8.
On a cobweb afternoon, in a room full of emptiness
By a freeway I confess, I was lost in the pages
Of a book full of death, reading how we'll die alone
And if we're good, we'll lay to rest
Anywhere we want to go
Of course, Scotty wasn't one to slip into the background at any party, especially when drinks were involved. Jaylah was happy, and when Jaylah was happy, she was like light—utterly radiant. He followed her around just as everyone else in their small group did, sharing a toast to her success and even partaking in Jim's drinking games, challenging her limits (where hers were by and by far superior to many of theirs—although it seemed that Keenser kept up with her just fine… Scotty figured he should have known.)
In your house I long to be, room by room patiently
I'll wait for you there, like a stone
I'll wait for you there, alone
Pool and dart games, and somehow, a beaming flushed Sulu had started singing "Happy Birthday" to her—and although it wasn't anywhere near her birthday (when was her birthday?) it managed to get half of the bar chiming in. Everyone was quickly plastered, but there was no better way to drink the evening away.
On my deathbed I will pray to the gods and the angels
Like a pagan to anyone who will take me to heaven
To a place I recall, I was there so long ago
The sky was bruised, the wine was bled
And there you led me on
Uhura had pulled Jaylah up to the karaoke machines (cue Chekov informing Jaylah, "…did you know zat karaoke vas invented in Russia?") and at first, Jaylah stood there with a look of genuine confusion as Uhura sang the words to songs Jaylah did not know. The tides turned quickly when the next song came on, Jaylah's choice, and she was rapping to the rock ballads of Rage Against the Machine and roaring alongside Metallica as Uhura conceded karaoke defeat. Jim seemed to be the only one who could follow along with Jaylah when she picked out songs.
In your house I long to be, room by room, patiently
I'll wait for you there, like a stone
I'll wait for you there, alone, alone…
His heart was in his throat when she picked one—and he knew it—and gestured for him to join her. Heaven above, her taste in music was ancient, but he knew of Audioslave, he could tell what music she liked. Truth be told, it wasn't far from his favored genre either. She beckoned him, and he shook his head, even though Jim and Bones were drunkenly nudging him, encouraging him to join her. He refused—he couldn't possibly do karaoke, he hated karaoke, if only because he hated everyone looking at him, hearing his screeching attempts at singing—and eventually, they stopped nudging him.
And on, I read, until the day was gone,
And I sat in regret, of all the things I've done,
For all that I've blessed, for all that I've wronged,
In dreams until my death, I will wander on
Eventually she shook her head and laughed it off, giving up on trying to convince him.
Scotty wasn't drunk enough at all to have joined her. Maybe a few more shots in, when he was certain he wouldn't remember everyone's reaction to his singing, he may have joined her. She took the stage on her own, and she sang in perfect pitch with the lyrics. Of course it'd be perfect—she'd spent the last fifteen years with this as her only music.
In your house, I long to be, room by room, patiently
I'll wait for you there, like a stone
I'll wait for you there, alone
Jaylah radiated the kind of ephemeral light that a shooting star gave off—fiery, burning through everything in their path, leaving a trail of lights and unspoken wishes in its wake. After all of the games, the roaring laughs and deep embraces, all of the announcements to the galaxy itself from their beloved Captain that Jaylah was with them—that she was family—only then, did Scotty have a brief moment of passing lucidity. Some mild regret, at not taking her hand when she reached out to him to join her.
I'll wait for you there, alone, alone…
The party went on well into twilight. All the drinking challenges Jim had been cocky enough to challenge Jaylah to paid off—he wound up being carried home, leaning on Spock, with an amused Uhura following after. She was shaking her head in the way she often did at Jim's antics, her long black ponytail wavering behind her. Chekov was out cold with Bones lingering over him with his medical tricorder, muttering some metaphors that had something (loosely) to do with alcohol poisoning. At least, he thought that's what Bones was talking about—sometimes the only one following those metaphors was Bones himself.
Sulu and Ben had checked out a bit earlier in the evening (after casually kicking everyone's asses at two-versus-two pool—reigning champions, those two) mentioning that they had to see their daughter off for school the next morning.
Soon, as the party wound down, there was only he, Bones, Keenser, and Jaylah—and somehow, he'd managed to pace himself well enough not to pass out in the men's room again. Certainly, however, he was seeing more than one Jaylah at any given moment. Drink it off.
"God, man, you think you should give your liver a damned break? If you were any redder, I'd think you were a tomato taking a Sunday stroll in August." Bones scolded.
Scotty shrugged, "Aye, wee clipe, 'n yer bum's oot the windae."
