Janice Rand is an organization specialist (not_a_secretary) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-05-04 11:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, james kirk, janice rand |
"I might be a manwhore, but I know when no means no."
Who: Jim Kirk, Janice Rand
What: explaining and comparing dreams and why Janice quit
When: After planting pictures and before random notes about shoes. Would've been up last night but had a loooong pause in the middle while doing the log, cuz of flu. Blargh!
Where: Laguna Beach
Rating: PGish
Status: Complete!
After some deep breathing exercises to work her way through a little internalized panic attack minor stressful moment, Janice dialed Kirk's number. His version of a peace offering was...ironically pretty sweet, even if she still had visions of him pushing her down and trying to have his wicked way with her. Which maybe she'd like under different circumstances but only MAYBE. She's admitting nothing of the sort.
At any rate, it was a realistic dream and after she'd had the other dream as well, she knew something was up. Something out of the ordinary. It was too tactile and too real to be ignored, and now she could understand why he was mentioning those dreams, along with other people on the valar net talking about them. Although she was currently hoping that he hadn't had the same sorts of dream too. Because that might make things really awkward.Kirk wasn't above a little role-play, but it was just that, play!
Jim answered the phone on the third ring, demonstrating a lack of urgency. Wouldn't want to appear desperate, nor would he want to wait too long. So third ring it was, "Yo, Kirk."
"Hardly an appropriate way to answer the phone, Captain Kirk," said Janice, after waiting a couple of seconds before responding, because she wouldn't want to seem eager or too aloof. It was also a not so subtle hint that she was in on what was going on now. Or, at least, she thought she was. "I've received what you left for me. I'm calling to thank you for...putting that in perspective."
There. That was very formal. She mentally patted herself on the back.
Jim squinted his eyes, then rolled out of bed. He was clad only in a pair of hula girl boxes, and he hadn't shaved, "Wait, what?" Captain what? Oh. That. His face split into a grin, "I'm glad it helped, Janice."
"If it hadn't, you'd still be blocked." She paused for a moment and added, "Sir."
"You can drop any formalities with me," He replied, chuckling. He'd yet to have any sort of dream with her, but was assuming it was a matter of time.
"That might be a little difficult. Those dreams you were mentioning? I was on a ship and you were there and I knew you." If anything, Janice was being blunt, even if she hadn't gotten to the real point of what was bothering her. Yet. There was always the inevitable 'yet' that had to creep into things. "Apparently, I was your..." Not a secretary. "...yeoman."
If he said secretary, she would promptly staple a note with 'personal assistant and organizational specialist' angrily (but neatly) written on it, directly to his forehead
"So, you knew. Somehow. That I was involved. Did you dream about me?" she asked, but wasn't rushed. Rather she took her time talking, to purposefully sound like she was remaining calm.
"I don't remember a Yeoman," Jim replied. "But I'm only getting bits and pieces. I've gotten some big pieces, but not all the pieces. I just had a hunch about you. Like maybe I'd seen you in passing in one of them, I don't know." Or at least a blonde with somewhat of a resemblance while scrambling through the ship
That was interesting. Meanwhile, Janice was still staring at the pieced together pictures making a greater whole, which must have taken him a while to sort through, considering the amount of images that had been given to him.
"Then that was quite a hunch you had. Apparently you're pretty good at following those hunches. I don't know what's going on, but I might owe you an apology and maybe an explanation."
"You did kind of drop off the radar." He unceremoniously scratched at an itch and plopped down in the Captain's chair in the center of his living room, "So shoot."
"It depends on if you'd like this over the phone or in a public setting. We could meet somewhere." After all, the only way she could maybe get over any hurdle was to face it head on and then jump right over it.
"Do you really think it's sane to be talking about these things in public?" He actually looked at the phone like it was crazy.
"Do you think it's sane that the entire valar net has started talking about those things too? You and your friends seem pretty quiet about it. You're all compiling information, aren't you. Among yourselves." Janice said that like she knew so, because it was the rational way of getting to the bottom of things without being tainted by conjecture or misinformation from outside sources. "I'm only saying that because I've been reading along. There's an ice cream stand a block or two from my house. I'll buy. Cookie dough. I know that, now. At least."
"Whatever gives you that idea?" He leaned back in the chair, playing with a few buttons. There were certain things he wasn't ready to share with anyone yet. He still wanted to talk to Spock about the timeline issue, even if he'd offhandedly mentioned it to Scotty. He somehow thought Spock would understand better.
