Chapter Seven

Jim Kirk stretched out on the sofa in the living space of his quarters, one arm flung over his eyes while he listened to an Earth sports update on the PADD lying on a nearby table. He was tired and the sofa was not terribly comfortable, but lying in bed in the middle of the day made him feel like an invalid.

Which he supposed he was, but still…

The door chime chirped and he sighed. Bones. Again. This was the price he paid for freedom.

"Come," he called and listened as the doors whooshed open and closed.

"Bones," he murmured from behind his arm. "I'm pretty sure that my blood pressure has not changed in the last hour. And didn't you say sleep was the best thing for me?"

"That certainly sounds like something the doctor would say."

Kirk mouthed a silent curse as he lowered the shield of his arm to cautiously study the woman standing before him. It had been two weeks since the last time they had shared a private conversation and given his mood, he held little hope that this one would end any better than the last.

"Lieutenant," he said warily as he struggled to sit up.

Uhura checked her natural inclination to help him when he flashed a warning glance at her. She waited until he was resting comfortably against the sofa cushions before she spoke again.

"I stopped by Sickbay to check on you and Leonard told me you were –"

"I'm sorry to interrupt," he said insincerely. "But aren't you supposed to be at your station right now?"

"I…" Her forehead knit in confusion. "I switched shifts with someone."

Kirk drew the mantle of his captaincy around him like a suit of armor. "You've been doing that a lot lately," he noted coldly.

She pulled herself erect, realizing that he was addressing her as her commanding officer. "Sir, I –"

"As a matter-of-fact, I've often seen you over the last few days visiting Sickbay during Alpha shift.

"Yes, sir. I –"

"You know, Mr. Spock and I spent a lot of time working on the duty rosters so that my best people would be on the first and busiest shift of the day, Lieutenant. And while I recognize that there are times and special circumstances under which a crewmember may need to switch his or her shift for their own reasons, it seems to me that you are taking advantage of your personal relationship with the ship's First Officer to manipulate the schedule to your benefit." He flicked his glance towards her and then away, dismissively. "Of course, I realize that this is not the first time that you used your personal relationship with Mr. Spock to change your assignment, but –"

Her head snapped back as though he had slapped her. "Stop it!" she cried, dropping all deference to his superior rank. "If I had been visiting you in Sickbay, would you still have so many issues with my decision to change shifts?"

"Be careful, Lieutenant," he warned. "You are skating perilously close to the edge of insubordination."

"Due respect, Captain," she bit out. "But no matter how you might try to spin it, we both know that your problems with me are personal and not professional."

"Is this how you want us to play it? Pretend that night never happened?" she cried. "What? Do you really think I can continue to sit on that bridge every day and act as though I didn't kiss and caress every inch of your body and pretend that you didn't map out every bit of my skin with your hands and mouth?" She thrust her chin forward challengingly. "Are you going to tell me that you can forget that you came inside of me three times that night?"

He leapt to his feet and doubled over as shards of pain speared through his still healing body. She surged forward and braced her hands on his hips, steadying him until he caught his breath. As the pain eased he straightened and pushed her away.

"Are you joking?" he panted. "I'm doing what you wanted!" He limped away from her.

"You think that this is what I wanted?" she asked shrilly.

"I've been following your lead," he told her as he spun back to face her. "You are the one who threw me out of your room that morning." He jabbed an accusatory finger at her. "I tried to talk to you. I wanted desperately to talk to you but all you cared about was getting me out of there before anyone discovered your secret." He stalked back and leaned down until his lips brushed her ear. "Before anyone found out that the elegant Nyota Uhura let Jim Kirk put his dirty hands all over her. And that you liked it," he rasped in a mean whisper.

She shook her head violently. Tears brimmed along her lashes and she fought to keep them from spilling over. She laid a hand over her stomach, nauseated by the path the conversation had taken.