Bones eyed him for a minute, as if trying to translate that meaning, before he sighed, "…that makes a lot of sense."
With a firm slap on the shoulder—Scotty winced and mouthed, "Ow! The 'eck was'sat fer?"—Bones stood and took his leave, nudging a sleeping Chekov at another table, "Alright. You guys are on your own. Jaylah, encourage him to drink a lot of water and get some sleep. Stabilize your blood sugar levels and I wish you all a good night. Or morning."
Pulling one of Chekov's slender arms over his shoulder and all of carrying the leaning, sleepy Russian boy out, Bones muttered, "Come on, now, kid, easy does it."
Slamming his emptied glass down, Keenser announced, "I fold."
Hopping down from his bar stool, he hobbled out after Bones and Chekov.
That left only he and Jaylah, who still did not seem even remotely as drunk as anyone else.
Maybe, Scotty thought, he was just maybe drunk enough to say a fragment of the things that had been on his mind since the minute she crashed into his life. Or was it he that crashed into hers? It wasn't very clear. She had quite a crashingeffect, no matter where she went. She had sat beside him, still throwing back drinks with a smile on her face that was utterly beaming with happiness. He caught himself staring at her, grinning back, like an idiot.
"W'at a party that was."
"I think that I like parties. I like this family." Jaylah said, grinning ear to ear.
She was so damned beautiful when she smiled. Her head turned back his way, pausing momentarily. Thick black lashes, impossibly long, darkened sleepy gold eyes.
No way.
He squinted, leaning in closer.
She mimicked him, giggling under her breath.
No. Way.
She leaned closer, squinting her own eyes.
"…nae way…"
"What?"
"Y'er completely lit," Scotty couldn't help but laugh. She was entirely plastered—and he lived to see it.
"I… I am not lit." Jaylah shook her head, taking another swig of her beer, before asking, "…what is lit?"
That reaction only amused him further. She was in denial. Definitely intoxicated.
"Alright. I think ye've 'ad enough, now," Scotty reached over and commandeered the beer remaining in her glass. It slipped free of her fingers easily as she watched him with more amusement than indignation and tempting fate, Scotty rather defiantly chugged the rest of Jaylah's beer. Placing the glass hard on the bar counter, he looked her in the eye, waiting for her response. A very clear challenge.
"One more round." Jaylah said.
"One more round." Scotty agreed.
And another round they had, laughing together over the way Spock had reeled Jim in more than one time through the evening, particularly, the one pool game that the Dynamic Sulu Duo didn't partake in, where Cupcake from security showed up and threw a tantrum over losing. Jim was more than ready to tempt a brawl, even after all this time.
"Heck, he would've donnit if Cupcake 'adn't backed down—Lord knows Starfleet'll forgive the guy f'er anythin'!"
"Cupcake, that is the big man from Security?"
"Aye, temperamental, big fella, but he's actually pretty good at tellin' yer horoscope. Might be a psychic, that one. Really scares me sometimes. He once told me somethin' like… what was it, there was a Mercury Retrograde and I was gonna 'ave one hell of a week fer it, somethin' like," Scotty mimicked Cupcake's deep voice and upright posture as he spoke,"Well, man, you've got Virgo and Gemini all across the chart, so when a Mercury Retrograde happens, you're fucked for about two, maybe three weeks straight."
"What happened then?"
Scotty shrugged, "Well. He wasn't wrong. Warp drive malfunctioned several times in three weeks, Keenser got one of 'is acid-colds and sneezed titanium-eating snot all'over me control panel, took out me favorite coffee mug with'it, sprained me wrist, got a concussion hittin' me 'ead when the ship stalled out of warp one day, ladyfriend dumped me—for Chekov—somehow—and then when I thought it was all over, Cupcake tells me," again, Scotty mimicked Cupcake, "…hey man, I think that Mercury Retrograde passed. You doing alright? I worry about a guy with a lot of Mercury in his chart during those weeks. Hope you're doing alright. Hey, just a heads up, Mars is gonna be square Libra in a hot minute here, so don't pick any arguments. Good luck, brother."
"What did that even mean?"
Scotty gave an exasperated shrug, "I dinnae. I dinnae. But two days after that, I got in an argument with someone in the ten-forward and was thoroughly punched out. Square in me bloody 'ead. I was out like a light. Cannae remember why it happened, I was really drunk at the time, but… I… I think it had something to do with a tribble."
"How could someone be so unlucky?"
"Be me?"
Jaylah laughed and then she nodded, "…be you. That is a start."
