tampered | Everyone raise your glasses!

Entry tags:

Everyone raise your glasses!

When; Evening of Tuesday, August 13th
Rating; PG-13, at best. Angela's on her best behavior tonight.
Characters; It's Ginny's birthday party and everybody Ginny knows was invited. Let's handwave that and just show up. BTW, IT'S BLACK TIE. PUT ON YOUR SUITS, BOYS.
Summary; There's no legal drinking age in the City, but who says we can't party like there was one anyway?
Log;

This party was four years coming. The restaurant has set aside a large room just for this event and on short notice too. The food is plentiful and of various cuisines, with even a large selection of vegetarian options for those who prefer that. But of course, there is more alcohol than one has ever seen because Angela knows the people she invited and knows quite a few of them have liquor in their veins instead of blood. Rule of thumb: more liquid than solids every time.

Everything's set and ready for the birthday girl to make her appearance, so for the time being, Angela's flitting around the place dressed in more subdued colors than usual, choosing black because no one gets to stand out more than Ginny tonight, and socializing with the few guests that have shown up already.

Sadly, there are no strippers. Ginny nixed that one hard.

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He's harder to get a read on than Bones. [ A thumb comes up where Jim slouches in his chair, nibbling it thoughtfully. ] Almost more light-hearted with his black humor, a lot younger than the doctor.

I'll call him back in a day, see if he's been eaten by monsters yet.

Hopefully that's not the case.

[ ...and this is getting to be uncomfortable. while something tuvok would likely have encouraged, if not insisted upon, showing up armed in this dress might be more trouble than it's worth. especially when her phaser keeps jabbing her like that. relenting to comfort, she stands ] Don't move. [ and uses him as a human shield while she hikes up the dress high enough to remove the damned thing. she presses the side of the weapon against kirk's chest to keep it out of sight. ]

Something tells me you can hold on to this better than I can at the moment.

What? Oh.

[ He averts his eyes (save for a single glance and hello, thigh) from Kathryn's shuffling, only returning his full attention when the phaser pokes him in the side. He turns it over curiously before stuffing it in the belt, pulling the cardigan down over the top.

Attractive Qualities About Janeway #101 ]

I've been trying to figure out how best to build my own phaser here.

[ Keeping them on track with something other than an obvious comment about how incredible her legs look in those boots. ]

Hold on to it. [ for longer than just tonight. she knows their weapons are few and far between, and both chakotay and harry arrived with phasers on them. she can part with one out of three. ] Take it apart, have a look, see if you can get any ideas from it. I can reassemble it if you run into any problems with that.

[ normally she wouldn't condone letting someone from an earlier time period have 24th century technology, but she feels that giving him the means to defend himself and his people, as well as a possible basis on which to build from, is necessary. especially given their current situation with khan, even if he is "willing" to play nice. ]

[ His smile lights up at that, astonishment bridged with gratitude the like of which he doesn't often feel because it takes a lot for someone to nail what Jim wants on the head and Kathryn isn't really aware of having done it. The offer fills him with a sense of purpose and he sits a little straighter. ]

Thanks. Y'know, I've been tearing through an old PADD — iPad? — and it's not too shabby anymore, I could make another one for you if you need somewhere to store your thoughts. There's an adaptable map I can transfer, it picks up Starfleet comm signals with enhanced carrier waves so I know where my crew is — and, uh, yours too. Sorry. It was more trouble than it was worth to take off those alerts. I'm working on making it holographic so it's easier to tell where the underground runs, that might be a while without the proper krellide power cells, though. Gotta love the Stone Age.

I've been running up extra segments for my thesis just for something to do, putting a few psych reports on it alongside my logs. [ He raises his brows and gestures from where his hands rest in his lap. ] Want one?

Don't be. [ kathryn takes a seat again, scooting her chair a little closer to his so she can keep her voice down and still be heard by him. ] I must admit, I've been keeping track of you and your crew with my tricorder. Call it part owning up to my responsibilities and part paranoia.

[ make of the latter what you will, jim, but in owning up to her responsibilities, she's essentially playing an admiral's role (a pair of shoes she's been stepping into on a regular basis for the past five years for all intents and purposes) without using the directive that gives her superiority over him to assert that superiority. adhering to protocol without forcing everyone to step outside of their comfort zones and compromise their loyalties. she doesn't break rules, but she will bend them.

she grins at him. ] That depends; are you offering me a PADD or a copy of your thesis?

I don't mind, it's impossible to pretend I don't care about you or your crew. Looks like we've both been keeping a third eye open.

[ Leaning on the arm of his chair, his smile stretches and he shakes his head. ]

The lion's share of it is back home, you don't want the off-cuts. It's rambling. I'll make you a PADD and when you get back to your ship you can frame it, "From Jim, with love and a frustrating lack of appropriate engineering shortcuts".

Who says I don't enjoy cut offs? In case you haven't noticed, Jim, I'm something of a nerd. [ a nerd in awesome boots who keeps a phaser strapped to her thigh. ] Knowledge is knowledge, and I'm curious to see your take on things.

