I asked."

Valravn turned her water goblet by the stem, weighing her words and carving them down at the base of her tongue. "Well, I," she began carefully, "heard rumours. That you were a good- ride."

Nonplussed, Kirk stared at her from across the table. "A good ri-? I don't get it. Wait, do you mean like on a motorcycle? Why would you think-"

Sinking her teeth into soft flesh inside of her cheek, she stared into the distance, refusing to look at him.

Valravn almost heard the moment of impact, all but slapping him clean across the face.

"You weren't talking about motorcycles, were you," he said blankly.

She shook her head minutely, molars cutting deeper.

"It was a freaking double entendre."

Valravn's head whipped away, shoulders shaking helplessly.

"I wondered when you would figure it out," she managed to force out, voice aching with supressed laughter, desperately trying to keep it from brimming over. For the first few months that they had known each other, she was certain that he would catch onto the slip of her tongue and never let it go- that every time she slammed him to the sparring mat, straddling him with her forearm pinning his throat, that he would tease her and be absolutely right, because there was something about it being him that flipped a switch in Valravn, and suddenly the hard planes and strength corded through him became less a tactical threat, more an invitation that coaxed her to lean forwards and sink her teeth into his collarbone.

It was fortunate that, with her self-control, she could withstand the gravitational pull of a neutron star. Resisting the urge to run her fingers through his hair and taste his pulse was a test, particularly when her imagination helpfully provided potential enthusiastic responses.

Once she had realised that he was completely clueless about the innuendo she had been throwing into conversation with him at least once a week, it had taken every ounce of self-control left in her not to reveal that she had played Jim Kirk at his own game without even trying.

"You were making a sex joke for two years and it went completely over my head," Kirk breathed, outraged, and Valravn almost buckled over the arm of her seat. "How did I miss that? Good ride, are you serious, you were basically flirting with me outrageously, to my face and practically every single day and I missed it-"

Valravn was still hiding her laughter behind the rim of her water glass when the server returned with the wine and two dinner menus.

By the time they emerged from the restaurant, it was so late that the sky was black. The air had cooled rapidly, and the world looked the way that Valravn's perfume smelled, dark and frosted and intoxicating.

"Well," Kirk ventured, "that was- uh-"

"Overhyped and underwhelming?" Valravn suggested, face upturned to the heavens, combing a stray tress behind her ear- concrete wrapped in gauze, like the light glancing off the pavement. Never mind the way she handled a knife in one hand and a phaser in the other: her words alone could kill the unsuspecting.

Kirk sighed gustily, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You're right, this date sucked, I'm so sorry-"

"James-"

"Do I get a do-over? I think I can do better than this-"

"James."

"I'm just saying, V, this is not representative of-"

"Stop." Valravn said, mirth catching in the corners of her eyes, seeming to shimmer like stars in the trap of her black lashes. Before Kirk could gauge her any further, she had moved into him, threading her fingers through his, her other hand covering his mouth until he stopped talking. "This date has most definitely not sucked."

Hr blinked. "It hasn't?"

"Not even slightly," she reiterated, drenched with the brand of cool analysis that made it impossible to doubt her. "The food was stunningly unexceptional, but the company was as stellar as was advertised. And that is what I came for. It will take infinitely more than a mediocre seafood dish to dim how much I enjoyed tonight."

Kirk deflated, breathing deep, valiantly attempting a nonchalant smile. "Oh. Okay."

"Can I request dessert now?"

He frowned at her slightly, bemused. "Uh- yeah, sure. Where do you wanna go?"

She sent him a quietly exasperated look that told him that he was being uncharacteristically slow on the uptake tonight.

"I'm asking permission to kiss you, James." Valravn said tonelessly.

"Oh, right- oh! Yeah, no, sure, you have that, anytime, go for it, I mean I'll make it clear if I don't-"

Valravn tasted like wine, and cherry gloss.

It took him a moment to register that she was kissing him, openly, on the sidewalk for the world to witness. There was something in the way that she held onto him- as though he was made of pure light and she was willing him to remain solid, pliant and unhesitating. Kirk slid an arm around her waist, kissing her back. Message received, he thought wryly.