"I was afraid," she admitted. "And I did want you to leave. I would have said almost anything to make you leave," she told him. "But not for the reasons you think. God! Not because I was ashamed to have spent the night with you."

"If you leave now," he quoted her words from that morning verbatim, "no one will ever know you were here." His voice had taken on a dull monotone.

"I remember everything you said that morning," he told her. "I remember how you could barely bring yourself to look at me." He lowered his head as he spoke, his mouth inches from hers, his breath brushing her lips in a mockery of a kiss. "I remember how you practically pushed me out of the door. You were in a panic that you might have to endure the shame of other crewmembers finding out that you had lowered yourself to sleep with me."

He pulled back and cocked his head to one side as though struck by a sudden thought.

"My God! I am so stupid." He barked out a laugh as though amused by his own obtuseness. "You were in a panic that one person would find out. You were afraid that someone would tell Spock."

She was crying openly now as she realized how badly she had hurt him and how her careless words may have destroyed any type of relationship they might have had. She'd been so consumed with her own whirling thoughts over these past weeks that she had not realized that he had leapt to the conclusion that her actions that morning had been motivated by shame at having been with him.

She looked into his face and saw the sneering coldness etched there and couldn't help but compare it to the sweet smile she remembered from that morning; the openness of expression on his face that had sent her heart lurching into panic and set the two of them careening down this path.

She had a sudden flash of memory then; could recall the ruthlessness he had displayed as he had pushed Spock to an emotional breakdown on the bridge of the ship during that first fateful voyage. He had done it then because he believed it necessary for the welfare of the ship and to save the Federation from further destruction. And she sensed now that he was using a similar strategy to break her and send her running because he was trying to protect himself from further harm.

The only problem with that tactic was that she was wise to him and she wasn't going down without a fight. She sucked in a deep breath. This was not how she had wanted this visit to go. She moved closer and moderated her tone, biting down on her own temper because she recognized now that his was fueled by hurt.

She took a deep breath to center herself. "You're wrong," she told him. "I was afraid. Not because I was ashamed to be with you, but because I was terrified of what I was feeling for you."

"Oh, please." His expression was filled with disbelief. "Stop it, Uhura. The one thing I could always count on from you was brutal honesty. Let's not change that now. I knew you were using me that night to get over Spock or, I don't know, maybe to get back at him for paying attention to another woman all night, but I wanted to believe otherwise and I let you convince me."

Suddenly all the fight drained from him and he flopped onto a chair. Exhausted, he covered his face with one hand. "I needed to believe that you wanted me the way I had always wanted you," he admitted. "But you just wanted that one night."

He expelled a long sigh and looked up at her. "I'm sorry," he told her, his face a mask of sorrow and regret. "I have no right to speak to you the way I have. You made no promises to me. You gave me no cause to believe that it meant anything more to you than just that night." He looked away and tried to pull the tattered remnants of his pride back into place.

"You don't have to worry about Spock," he told her. "He's my friend and you –" He paused and cleared his throat. "I… I hope we can get back to being friends and I don't… I wouldn't… I hope you know that I would never intentionally do anything to come between the two of you."

Uhura dropped to her knees in front of him and placed her hands on his legs.

"Please listen to me," she implored. "You don't understand." She licked her lips and cast her eyes to the ceiling as if imploring the heavens to help her. "I don't know how to make you understand what I was thinking or feeling that morning when I have such a hard time making sense of it myself," she confessed.

"But I think I should start by disabusing you of the notion that Spock and I are back together. We're not. Nothing has changed between us." She stared steadily into his eyes as she pressed the point home.

"I saw you," Kirk said. "Every time I opened my eyes in Sickbay you were sitting with him."

"I hardly think it was every time you opened your eyes," she protested softly. "But though I'm not in love with him any longer, I did once love him and I still care about him. He was injured and I was worried about him."

He accepted this with a moody jerk of his shoulders, and kept to himself the thought that not once had she sat by his side.