Put it on the PADD. Call it a bonus gift, and I might be willing to let you fiddle with one of our tricorders -- maybe even a combadge. Our power cells have gone through a few upgrades in the past century. You might find something in our technology to be a little more viable. Adaptable. [ she smirks, a quiet joke that only she gets without harry or chakotay around to pick up on the borg humor. kirk may not know it, but he's sitting with the woman the most lethal and destructive force in all four quadrants considers an automatic threat -- not her ship, not her crew, her. ]

I feel like I'm being seduced.

[ Humor lingers playfully in the delight that spreads through him at hearing all those options creaking open. He'll probably disappear into the labs for a solid week and bone up on the schematics of it all with Spock, camping out even if his friend opts to take breaks.

He cocks his head. ]

Isn't it finished already, since you're from the future? I had to leave it half-done when I got my commission, I've been putting it off until now. Your Spock gave it a once-over and had this smug Vulcan nod going on so I'm guessing it's not too different.

Go ahead and tell your doctor that's what happened if he protests you "obsessing" over this project. [ she uses the word loosely. what chakotay and the doctor often insist is an obsession is what she interprets as necessary determination. because she's the captain, and no one outside of another captain really understands what that means. "i'm the captain" means something. it's not an excuse. ] I seduced you.

[ kathryn nods, shrugs. ] It is, but I haven't read it. I was never the Kirk aficionado that many of my command contemporaries were -- no offense, of course. Although, [ she smiles again ] I suppose I'm one now, since I'm rubbing shoulders with the man himself.

He protests a lot. A lot, lately. [ It's done though, he's fairly sure. Leonard's tough enough to work through the remainder of his paranoid grief and Spock is ... Jim would rather not think about the furious reaction when he'd asked for a mind-meld. There are a bunch of balls in the air and he's not even sure when he started juggling, it's easier right now to just avoid the arguments as they drop. ] He'd believe it.

[ Jim's strained smile softens a touch, opting for a careful level of humility. ]

I bet he'd have found a way out of here in under a day. I keep hearing how amazing he is, it's ... [ Depressing. ] Inspiring.

He's just doing his job. As much as doctors may get on our nerves as captains, they're just trying to follow their own set of rules. We follow ours, they follow theirs... I don't think Starfleet ever intended for the two to work in tandem with one another. [ she smiles, almost forlornly, and meets his gaze. for a moment, just a moment, her shields drop. ] They'll never understand. Any of them. Your doctor, your first officer, your family, your friends. They'll try to, and at at first, you'll even want them to. But, explaining a point that's difficult to put words to only causes more problems, and in the end you realize that appearing to be obsessive, cold, and distant -- that's far easier than trying to make them see what they are incapable of seeing.

[ shields back up, she reaches out, pats his arm. ] Take his concern to heart and his words with grain of salt. You're the captain, and I did seduce you.

[ kathryn grins coquettishly at him, laughs, and calls him on his bluff. ]

No, it's not. Having another version of yourself to compare yourself to is hardly what I'd call inspiring. Intimidating. Uncomfortable, but not inspiring.

[ It's almost startling, having another person present who understands the position he's in. Having felt caught between being a fool and a thoughtless bastard, he refuses to toe the line for anyone and their paranoia, doing what needs to be done and not about to apologize for it. The ship was falling, they needed you. I was dying. I wanted Spock there, don't make me feel bad for that. And he knows, he knows Bones only ever wants to keep him safe, to have a chance to do that, but realistically Jim's decisions aren't based on pandering to what will make anyone feel good. His death was a massive inconvenience, is the general feedback he's swallowed. Noble and brave and whatever else, but Did you think about what you were putting Spock through? Hasn't he seen enough people die? No, Jim had wanted to say. I didn't think about him. I did what I needed to do, and I needed my first officer.

Being obsessive, cold and distant by reputation isn't what he wants though. He can't justify becoming that, Jim would rather take the heat for his actions and respond in kind so everyone knows where they stand. The hard truth is they don't have to like it, but they should damn well expect to sit back and take it.

I'm the captain.

His frown morphs into a chuckle as she grins, letting himself be buoyed by Kathryn's efforts as he leans into the touch. Moping isn't his style. ]

Given he's about a million years old now like his Spock, I guess I've got a while to start surpassing his reputation.

[ he leans, she lingers, enjoying the companionship of another captain, someone who's equal to her in ways no one on her staff is truly capable of being. he may not know it, but he helps her to feel less alone in the position she's been placed in, a position that's plagued by loneliness more than it should be thanks to her unique predicament. being that way, appearing to be made of ice to her crew, wasn't something she wanted, either. but it was often more necessity than not, a way of moving forward and doing what needed to be done without compromising anyone -- save herself. ]

I think it's safe to say that you already have.

[ she never could've had this sort of relationship with captain ransom. in many ways, she's unknowingly blessed to have come here before she stumbled upon the similarly lost equinox. before a corrupt starship captain threw her for a loop and pushed her buttons in ways she never thought possible, pushing her over the edge, threatening everything that she stood for and spent the better part of five years fighting to uphold. jim kirk is not rudy ransom, and somewhere in the bliss that is ignorance, she's grateful for that. ]

Edited 2013-08-16 09:15 (UTC)

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Everyone raise your glasses!

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