Valravn broke contact, leaving him a little breathless- but she was already stealing another one from the corner of his mouth, and he parted his lips encouragingly. She took her fill, leisurely, each skim and drag of her lips on his like a chaser of ice-cold vodka, and he felt the shock flood down his throat and across his collarbones, never quite enough. He came close to gasping against her, creasing the fabric of her gown at the ribs as he grasped for purchase. Valravn only pulled him closer- inexperienced, but a damn quick study, and Kirk was more than pleased to give her the practice.

It was a short eternity before she took mercy on him. Catching his breath in quick bursts of cooling summer air, Kirk rested his forehead against hers with a sigh; it was like the dust had settled into a comfortable rightness. "So. Uh. Seasalt next time?" He suggested with a hazy grin.

Valravn let up a sound of assent. "I do like their Dungeness crab."

"And they actually have a decent dessert menu."

"Oh, it was pitiable, wasn't it?"

And just like that, as though with a snap of the fingers, everything was so easy.

"Well," Kirk cast his gaze upwards, "I kinda did have something planned for after dinner, but, I mean, we can always skip it-"

"James Tiberius Kirk, by now you should know better than to bait me," she replied in a voice like blunt teeth against his throat, giving a short sharp yank at his lapels, danger leashed. Eyes flicking down to gaze at her through the screen of his lashes, he let his jaw slacken slightly, breathing her in until he was convinced the inside his lungs would be stained glimmering black. "Speak."

Jim exhaled, long and shallow. "Can you waltz?"

Her brows twitched. "I learnt how. Once."

"Great." He took her hand, pressing the backs of her fingers to his mouth in a courtly gesture that he just couldn't resist, anticipation burning up through him. "Come with me."

He turned, his pace brisk, but he knew that Valravn would be insulted if he slowed on her behalf. She held close at his flank as the slipstream tugged at his open jacket and the frothy confection of her dress.

"I have no idea what we are doing," Valravn informed him flatly.

"Good," he replied brightly, "kinda the definition of a surprise, there, sweetheart."

She swatted at his arm harmlessly, and he cracked a smile.

Serendipity was a hell of a thing. It just so happened that Sonander was less than five minutes on foot from a secluded spot by the waterside where, a few weeks ago, Kirk had spoken with Spock Prime. Night painted the location into something unrecognisable, as though it had been dipped in darkness and magic and imperial purple dye; he pulled Valravn over to the edge of the bay, violet and blue electric city lights glittering on the ink of the water, beads of clear white light marking every structure and street and leeching the black from the edge of the blackness like bleach.

Halting, Kirk smoothly spun Valravn by the wrist to face him. She seemed to be walking the knife-edge between amusement and uncertainty, the play of electric light across the warring expression tempting him to lean in and kiss it off her.

"So?" Valravn prompted with a curious twitch of her brow.

Unable to help the pleased little smirk that crossed his mouth, Kirk gazed off into the distance- and reached into his pocket, slipping out a slim silver music player and switching it on. Belying its size, music flowed out clear, echoing across the quiet swatch of the bay- the soft brush and hiss of drums, the pluck of a piano, and the bourbon-smooth dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra.

"Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars-"

Valravn was repressing laughter, he could tell- signed across her mouth and shimmering in the curve of her irises.

"Really?"

"What?" He retorted, grinning innocently, heart hammering at his sternum as though trying to break out, desperately wishing he could catch this moment in a bottle as a memento. "Come on, what's a first date without dancing?"

She let up an almost inaudible snort- it still knocked the breath out of Kirk's lungs to realise that she considered him worth showing a moment of indignity for, because there was nothing graceful about that sarcastic little sound- and placed her left hand on his shoulder, holding herself in the pleasing frame of someone sculpted by the sense memory of extensive ballet classes.

"In other words- hold my hand-"

He placed a hand at the small of Valravn's spine, her contours beautiful under his palm. Slipping the music player back into his pocket and wrapping his fingers around hers, the first few steps fell into place, experimental, a testing of the waters. It was clean, and simple- Kirk had always liked the waltz, despite having very few opportunities to practice.

Valravn observed him with a knife-quick flick of her eyes, incisive and intrigued. "Where did you learn to dance?"

He grinned down at her, raising his eyebrows. "What, am I that bad?"

"The contrary, actua-"

The big band picked up, brass notes rising into the chorus, and Jim- in a burst of confidence- turned Valravn under his arm and safely back into him, never missing a beat. She followed on reflex, her balance and footwork never wavering, but Kirk caught her inhale of surprise as he caught her in the curve of his arm.