She paused to gather herself. She had to find the exact words or this would never be right. "That night was about a lot of things," she began. "At first, it was about needing to feel wanted again." She stared deeply into his eyes. "And from the moment we met in that bar in Iowa, you made me feel that way. So I thought, why not? He wants me and…" she hesitated before continuing. "I've always wondered what it would be like to be with you."

"But that night… no one has ever made me feel..." She lowered her chin, unable to look at him while she made her confession. "I felt vulnerable, yet powerful. Completely out of control of myself and yet able to make you tremble with only the slightest of touches." She closed her eyes at the memory. "I don't know how to explain it," she said, "but it was one of the most potent feelings I've ever had."

She kept talking, afraid that if she stopped, she would lose any chance of explaining herself.

"Then I woke up and, oh God. It was as if I was seeing you for the very first time. So sweet and gentle and so happy and I was just… scared. Because how could that last? We're so different. If it didn't work with Spock who, let's face it, is the type of man I've always been drawn to, how could it work with you?" she asked. "It was one thing to allow myself the occasional fantasy about being with the bad boy, but quite another thing to lie there thinking how nice it would be to just stay there with you forever. Forever!" She laughed incredulously. "And my brain started screaming no, no, no!"

She sat back on her heels but kept her hands on his legs and he was captivated by the look of open honesty on her face.

"I panicked," she admitted. "And I said things…" She pressed her fingertips to her eyes and let out a shaky breath.

"I did push you out of that door. I was worried that others would see you and know you had spent the night, because on top of my own overwhelming confusion I could not handle the idea of facing the prodding speculation of the entire crew. I was trying to protect myself and in doing so, I wound up hurting you. That wasn't my intention," she vowed. "But I know now that I did."

Her hands fell limply into her lap.

"And then, nothing was right. Our friendship was strained. I couldn't look at you without remembering what it felt like to kiss you and be kissed by you. From across the room, I would watch you speaking with someone and gesturing with your hands and all I could remember was what it felt like to have those hands moving over me."

She looked at him with the most bewildered expression on her beautiful face. "I was so confused because I couldn't stop wanting you but I just couldn't begin to imagine how it would work between us."

She stopped talking and they stared at one another as a long, tense silence spooled between them. She gnawed on her bottom lip, unsure of how to read his expression. His features seemed as though carved of stone and yet she thought she saw a hint of emotion in the depths of his blue eyes.

She drew in a deep breath and released it, willing herself to get it all out. To finish it and see where things fell.

"And then word came that you were injured and I was so frightened. I did my job but all I could think about was making sure that you were alright," she told him as she lifted wet eyes to his.

His handsome features were marred by the confusion etched in his expression. His eyes roved over every inch of her face, searching for the truth between what he heard her saying and what he had seen with his own eyes.

"You ran into the transporter room," he remembered.

"Yes."

"You wanted to be sure that I was alright?" he repeated slowly.

"Yes." She stroked her thumb over the knuckles of the fist he clenched in his lap.

"Which you did by… rushing to Spock's side?" he asked skeptically. "And sitting with him at every opportunity you had?"

Hope flared to life as she was struck by a sudden insight.

"You're jealous," she murmured, unable to stop a slow smile from spreading over her face.

"Don't," he said tightly. Vulnerability and anger warred for dominance of his expression. "Don't make light of this."

She nodded and rose on her knees again so that her face was once more level with his.

"I couldn't get to you," she told him solemnly. "You were immediately swarmed by Dr. McCoy and the medics and then after, you were kept under sedation." She pushed his knees apart and insinuated herself between them, each slow movement designed to bridge the gap between them.

"They kept you isolated. I couldn't get to you," she repeated. "But that doesn't mean I didn't care." She risked touching him more intimately and ran her hands over his torso. His face contorted and he couldn't hold back a hiss of pain as her short nails lightly scored a path from shoulder to belly.

