After about a month, everything falls into an easy pattern.

Jim feels like he's been running his entire life—from Iowa to Tarsus IV to and then to Starfleet. Even after he enlists, he was constantly on the move, nothing felt permanent, not even the Enterprise. Not until now.

He's Captain on the Federation Flagship, leading the Five Year Mission. That's pretty damn permanent, and now he has close friends grounding him in a way that he's never had before, but it feels so right.

He and Spock are finally getting along and the friendship Spock Prime had once spoken nostalgically of is starting to feel possible. Sure, they still argue like an old married couple of protocol and regs, but all is forgiven and forgotten when all is said and done.

Uhura moves past "barely tolerating" him and he thinks there might be some respect there, but isn't actually sure whether or not she's forgiven him from past wrongs until she shares a drink with him after a particularly bad Away Mission.

Bones will always be Bones—his first friend and his brother. For all his scowling and grumbling, Bones cares for him in a way that no one else does and knows him better than anyone. Jim knows he can tell him anything and trusts him with parts of himself that he's never even trusted his Mom with and Bones means more to him than anyone else in the world, because damn Bones dragged him onto the Enterprise in the first place and Bones brought him back from the dead.

The rest of the Bridge Crew doesn't know him as well, but they're getting there. He and Sulu spar regularly and share a love of out of date weapons; he and Chekov could talk for hours about Warp Theory and Improbability Engineering; and then there's Scotty who's not on the Bridge Crew, but just as close, and invites him down on weekends to share a glass of his homebrewed Scotch.

And then there's Carol of course.

He's not entirely sure if she bought into his "reputation", but she certainly doesn't treat him like he's a womanizing jerk anyway, so he thinks that's a good sign. After a few months of uncomfortable conversations and uncertain teasing—from his side mostly, because he doesn't know how the hell to act around a woman he actually likes—they realize that they have more in common than previously thought.

Both of them are Legacy kids, coming from a long line of Starfleet ancestry and have grown up dealing with the same pressure from their parents. Besides that, Jim learns that she shares his love of old music and movies, Andorian Brandy, and honest to god paperback books.

Whenever Jim's unable to hang out with Bones' after his shift, he finds himself holed up on an Observation Deck or in the rec room with Carol, the two of them talking the night away about nothing and everything.

It's an easy pattern: almost like breathing, but knowing Jim's luck, it won't stay that way for long.

4. Jimmy Dear and Care Bear

It's not his fault. Really.

Carol is ignoring him and really it shouldn't feel so miserable, but he suddenly realizes how much time they've really been spending with one another now that they're practically strangers all over again.

Apologizing sounds like a good idea, but she won't speak to him unless its work related and even then she's cold and stiffly refers to him as Captain.

Jim settles for staring at her back mournfully until Uhura gives him the Face. He feels strangely proud that each member of his crew has mastered the Face just for him, but Uhura has been doing it longer than anyone he knows besides maybe Bones, so she has it down to an art form.

"Try talking to her," she hisses, as Alpha Shift ends.

Jim glares at her back as she heads towards the turbolift. He'd already tried talking to her and it had gotten him nowhere.

He needs a plan.

"Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor not a couples counselor!"

Jim blinks at Bones. "We're not a couple!" he sputters.

Bones gives him the Dad Face. "Look, I get it's your first fight—"

"It's not a fight," Jim mumbles. "It's a minor disagreement."

"Minor? As in she reamed you out on the Bridge for being an overprotective ass? I swear even Spock was too scared to get near her."

"I'm not being overprotective," Jim protests.

"You've refused to let her go on away missions."

"They're dangerous and she doesn't have combat training—"

"And Diplomatic Meetings are obviously out of the question," Bones sarcastically adds.

"Every Diplomatic Mission in the last month has gone sideways," Jim counters.

"And don't even get me started on Shore Leave and you watching her creepily when she's not looking."

"It's not creepy! Every planet we've had Shore Leave on has been suspicious!"

Bones eyes him for a moment. "Carol's a grown woman, Jim. She's perfectly capable of looking after herself."