"Okay, let me get some pants on and I'll meet you there."
"All right. I'll wait for you there." She hung up and went to put on something that was nice but not too nice. Presentable. Because showing up in a paint smeared button down men's shirt and shorts was probably not the greatest idea. That all done, she locked up and walked down the street, to the ice cream stand. Doo dee doo, waiting for you, doo dee doo....Showing up like that was only done if you wanted to turn a man on
Jim pulled on jeans and a shirt, hopping into his car and speeding on down the expressway. He arrived about ten minutes after Janice had, and parallel parked.
Did he parallel park at high speed? Because showing up like that might turn a woman on, if it was the right kind of woman.
Janice was wearing a simple short skirt and plain top. No, they weren't red. They were a faded pink color, and her hair was down just to prove that she hadn't fussed over it too much at all. So there. She gave him a tentative flicker of a smile and stood perfectly still, waiting.
60 to 0 in 3.5 seconds. He knows. His eyes appreciated the skirt behind sunglasses, then he climbed out of the car and walked over, "So I hear this place has cookie dough."
"It does." She sort of kept her distance and was being very watchful. "You should've said you preferred that, before. Apparently, with those dreams, I learned a few things about you."
She made her way over to the icecream man and ordered them each a cone, double scoops, one with cookie dough and the other, cherry vanilla. She handed it off to him, but her hand was less than steady and she was eyeing him as though she was waiting for him to bite her.
He noticed the lack of steadiness as he took the ice cream, but said nothing. He wanted to leave her some dignity - she seemed shaken, "What have you learned?"
"Mostly pet peeves, likes and dislikes, that sort of thing. You wear some questionable underwear. I've walked apparently walked in while you were sleeping to give you a report or some logs, and found that out the hard way. Easy...way. I found that out some way." She moved away from the stand so they could have a bit of privacy and began to lick at her ice cream so it wouldn't drip over the cone and onto her hand, though she was still talking between licks. Before she moved too far away from him, she did say under her breath, "And I was on a ship. In space."
Jim shook his head, laughing, "What was I wearing, then? Underwear-wise...." He trailed off as she started to lick the ice cream. It was distracting, and he forgot what he was going to say next. He wondered if she'd done that on purpose. It certainly felt like that. Until she said she was on a ship, "A ship? In space? Do you recall what it was like?"
She hadn't done it on purpose other than to eat the ice cream and keep it from dripping, like ice cream tends to do.
"A ship, in space. Called the Enterprise," she said very seriously. "It was well lit, had a big round bridge area, with a captain's chair in the middle, behind the helm controls. Lots of decks. And your underwear were boxers that had little green dancing ladies on them. Which I thought was pretty odd considering you tend to wear briefs when you were on duty."
She turned a little to look at him and explained, in a vaguely disapproving way, "You said boxers would bunch and ride up if you had to solve an alien dispute with your fists."
Too much running was a factor, too. Mmmhm. Janice nodded like she knows now. Yep.
Ice cream licking is sexy in general! Jim tilted his head, "Was it like a big apple store? Lots of blues and whites?" He moved his hands in a way to try to describe what he remembered. He didn't remember alien boxers but then he hadn't had any dreams like that.
Thoughtfully, Janice described something very similar to what everyone else seemed to recall, including the uniforms and the colors and symbols involved. All while eating her ice cream. Very normally.
"Okay, yeah that about matches what the rest of us have been seeing. Can you describe some of the people?" He opted to ignore the ice cream.
That was easy, she began describing everyone in the chain of command and then the bridge crew, right down to that guy who was in charge of the bridge's turbolift maintenance that she had drinks with, once, in the mess hall. If anything, Janice was extremely detail oriented. That was when she seemed to take notice of him ignoring his ice cream. "...you might need to lick that. There. It's on your hand now."
"Oh." He quickly licked it off his hand and then started working at his ice cream, "Well you've described some people I recognize, and some people I haven't recognized. At least not yet."
"You looked a little older," she reluctantly admitted. "More sure of yourself than you are now. I'm willing to bet money that the Uhura, Spock, Scotty, McCoy, Sulu, and Chapel that are on the valar net are the same, also. You want another napkin?"
Janice held a napkin out to him, at arm's length.
He took the napkin, "Maybe a bit later, then. In our dreams I think a lot of it is the first time we've worked together. Spock was in command until I forced him to admit his emotions were compromised."