"Oh God," she breathed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt…" She pushed up the soft cotton of his t-shirt and a mournful sound escaped her as for the first time she saw the evidence of the injuries he had suffered. Raised welts of newly healing skin crisscrossed his torso. She stroked trembling fingers over a particularly deep gash the marred the skin in the center of his chest and impulsively leaned forward to press an open-mouth kiss over his heart.

So close, she thought with a shudder. So close to losing him. Tears welled in her eyes as she turned her head and rested her cheek against his chest taking comfort in the solid warmth of him and the steady, reassuring thrum of his heart beneath her ear.

He stiffened in her embrace and then, the air escaping his lungs in a long hiss, he collapsed against her like a deflating balloon. He laid his cheek against the top of her head and pressed one hand against the small of her back, urging her closer.

"Do you remember what we talked about that night?" he murmured into her hair. "I told you a story about a girl I cared about and how I had to watch her find love with someone else?"

She nodded, dreamily half-listening to his quiet murmur as she nestled closer.

"I never had a chance with her because she didn't see me." He nudged her chin up with his fingertips so that he was staring directly into her eyes as he finished the story. "That girl was you, Nyota. I've been halfway to falling in love with you ever since."

Stunned by the power he had given her over him with his confession, she blinked slowly. One tear spilled over her lashes and she nestled her cheek into the palm of his hand as he stroked the dampness away with his thumb.

"I see you, Jim," she said at last and leaning forward, pressed her mouth to his to seal the vow.

Her lips trembled against his in a chaste kiss and then she slid her arms around his neck and the tone and texture of their kiss deepened. The room was silent save for the sound of her muffled sigh as his tongue plunged into her mouth; his groan as she scraped her teeth over the exposed length of his throat and their twin murmurs of need as restless hands were in constant movement; her fingers spearing in his thick hair to hold him steady for her kisses; his hands roving over her back, molding her closer and closer to him.

He tore his mouth away and tipped his head back, his chest heaving as he struggled to pull oxygen into his starved lungs. She buried her face in the warm column of his throat and marveled at the growing need in her for him, the aching desire to somehow crawl inside of him and never leave.

Long moments passed as they brought their breathing under control and finally she eased back so that she could once again see his face. The power of the moment coiled between them and she cast about for a way to relieve the intensity before it snapped.

She stroked her thumbs over his cheeks, enjoying the bristle of his days-old stubble beneath her hands.

"I have to go to work," she finally whispered. "If I'm late, my captain will be very angry," she said.

"I wouldn't want to get you into trouble," he responded to her teasing smile.

She brushed her lips over his in a last kiss and pushed herself to her feet.

"I'll see you later?" she asked tentatively.

"Maybe we can have dinner together after your shift."

"I'd like that," she said with a shy smile.

"There's only one problem," he said. She frowned at the serious tone of his voice. "I'm not allowed to leave my quarters," he explained. "We'll have to have dinner here. Alone."

She fought to keep her expression somber. "Well, I know how much of a stickler you are for following doctor's orders." She braced her hands on the arms of his chair and took his mouth in a lingering kiss.

"As I recall, you mentioned that the doctor ordered you to get a lot of rest." She cocked her head to one side thoughtfully and crossed her arms over her chest. "Maybe I should check with him before I even consider coming back here tonight." She gave a sassy toss of her chin, her ponytail snapping with her movement as she made her way to the door.

"Oh, you'll be back," he called confidently as the doors hissed open. She waggled her fingers at him in a teasing farewell and was enormously pleased to see the familiar cocky grin that wreathed his face.

He didn't need to know it at that moment, but he was right.

She would be back.

End

A/N: That's it, folks. Again, my gratitude for the very generous response of the readers to this story. Writing for writing's sake is fun. Having people take the time to let you know they enjoyed your writing is icing on the cake. Thank you so much. I had the basic concept of the ending in mind from the moment I started mentally composing the story but was hard-pressed to get the emotions and characterizations right. I hope I succeeded.