"I know that!" Jim snaps back. He pauses and sucks in a deep breath. "What do I do?"

"Recognizing you have a problem is the first step," Bones says, patronizingly. "You can start by apologizing."

"I haven't done anything wrong."

"Out of my Medbay, Jim."

"So, did you try talking to her?" Uhura asks, as the two of them watch Carol and Spock engage in what Jim calls "techno-babble".

He's smart enough to understand what they're talking about, but too engrossed in watching the way Carol leans on one foot, cocking her hip away from Spock and the way one hand reaches up and tucks a strand of her blonde hair behind an ear, to actually care. Her brow furrows at something Spock says and she purses her lips slightly.

"What do you mean?" Jim asks. Uhura gives him her I'm unimpressed and judging you face Version 3 that is specially reserved for the Captain is being a dumbass again. Jim groans. "I'd talk to her if she'd let me. What do I have to do to make her forgive me?"

Uhura raises an eyebrow. "You could start by apologizing and letting her come on our next Away Mission."

He knew this had been a bad idea. A very very bad idea, a bad idea of epic proportions, a suitcase and three trolleys full of bad as Carol liked to say.

It only further proved his point that he had been right and that people should stop questioning his decisions when he said they couldn't go on Away Missions and that other certain people shouldn't undermine his decisions and guilt trip him into apologizing.

Unfortunately this argument would sound a lot more convincing if Carol wasn't the only thing currently keeping him from bleeding to death.

"I swear to god Jim, if you dare die on me I'll kill you!" she hisses at him, as she tears his shirt away from his shoulder where this planet's version of a bullet—but dipped in poison—is currently buried.

"Kind of defeats the purpose," he slurs, waving his hand drunkenly as emphasis. Whatever the cartridge was laced with was making him sleepy.

She smacks his hand back down. "Stop moving."

"You're bossy."

"You have a bullet in your shoulder," she snaps. "And I don't know whether to remove it or wait for the rest of the team to find us, because if I remove it you bleed to death and if I don't remove it you die from drug overdose!"

"You've been practicing Bones' bedside manner."

"I'm not a medical doctor," she replies, curtly. "I don't need a bedside manner, Jimmy Dear."

"Whatever you say, Care Bear."

For one moment she looks like she's going to explode at him—her eye is twitching—but then she deflates. She sighs and sits beside him on the floor of the small shelter they're hiding in. Outside, the storm is getting worse, but their attackers are nowhere to be found. Doubtless Sulu and his sword of badass have scared them off. Well, him and security anyway.

Jim drops his head onto Carol's shoulder and focuses on just breathing. . It feels like his skin is crawling and burning just underneath the surface, he can barely keep his eyes open he's so exhausted, and his mouth has a nasty, metallic taste in it that makes him want to gag.

He hasn't felt this awful since dying of radiation poisoning—and that's a can of worms better left shut right now—but he knows he'd do it again, because he'd suffer far worse if he was watching Carol in this kind of pain.

"Don't fall asleep," she says quietly, reaching over and stroking his hair.

"Hard not to when you do tha'," he slurs, leaning into her cool hand.

"You're running a fever," she murmurs.

"Hmmm." He's so exhausted and her voice and fingers are gently lulling him to sleep.

"Jim, I meant it when I said no sleeping." She shakes him hard.

For her sake, he tries to pry his eyes open, but they're so heavy and he's so so tired and the sound of rain falling and her fingers in his hair are just too much to fight against. The last thing he hears before darkness sets in is her panicked voice begging him to stay awake.

"I swear you have the worse luck, kid," Bones says when he wakes up in Medbay. "You've been out three days and you were allergic to whatever drug they got you with, but you'll be up and about in the next week."

"Did I die again?" he asks, his voice raspy from disuse. Bones snorts, but Jim doesn't miss the shuttered look that sets in his eyes. Wincing, Jim berated himself for bringing up bad memories. "Is Carol alright?" he asks, instead.

Bones eyes evenly for a moment. "She's barely left your side since we rescued you. I had to order her to leave and get some sleep about an hour ago.

"I…she what?" Jim gets out. "Why would she do that?"