"I see. You did behave...or that you that was in my dreams, normally, behaved a little differently. Like you had a purpose and knew what you were doing. So at least that's encouraging."
"Like I'll grow into it?" Jim laughed, and crunched down on his cone, "I felt like I had purpose, when I sat in that chair." He paused, "Not that any of us knew what we were doing." Admission! "Earth was in danger, that was all that mattered."
"I don't remember anything about Earth being in danger. Ever. I remember that I was in starfleet, and I took a post as a yeoman on the Enterprise, and you were the captain. So, I suppose, yes. You grew into it." She started to eat around the edges of the cone, very slowly, and looked deep in thought. It was a long moment before she spoke again.
"No, I don't remember Earth being in danger at the time. That's where Starfleet and the Federation was. But there was something about Romulans and Klingons and a neutral zone."
"...There was something about a Romulan attack, and Klingons, but things are fuzzy. There's a hole there." He tapped his head, "I think the ship we were chasing was Romulan."
"I don't know anything about that. I did remember the year, but I don't want to sound crazy. I was dreaming about some log that I was keeping track of for the captain and the year was on it. Twenty-two sixty-six."
The captain being the guy she was looking at, right now, which was profoundly weird. The whole situation was weird and quite surreal.
Jim wracked his brain, trying to remember if there'd been a year mentioned, "The closest thing I can think of where a year is mentioned in any of my dreams was that I was twenty-five, and there was a lightning storm in space around Vulcan, just like there'd been a lightning storm in space when I was born, when a Romulan ship attacked my father's ship, killing him." He scratched at the back of his head, "Vulcan...that was the planet that was destroyed!"
He stopped walking, and quickly filled her in on the dream from the bridge, that he'd shared with Scotty, "I'm pretty sure that was where the platform was, too. The dream where I'd jumped to save my friend."
"Um...what? How old?" She looked a little surprised because that didn't match up with what she now knew. Screw surprised, because Janice looked outright confused. Especially since her mind had remembered being on the ship and what she now knew was common knowledge. "You were about...thirty-three? And Vulcan...that was where Commander Spock was from, your First Officer? No. It wasn't...ever...destroyed."
She swore to god that the ice cream gave her a headache or this conversation was going to explode her brain.
"I swear to god," He put his hand over his heart. "Vulcan was destroyed. I..." He trailed off, wondering how much more he should say. And why she seemed so confused. He had a theory, but he didn't want to discuss that yet. Not until he spoke to Spock, "Maybe one or both of us are misremembering details."
"No, I'm not." Her gaze was locked in on him, all blue fire and stubbornness, like how dare he question her sense of detailing things. "I think I mentioned to you before, I don't remember dreaming a lot of the time. I sleep like the dead. So when something like this comes up, I do remember. Including remembering you trying to attack me and me clawing your face."
There, she said it. And one eyebrow arched up in a less than delicate way, because she looked ready to karate chop him in the balls.
Jim stared at her, a mixture of shock and confusion on his face, "I ..would never....That never happened!"
"It did too happen," she very adamantly responded, including a angry stomp of one foot. See that little puff of beach silt which whipped up around her sandal, just then? That is because of you, sir. "Why else do you think that I said I quit? You were in my quarters, you grabbed hold of me, kissed me quite roughly and shoved me down onto the floor. If that was real, at some point in whatever life that was? Then no wonder I've spent so much time in this...place...wherever we are, now....learning how to throw men three times my size and make them sing first soprano in a opera of pain."
She threw the rest of her soggy ice cream cone corpse toward the stand's wastebasket, from a good five feet away. And she made it, too. Didn't even hit the edge.
Jim almost crossed his legs at the mention of Soprano in an Opera of Pain. Almost. He had more self control than that, "Janice, I might be a manwhore, but I know when no means no. Or banana-pudding means no, depending on the safe word."
"Pineapple. The safeword has always been pineapple. Banana-pudding sounds too soft-syllabled when you say it in the middle of things happening, so it can be possibly mistaken. Pineapple has a clarity to it that's unmistakable. So does cabbage."
Janice folded her arms over herself, and felt a bit better for being so blunt.
"Anyway, Jim? You weren't taking no for an answer. But after I scratched you, you ran out and left me alone. That was still enough to rattle my cage. That's why I reacted that way. That's a woman's worst nightmare."