"Show-off." Valravn accused him, seething like acid. Contrary to her tone, she was melting into him, and Kirk didn't even try to temper his smile.

By the time the instrumental solo kicked in, they were coasting across the bayside promenade on the centuries-old rhythm, the lights of the city suspended in nothingness, the fabric of her dress floating like woven stratus cloud with each sway and turn, the seams of his suit catching shadow and light. They took a half-turn, and with a neat swivel of her ankle, Valravn pressed into him, the stars falling to catch in her hair, glowing like frosted glass- looking at him like he was the only thing in existence.

"Fill my heart with song, let me sing forevermore- you are all I long for, all I worship, and adore-"

They were still moving, but it was something of an afterthought. Looking at the excruciatingly rare, open smile that Valravn was wearing, subtle as light pollution on the horizon, Jim grasped for something to say.

"You truly do put the sun to shame, James Kirk."

Valravn spoke before he had articulated anything, fluid and certain; she couldn't have disarmed him more cleanly than if she had delivered a sucker-punch to his diaphragm, and pinned his arm against his spine.

Silence seeped between them- just before the bombastic brass of the next song kicked in, sharp as a manual gear change. It was only then that Kirk noticed how utterly satisfied Valravn looked, an echo of victory in her expression, tongue pressed to the inside of her teeth. He narrowed his eyes at her, picking up the slack of the steps determinedly.

"Dean Martin rescued you this time," Kirk informed her crisply.

"Rescued me from what, exactly? Retaliation in kind?" Valravn let up a shallow sigh, cool as snowmelt. "What a terrible fate. However shall I bear it."

Kirk rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay-"

"I'm serious. I doubt that I could tolerate any further dreamy looks or poetic compliments without attempting to hurl myself into the bay, not that you would permit such an escape. How in the universe you could have invented such cruel torture is beyond my comprehension. I fear what other horrors you have in store."

"Wouldn't you like to know," he muttered, dipping her shallowly. When he pulled her back in, he swore he could feel her smirking against his collar. Kirk skimmed his fingers up the fuller of her spine, hearing the hiss of her intake of breath.

"The anticipation is killing me, darling," Valravn breathed.

"Mn, that's the best part," he replied roguishly, slow and deliberate. "Delayed gratification is a hell of a thing."

"And I have heard that it becomes particularly potent, if steeped over months," she returned, a low hum in her voice. "Careful not to overdose."

Kirk exhaled a laugh.

They went through a cycle of songs, flitting through the decades of the mid-twentieth century- Sinatra and Martin, Redding and Simone, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Kirk counted them down, recalling the order of the playlist, hoping that he had timed it to an art; he had laid the groundwork meticulously, misdirection patiently bound into every move, like chasing a clever victory in a round of three-dimensional chess- and it seemed to be working. He knew what Valravn felt like when she was alert, because it was the norm. Currently, her guard had crumbled.

The solo piano prelude of the next song had her freezing up.

"Wait- is this-?"

"Funny story," Kirk said blithely, "I'm dating this incredible woman- she's completely out of my league- clever as the devil and twice as pretty- and she's into this era of music-"

"I bet she's back in the atmosphere, with drops of Jupiter in her hair-"

"- so I figured I would indulge her," he concluded, twitching his shoulders into a shrug, crafting the conversation to the hypotheticals, familiar terrirory with Valravn-orientated conversations that pared too close to the bone. "Especially since this was one of the first things she taught herself to play on the piano. Besides- it suits her. The song. It's pretty."

Valravn made a neutral sound, her head dropping into his shoulder by a degree. "You know, we should hope that she never meets this guy that I'm dating," she replied easily, falling into step with him swiftly. Kirk supressed his smile, knowing that she would sense it the moment he let it slip through. "He would probably be her type- a smile that could melt the Alps, a mind that could find a way to set water on fire, a bad reputation in all the best ways, never fails to surprise- I find myself unwilling to share him, if I can help it."

"Tell me, did you sail across the sun? Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights are faded? And that heaven is overrated?"

"I seriously doubt that he wants to be shared," Kirk assured her, carefully impartial but laden with inference, "I mean, especially if you-"

"I don't want to control him," Valravn cut in tightly, "or dictate to him. He belongs to himself before anyone else. If he wanted- obviously, then, I would try to accept-"

"He doesn't want," he said firmly as the strings and percussion soared off the end of the chorus, scattering and smoothing out. "If he did- I mean, he'd adore you for saying it. But he's not- wired that way, I guess. It's not something you need to be concerned about."