Still smiling, Scotty let his head hang for a moment. Yeah—being him certainly is a start, regarding bad luck. He was tempted to suggest another round of drinks. But when he glanced up, he noted the sleepy, half-lidded look on Jaylah's face and thought against it. She wasn't even bobbing her head to the rock music blaring from the unattended jukebox anymore—lyrics ringing out, kneelin, lookin' through the paper though he doesn't know how to read, oh, prayin', now to something that has never showed him anything—instead, Jaylah was nodding off.
"Y'look ready to sleep, Lassie."
Jaylah nodded and yawned, "I am ready to sleep."
"Alright. Let's get you home, then… I mean, er, if, if ye want me to, uh, walk ye home again?"
"That would be nice. Thank you." Jaylah said, sleepily throwing her arms over his shoulders.
Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies, oh he don't know, so he chases them away…
Scotty froze for a minute, his heartbeat catching in his throat, static electricity tickling the nape of his neck where her hands moved around him. Her breath was hot against his chest, slow and steady. His eyes slipped shut, all of too comfortable with her small frame heavy and warm against his chest. Letting his arms slip around her with awkward motion, he wasn't sure whether this was some kind of hug or hint that she wanted him to carry her home again.
"Montgomery Scotty…" Jaylah leaned up and whispered his name against his collar, he could feel her grinning, "…thank you… for landing in my life."
Scotty couldn't fight off the hint of a smile as he answered quietly, her hair like soft, white silk threads against his lips, "…well, ta be fair, I landed about eight 'undred meters from yer life… more like… tripped an' fell the rest of the way… think I'm still fallin', really."
Someday yet, he'll begin his life again
Oh, whispering hands, carry him away
"Still falling?" Jaylah's sleepy voice asked.
Scotty nodded, growing a bit braver, letting his fingertips trace down across the black markings on her shoulder blades, exposed by an open-back dress. Heavens, she probably had these lines all across the entirety of her body. Sucking in a breath and letting his eyes shut—his heart was pounding—Scotty answered, "Aye… definitely still fallin'."
"Me too." Jaylah murmured, her body falling limp.
"Me too?"
Jaylah was out cold. In his arms. What was that supposed to mean?! Did she mean falling asleep, or…?
When she started snoring quietly, he glanced around and realized that, yes, she probably definitely meant falling asleep. He also realized that he should probably get her back to her apartment. Luckily, the walk from this place wasn't anywhere near as far as the walk from the last bar she passed out at. Scooping her into his arms, he carved his own wavering path through the bar. Luckily, he'd sobered up enough not to be walking-into-walls drunk.
Although he did, accidentally, bump Jaylah's head on the edge of her apartment door when they arrived, "Ah! Fack! I am so, so, sorry!"
He cursed under his breath and apologized profusely, even though she just grunted and took little notice.
Navigating through the hanging, bottle-cap streamers (and knocking over one small model starship on a waist-level shelf) Scotty managed to get Jaylah into her bed. She had a mildly cute, mildly frustrating way of clinging to him when he tried to set her down. He wasn't sure if she was tugging at him or just clinging in a state of sleep. The idea of falling asleep beside her was all of far too inviting, and he was pretty certain she'd be less than thrilled to wake up next to him the next morning. Managing to unravel her arms from around his shoulders, he caught himself lingering over her. She was too damned perfect; she would never let him get away without at least one broken bone the next morning if she caught him there.
Still. Time had a way of stopping when he was this close to her.
If he had his way, he would steal a kiss and whisper a "good night" in her ear.
But it wasn't his way.
Letting his fingertips brush soft, stray strands of hair from her face, he watched her for only a moment longer before leaving her room. Luckily, the model she had placed on the shelf hadn't been roughed up too much in its tumble. He picked it up—it was that model of the Franklin.
In any other timeline, he'd look at it with so much less regard and appreciation. It would be just another ship—a beautiful one, one he'd have loved to set foot on, at least once in his life, sure. But there wouldn't be a single memory with it he cherished.
It wouldn't be attached, so deeply in his mind, to the girl with circuitry markings across her body and electricity in her very veins. Funny enough, it was, in space, there really was no such thing as falling—just a pull, a current that swept you up in whatever slipstream carved its way around. Of course, that wasn't minding the whole freezing and being ripped to shreds or irradiated—falling in space was categorically not the business.
But there he was.
What would happen first, ripped to shreds, asphyxiation, freezing?
Bones probably had a metaphor for this.
With a sigh, he set the model Franklin back down on the shelf and made his way out of the apartment. By the time he reached the door to his own apartment—mostly emptied, save for the boxes of his few belongings and half-finished junk projects he'd take onto the Enterprise with him—the sun was rising. Luckily, he didn't have to be out and about for at least… three more hours.