Bones raises an eyebrow. "You can ask her yourself when you see her."

Jim doesn't see her for two days. She doesn't come see him once which his oddly hypocritical considering she was apparently at his bedside during his drug-induced coma for two straight days.

He does however receive visits from the rest of the Bridge Crew—and Bones of course—and receives a wide variety of lectures that surprise him until he remembers that this is first time he's been severely injured since the Warp Core Incident.

It isn't until the third day after he wakes up that he actually sees her. She stiffly marches into curtained off area and sits rigidly in the chair beside his bed. There is an uncomfortable silence as she avoids his gaze and he desperately tries to think of something to say, some way to apologize, but he doesn't know how or what for.

"You're a real idiot, you know that?" Her tearful tone causes him to start. He notes, with some distress, that her eyes are shinning with tears and her lip is trembling—

"I didn't want you to get hurt," he says tiredly.

"So you just casually jump in front of a bullet for me?" she shrills. "I didn't ask you to protect me!"

"I'm the Captain," he snaps, gathering enough strength to feel a bit annoyed at her. "It's my job to protect the crew."

"It's the crews' job to protect the captain," she shoots back. "And I didn't see you jumping in front of any bullets for Sulu."

"Sulu can take care of himself," he growls.

"And I can't?"

"I didn't—that's not…" Jim presses the palms of his hands into his eyes. "I don't need to protect you," he admits, lowly. "I want to."

Silence. Jim lowers his hands from his eyes and looks at her. She staring at him with an unreadable expression.

"Jim—"

"I'm sorry," he hoarsely rasps. "But it's true and I don't know why, because I'm not this way about any of my other friends—I mean I want to protect them and I'd die for them, but not the same way I'd die for you. I think I like you." And damn if he doesn't sound like a teenage girl right now, but whatever this thing—this thing that they've been dancing around—is, Jim's tired of not acknowledging it.

"I haven't been fair to you in the last few months and I'll stop being an overprotective bastard, but I can't apologize for doing what I did down there," he finishes, closing his eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe—

"And you don't think I feel the same way?"

His eyes fly open. "I…what?"

"Jimmy, you idiot," Carol shakes her head in exasperation. "Considering your reputation I'd have thought you'd be the first to catch on someone flirting with you."

"Hey, I thought we both agreed that my so called 'reputation' was—wait…what?"

"You are such an idiot," she says, but she's smiling affectionately at him.

"You…I…we…" It seems his brain has short-circuited rendering him useless in communication, but she doesn't seem to mind as she leans over and quickly brushes her lips against the corner of his mouth.

He stares dumbly at her for a moment before a slow smile spreads across his face.

"So we're…?"

"Yeah…"

"So that's what Bones was talking about. How did I miss that?"

Carol rolled her eyes. "I swear you are the stupidest genius I have ever met, Jimmy Dear."

"You're one to talk, Doctor Care Bear," he snarks right back.

They stare at each other for a long moment before bursting into laughter. They're still laughing when Bones walks back in, exasperated and muttering under his breath about lovesick morons, but Jim can't find it in him to actually care, because he and Carol…

He's not used to getting what he wants, but he's Captain, he has an amazing crew who are practically family, and now he has Carol and she has him and there's something wonderful and new about belonging to someone and someone wanting him.

They don't keep it a secret per se—Bones certainly knows that they're dating—but they fail to mention it to anyone else. It's not because they're ashamed or it's against regulations, but they don't want to put a label on it yet.

They still hang out after shift, tease each other, and exasperate Bones and the rest of the crew on a daily basis; the only thing that's different is that they're exclusive to one another—and isn't that the strangest feeling Jim has ever had?

One would think it'd be hard to break the habit of flirting with anything that moves, but once you've found what you're looking for, it's hard to look at anything else. He finds that he can still appreciate beautiful women and enjoy flirting with Uhura just for the hell of it, but something fundamental has shifted in his core.

"It's weird," Jim says to Bones, as the two of them share a drink one evening after their shifts. "But it's more than just attraction. What you think it means?

"You dunderhead," Bones sighs, tossing back his bourbon. "You're in love."