Valravn was quiet- the kind of quiet that was associated with silver clockwork, gears turning noiselessly.

"I wouldn't mind. For certain- things. Taken from a particular perspective, it's just exercise."

Kirk closed his eyes briefly, trying not to adore her more than he already did. "Somehow I don't think he'd see it that way. He'd consider it- unfaithful. I mean, personally- I'm- okay, put it this way, I'm not interested in going to a different restaurant for dessert."

Valravn burst out laughing. "Ah. Alright."

"What?" He asked, bemused.

"Nothing. I just wouldn't have seen you limiting yourself to a- favourite restaurant. Recent developments excluded."

"Well, what can I say?" Kirk turned her under his arm with the flourish of violins. "One taste, and I was hooked. I'm just glad I could get a reservation."

She slid back into his hold, left arm curled almost completely around him possessively, her words chasing across his ski like droplets of ice. "Fairly certain that you're the only one who can get a reservation."

Kirk grinned. "Oh. Good to know."

"- did the wind sweep you off your feet? Did you finally get the chance to dance across the light of day? And head back to the Milky Way- tell, me, did Venus blow your mind? Was it everything you wanted to find, and did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?"

As they hit the middle eight, it finally happened.

Valravn instinctively snapped to attention as the high whistle pierced the quiet. The firework exploded over the bay, a hundred and fifty decibels, colour and light shimmering on the waves, ruby and sapphire and diamond heralding a waterfall of silver rockets.

"Huh," Kirk said cheerfully, feigning surprise, "that's cool."

He felt her exhale of realisation.

"It's the fourth of July."

"Yeah."

"You planned this."

He pressed his mouth into her hair, gathered and bound into an elegant knot, like a medieval queen. "Uh-huh."

"Seems like tempting fate. Did you tie Catherine Wheels to the railings?"

Jim shook with a tremor of laughter. "No, but I should have- I don't think Bones is ever going to forgive me for that one."

"It's partially my fault," Valravn admitted. "I knew it was a terrible idea."

"It was a fantastic idea," he retorted indignantly, "the execution was just a little- off."

"We were sat outside your dorm room for four hours with a jar of peanut butter," she reminded him tonelessly.

"Yeah, that was a fun night," Kirk recalled, warm nostalgia flooding through him. "It was the first time I saw you with your hair all mussed. I remember thinking how damn pretty you were."

Valravn scoffed unconvincingly. "I was pretty? If only you could have seen yourself, breathless and flushed, burn marks stippling your collarbone."

Kirk turned feverish at the teasing skim of her lower lip at his neck, making him wonder her kiss might have made the pattern of scalded skin feel like a frozen constellation set in his flesh.

"- and are you lonely, looking for yourself out there?"

He insisted on walking her home- because of course he did.

Valravn directed them on a more scenic route, circling around the bay for as long as possible, rather than cutting clean through the complex of the city streets. Halfway, she found herself somewhat regretting it; the wind was picking up, billowing in with the first threads of mist, sapping the heat from her flesh mercilessly. It was nothing that she couldn't tolerate, pasting a visage of indifference over the mild discomfort, but after the balmy weather that had reigned from the early hours, and the temptingly generous warmth that Kirk exuded, it was still an unpleasant shock to her system- especially given her relative lack of sleeves and exposed shoulders.

"Hey, you okay?"

Valravn glanced across at her date- she allowed herself to think of him as that, because he was certainly acting like- and was about to issue the standard evasive response.

Something in his expression- intuitive, searching, coloured with hints of concern and unease - made her halt, swallow her pride and force herself to tell him the truth.

"I couldn't find a jacket that went with this dress," she admitted, rigid, "and now I'm paying for it. That's all."

Kirk blinked at her, once, an eyebrow twitching calculatingly- then, with two deft flicks of his fingers, he unbuttoned his blazer, the fabric of his shirt tautening across his shoulders and creasing at his ribs as he shrugged the suit jacket off.

Realising what he was doing, Valravn took a half-step back. "No."