Jim managed to not smirk at her choice in safe-words. Even if she did have a point, "I'll keep that in mind for the future." His voice softened, "I know. I've taken enough cushioned body blows from women who've gone through that to have a little bit of understanding." He preferred cabbage. Or artichoke.
Artichoke was a good one. So was cucumber and cocoa, because of the hard c's in it.
"Probably a wise idea," she replied, arms still folded protectively over herself. "I don't think that is how you normally are, because I was surprised, shocked, and...maybe my feelings were a bit hurt. The least you could have done was ask nicely, so I could have said yes or no. You were acting like a brute, which is...it’s not what my other dreams were like, and not how you are, now."
"Well, for what it's worth, I'm sorry." He hesitated in leaning forward, and then decided why not, and hugged her, "You don't deserve to be treated like that. No woman does."
What the hell, did he----??? Tense! Janice drew in a deep breath and told herself it was stupid to treat him that way just because of a very realistic, very convincing dream. She hugged onto him too, like...she's not admitting it...but maybe she really needed the hug.
"...thank you, and I guess, it's not really your fault. You don't even remember it," was all Janice could say, like she was reminding herself of the same thing she was telling him.
She needed the hug, even if she wasn't admitting it. He could tell. His hand rubbed in slow circles on her back, "Doesn't make it any less wrong. I'm like a rapist with amnesia."
"You didn't follow through with the rape part, at least, so it was just the assault mostly," she whispered, because that was certainly...soothing. Oh well, hell with it, she had quit, so he wasn't her employer any more. She buried her face against his shoulder and was very quiet.
The captain issue was awkward, but there's no ship, was there? She's telling herself 'no ship, no job, no problem.'
"An assaulter with amnesia," He replied, kissing the top of her head. He wasn't sure what else to do. His protective instincts were kicking in and he couldn't even do anything about it. Protect her against himself?
Maybe. She did feel pretty safe right now, though. She drew in a very deep breath after that kiss and moved her head enough to peek up at him.
"It was sweet," she admitted, like it was a great secret, "the way you figured those pictures out and left them, pieced together like that. How long did it take you?"
Good. Change the subject so they weren't uncomfortable. Janice wanted to pat herself on the back, but she's still hugging him, so he's getting a light patpat on the shoulder, instead.
Fair enough. Because that certainly was a clever move, doing that.
He touched her chin, stroking her lip with his thumb, "Two days or so, minus a stop to drink a bit." He let her change the subject this time - he had no control over that and that bothered him.
"You're pretty persistent," she was saying very softly, so her lower lip moved against his thumb even more. "I don't think that's something the older you loses, either. Oh. I forgot to mention, there was a salt monster on your ship."
"A salt monster? How would a salt monster get onto my ship? And what does that have to do with my persistence?"
"Well it had to be dealt with, and it snuck on board," and here she proceeded to explain the entire thing while conveniently forgetting how they're on the side of a roadway next to a ice cream stand and kind of entangled.
And no, she didn't leave out the fact that she told it to go chase an asteroid either and that she stole food off Sulu's plate. His space celery was hers.
"Mmhmm. Space celery. You have an odd way of flirting with a man." He winked at her.
"With Sulu?" Janice gave him a knowing smirk. "Not, even. He was too busy fussing over his pink fuzzy flower plants in the botany section of the ship. Pink plants that hiss and flail at salt monsters. Besides, it's not like he noticed how many were on the plate. He can't miss what he doesn't know about in the first place."
"Thats..kind of evil, Janice. How do I know you're not an evil twin? Or a salt monster?"
"Because I'm not sucking the salt out of you, sir." She said that with a more sexier edge than was intend-...okay, it was intended but cleverly hidden, because her smirk went lopsided like she was having a rare moment of smartassery slip through. She was, after all, the un-secretary who put up with an older Kirk for a year. Not many women could do that.
"That too was evil," Jim remarked, grinning at her. "You make me...You're really....damn it." He leaned down, replacing his thumb his his lips.
She started to protest but...no, she wasn't quite able to do that, and she wasn't pushing him away either. After all, this time was a lot different than how it was in the dream. It was much, much better.
Jim broke the kiss, pulling away a little, "Want to get some more ice-cream?"
"Sure," she said with a secretive grin. "I think they have salty caramel. Sounds great. I'm all over that."
The man grinned at her, "That'll do, Janice, that'll do."