He had the temerity to roll her eyes at her; she glared at him indignantly. "You're cold," Kirk admonished her exasperatedly, catching the jacket by the collar and opening it up for her to step into. "I should have realised, that dress-"

"James, that's not-"

"Please?" He pressed, soft and warm and chivalrous, and Valravn damned herself for not wanting to refuse him. "Otherwise I'll just feel bad."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but she could pinpoint the moment that she felt herself crack- it was with the slight lift of his brows, as if to ask her if she was going to keep him waiting.

"This is emotional blackmail," Valravn informed him darkly, even as she grudgingly moved forward and let him wrap the blazer around her shoulders, a pleased smile tracking across his face. The satin lining was warmed by his body heat and inundated with an intoxicating splash of his cologne, and Valravn couldn't resist slipping her arms into the sleeves and closing the front around her possessively, drinking in as much as she could bear. "Thank you," she said quietly.

Jim flashed a heartbreaker grin, casually undoing the cuffs of his shirt, folding them up to his elbows- he's trying to kill me, Valravn thought desperately, admiring the pleasing lines of his hands and forearms. "My pleasure," he purred, tenor and temptation, his intonation making it clear that the words were not pure platitude.

Before she could convince herself think twice, she pressed against his side, winding her fingers around his.

The walk was too short by approximately five years.

Valravn hesitated on the stoop to the apartment building. She wanted to say that she had a good time tonight, that she didn't want it to end, but she still refused to fall into the prosody of clichés- anyone whose name became synonymous, in her mind, with the curling of her accent around the word darling deserved better.

Spoken languages were only ever her element when she was concealing the truth, slipping her intentions through verbal armour like a misericorde. He deserved her honesty- splashes of promising colour to cold monochrome- so a kiss would have to suffice.

Her experience was sparse, but fortunately Valravn was an expert at reading Kirk's reactions, and had already learned the style of kiss that she suspected was his favourite, at least from her: a prelude of short and chaste, testing and thieving, then long and slow and deep until his breath was stuttering against her, drawing her air deep into his lungs, curling like fragrant smoke and choking him.

It was damn good, but there was a dark, insistent urge that Valravn just couldn't resist- the desire to make him pay for every excess second that he had made her wait for this.

Without warning, she broke the kiss and turned for the door, climbing the steps swiftly. "Give me a few days to come up with something to surpass tonight," Valravn said casually, tossed over her shoulder. "It shouldn't take long. I'll call."

The moment she let the building's front door swing shut behind her, she felt a pang of panic and worry that she had gone too far in her fit of pique.

Then she heard a bout of muffled, hysterical laughter, garbled with what could have been an incredulous, affronted string of compliments.

July 5, 2258 – San Francisco; California, Earth

Kirk didn't know how it happened. Really, he didn't.

It began innocently enough. Valravn had taken a detour that morning, on her way to a previous engagement, to return his jacket.

It was perfectly justifiable. Anyone would agree.

And then somehow she had ended up wearing said jacket, straddling him as he slid his tongue across hers, tugging at the lapels to keep her where he wanted her. Even if he did know how it happened, Kirk couldn't remember: the thought and sight of Valravn wearing his clothes wreaked havoc on his capacity for reason- the only reason he had drawn up short last night was because of her abrupt, and admittedly funny, departure- and the sound she made low in her throat as he slid his hands inside the blazer to circle her waist was not persuading him to reconsider what they were doing.

"Fuck," she breathed fervently as he sank his teeth into her lower lip, before dropping his focus the column of her throat that was torturing him above the swatch of dark blue silk; her nails were biting into his left shoulder, and her other hand was grasping at the hem of his shirt for purchase, perilously close to touching bare skin. "Yes."

Kirk groaned into her mouth and flattened a hand at the base of her spine, pressing her closer, even as he felt Valravn dragging them together by the grip on his shoulder. Pulling up and slipping beneath worn cotton, she was suddenly splaying exploratory fingertips across his abdomen, and, shuddering, he dropped a hand to the curve of her thigh to tug her in firmer, ideal for a shred of rhythmic friction. Kirk found himself drawing her skin between his teeth until her breathing grew thick, forming a perfect love bite.

"Red is such a good colour on you," he murmured against the mark with a flick of his tongue.

Valravn was a quick-tongued as ever. "And here I thought you'd gained a partiality for blue."

He laughed against her skin. "So cruel to me, sweetheart."

He hissed as her hand caught in the collar of his shirt, and dragged her nails across his skin, flesh flaring. "Only because you take it so well," she hummed, almost indifferently, "and because nothing goes better with red than gold."

In retaliation, Kirk made her irreparably late, and had fun doing it.

He had made her late- beyond late. Valravn would never admit that she had only bought it on herself, nor that it wasn't entirely unalike divine retribution.

Very divine retribution, a sly section of her mind supplied unhelpfully.

Fuck off, her composure replied icily, you're the one who got us into this.

The sole consolation was that Valravn had spent enough hours staring at equations and code and engineering blueprints to know how to relax her eyes, and let her mind move like quicksilver and seek familiarities and anomalies in a mass of data. The stretch of golden sand was hot and densely crowded, but she caught a flash of green skin and red hair, a flutter of Uhura's laughter, and quickly tracked down the camp that they had staked out.

She caught the looks she was receiving as she approached, unhooking her bag from her shoulder and loosening the tie of her sarong, opening it up across the sleek backless one-piece swimsuit she wore underneath.

"We said ten at the latest," Uhura, stretched on a lounger in two swatches of floral fabric, reminded her sternly. Her eyes were invisible behind the lenses of her sunglasses, but her reproachful stare was tangible. Gaila rolled over on her beach towel to smile at Valravn, and kick one of the struts of Uhura's lounger unsubtly.

Valravn refused to wince, but acquiesced a sincere apology. "Sorry. I got caught up."

"In what?" Hai asked, once again taking shelter beneath a broad parasol, a digital book open on their bare thighs and a chilled glass bottle of orange juice bedded in the sand beside them.

Before she could say another word, Gaila suddenly jolted upright and gave an unholy, wordless shriek, pointing at Valravn's neck accusingly.

God-fucking-damn it, Valravn thought, resisting the urge to guiltily clap her fingers over the telltale mark.

Uhura followed Gaila's damning gesture, sliding her shades down. Her eyes narrowed.

"Valravn Winter, where did you get that?"

Valravn paused, calculating.

Then she dropped her bag and turned, her heels churning through the sand, towards the water. "I think I'm going to take a swim-"

"Oh no you don't!" Gaila scrambled to her feet, colourful towel tangling around her ankles. "Get back here, I want details-"

Valravn bolted, taking off in a dead sprint.

"Hey! You can't escape that easily!" Uhura yelled after her, joining the chase.

Except Valravn did exactly that, because she had consistently maintained one of the fastest sprint and marathon times at the academy, not to mention the fastest freestyle swim record. She outran them by several meters, opening the comfortable distance without even breaking a sweat under the violent midday heat, tearing through the crowds of beachgoers like a skater on ice. Her friends finally gave up their quarry when she hit the water, plunging in and emerging a safe distance. Valravn caught a few curses and warnings hurled in her direction before they retreated, and laughed loudly enough for them to hear, slipping back beneath the waves.

The saltwater turned her mouth chalky and burned her eyes, but the play of light beneath the water was like cracks of weightless gold in clay, pulled to dance in the currents, rippling across her skin. When she broke for air, a glittering expanse of wild cold water extended beyond her sight, the horizon cut as though with a paring knife from the sky.

Once, in a different ocean, she had looked out and wondered what would have happened if she gave herself over to the mercy of the tide.

She hadn't wondered that for a while.

"These waves are lovely, dark and deep," Valravn breathed, twisting the ancient poetry to her purposes, her voice swallowed by the seething sea. Salt dripped from her lips, the sun searing. "But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep."

A/N: Long ending note this time- mostly due to my long absence.

A couple of footnotes: the building that Kirk plans to get an apartment in is a call-back to Chapter IV- it's the same unfinished skyscraper that he and Valravn climbed on New Years' Eve. At the time the two of them assumed that the building would be for offices, due to the floor space, but it was actually for large open-plan apartments.

Three of the stories of the Bacchus house parties- the one about the toothpaste and the crackers, the chilli vodka shots, and that argument over the AI- are all based on real experiences I've had here at university. (And despite not being a fan of alcohol, I was the one at a flat party who downed a shot of chilli vodka when no one else would take up the dare. It tasted like an emetic. I managed not to throw up, but I don't recommend it. The bottle itself had a warning on the label not to do shots of it.)

Did anyone get the joke with the reference to Maid in Manhattan? For those unaware: it outperformed Star Trek: Nemesis at the box office during their shared opening week. Which, by the way, was such an embarrassment that it killed any chances of another Star Trek cinematic release, until- yeah, you guessed it- the JJ Abrams '09 reboot. Meta jokes. I live for them.

Fun fact about Sheffield: I live there most of the year. Yeah, that's where I'm studying! So I threw it in that Valravn lived there for a couple of years as a loving tribute. Sheffield is one of those northern cities that thrived during the industrial revolution, and the steel works were big there, so my university shop sells this shirt with a design reading "City of Steel" splashed across it. They also sell a shirt featuring a bicycle and a bottle of Henderson's Relish, which pretty much sums up Sheffield to outsiders, once you throw in Yorkshire tea and a lot of trees and green space. And hills. Ye gods, those hills. Strong and Northern, indeed. (I'm still slightly Weak and West Midlands, but I'm working on it.)

So! I got a lot of responses about Valravn's casting, which were interesting. I saw a suggestion for Katie McGrath, who played Morgana in Merlin (a fine choice! I finally got around to watching the first season of Merlin, and found a couple of Valravn's snarky, teasingly cutting traits in Morgana- it also makes Valravn's inner thoughts in Chapter IX, comparing the bridge of the Enterprise to Camelot and the Round Table, that much more appropriate). And curiously there were a few mentions of Abbey Lee Kershaw, based on her performance in The Neon Demon (which recently became available on Netflix, so I sat down and watched it; the scene just before the final photoshoot, where Kershaw's Sarah is on that white couch, in the leather jacket- that chillingly expressionless look with the quote, "I ate her", then as she's invited to replace the other model- that really snagged me. It was breathtakingly icy).

Visually, I saw a couple of black and white editorial shots of Frances Bean Cobain that fit almost perfectly with my mental image of Valravn. I'm still not sure about the perfect actress for her, but I think I'm getting a clearer image. Thank you to everyone who sent me their suggestions! It was great to read your opinions, and I had an almost inordinate amount of fun imagining how each of your suggestions might play out on the screen.

A guest reviewer also asked about my favourite author/book. Truthfully, that's far harder to answer than it should be. I don't get much time these days to read for fun, and by my own admission I'm incredibly picky. Maybe I've been spoiled by the quality, depth and complexity of some of the works you can find online, here and on AO3, but I keep finding myself- disappointed- by the quality of retail books.

Still, I have my sparse favourites. I have always and will always love the Bard above all others; my favourite is probably still The Merchant of Venice, the first Shakespeare play I read and studied in depth. I can't help but feel that it somehow captures Shakespeare's breathtaking understanding of the human condition as a complex, ugly tangle of beauty and tragedy, vulgarity and elegance.

I also remember enjoying the wry wit and fable-spin of Pratchett's Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky a few years ago. Right now I'm trying to get into classic literature- I got Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost as gifts for Christmas, so I'm starting those, and I bought myself Faust and The Count of Monte Cristo as e-books (I will always favour paper, but I got £3 off my order, so I made an exception this once; I also needed a copy of the Into Darkness novelisation, which I've only read once and will likely need for writing this- so two birds, one stone).

My favourite genre is probably fantasy, both high and urban, but I've yet to find something that captures and keeps my imagination. I'm also into political intrigue and thrillers- things with bite and complexity and wit. For example: outside literature, I love a decent spy or heist thriller, especially one that subverts and plays with clichés; I loved Skyfall for its grit and solemn beauty just as much as I loved Kingsman for its self-aware humour and vibrancy.

But then, I'm also a sucker for fairytale and mythological elements (I absolutely adored fairytales as a child- I still have my ratty hardback collection of classic fairytales on my shelf, and if I see a myth!AU or Fairytale!AU in one of my fandoms, I'm almost immediately digging into it). I guess I write the kinds of things I'd like to read, though I haven't had the pleasure of flexing my political thriller limbs in this one- yet.

However, if you're looking for recommendations and you happen to be in the Lucifer (the Amazon Prime series) fandom, I recently finished an incredible work titled And There Was Light on AO3 by ariaadagio. It's beautifully written without being overwrought, and is somehow both grand and mundane- it has a lovely combination of a solid underlying case-fic plot, flowing prose, terrifyingly grand existential conversations and crises, and people just being people and figuring out how they fit around each other. It's representative of the kind of thing I just love to read and reread.

(Also guess who binge-watched Yuri! on Ice last week and officially ships Victuuri so hard.)