It wasn't uncommon to meet up with her again in his dreams—although it was obviously not the real Jaylah. Just a figment of his imagination and wishful thinking.
That night (or rather, those small hours on the borders of moonset and sunrise) brought him at least the seventh dream he could recall, where she was there, waiting for him.
Odd enough, it wasn't the usual fare, dreaming about a beautiful woman. Not the sort of impassioned, hot romp in the sheets that a typical, attraction-induced dream entailed. Far from it, actually.
Jaylah showed up in his dreams, at first like small fragments, flickers of images interspersed with other random, dream subjects. Schematics and numbers, the metal skeletons of starships, the chemical formulas that built the ever-molting, radioactive exoskeletons of stars. Scattered amongst disheveled images, sometimes she would be there, like a shadow at first.
A shadow of Jaylah, sitting alone across the bar, one leg swinging lazily under her seat. More numbers. Physics. The first dream had held a conscious effort not to think about her, to ignore the fair ghost bobbing her head to music alone, tapping her fingertips on an emptied glass.
Ignore it. Let it go.
A sliver of light crossing over Jaylah, the shadow gradually lifting, Jaylah running, Jaylah's fists and small, but lethal knuckles punching away at her sparring partners. Jaylah being knocked down and leaping back up to her feet effortlessly. Jaylah glancing his way, only for a moment.
Ignore that as well, let her go.
Like an eclipse steadily passing, Jaylah walking through the glassy corridors of Yorktown, bathed in light, her uniform the only color in a monochrome image—scarlet. Her eyes glancing up at him through long, black lashes. No, there was one more color, there was gold, gold like her eyes.
It was becoming impossible to ignore—trying to let the black hole decay was only proving that the heat only rose with entropy, until it burned away every last particle.
9.
The next time he saw her was on the day of the Enterprise's departure, standing at attention amongst the other members of the Engineering crew. They stood in salute, as per custom, and he was never one for so much formalities. Chief of Engineering, Lt. Commander, sure, but he loathed to run the place like a military operation.
"At ease," Scotty sighed, and the crewmen and techs dispersed one by one to their stations. He was trying his best to keep himself looking busy, occupied with the checklists, sign-offs, last-checks and triple-checks of the ship's each and every function. It felt good to hear her engines roaring to life again and smell the scent of machinery, oils, electricity on the air. This was more a home to him than any apartment on Yorktown. Heck, probably more than any place he could go back to on Earth anymore.
Keenser had mentioned that Jaylah was to spend her first day on the Engineering decks shadowing—but that lasted all of fifteen minutes before she wandered away from the communications database technician she was shadowing and took more interest in working alongside technicians with more advanced duties. A smirk crossed Scotty's features when Keenser told him that.
"I cannae imagine 'er shadowin' anyone long. She'll be more than a cadet quicker than ye know, Keenser."
Keenser shrugged and waddled off. Looking up from Keenser, Scotty caught sight of her, looking over the panels and working beside the more seasoned technicians as though she'd been there all along. Of course she would. This wasn't her first ship. Nor was it her second. He believed her when she said she'd grown up on a ship. He believed the idea that she was learning how to be a part of a working machine as young as fifteen, maybe even sooner. She didn't move like a newbie at all—he quietly wondered if she held some kind of rank or occupation on her first ship, before Altamid.
The techs beside her looked at her with curiosity and intrigue. They were listening to her, naturally.
She had to have been an officer of some sort before Altamid.
All of this was just retracing old steps for her.
The Enterprise departed from starbase Yorktown as planned. Not a single hitch. In the Engineering decks, they often blared music while they worked, keeping their hands busy and the systems running smoothly. Everyone's music came on, but he found his spirits lifted just a bit higher than usual when an utterly ancient rock song blared—beats, shouting,Jaylah.
The uniform fit her. The same red tunic of an Engineering technician, although Jaylah opted to wear the long black sleeves and leggings under it, as some of the smaller technicians tended to—those tiny girls who were always cold. Part of him wondered if Jaylah was a perpetually-cold sort of woman, or if she simply didn't like showing all that much skin. She'd hated the short skirts of the Academy uniforms. It must have been a modesty thing. The leggings were cuter on her anyway.
She smiled at him when she walked by—at least, it seemed, she wasn't upset at him for leaving her the other night. Heck, she probably appreciated that. He would have, had he been in her boots.
"Mister Scott. We've got some door glitches." A voice came over the intercom—Uhura.
Scotty sighed. Well, no launch was ever so perfect.
"Which deck?"
"Well," Uhura said, exasperation in her voice, "…Officers' Quarters seems to be having the glitch. I'm stuck in my room. Door functions are intermittent. Apparently the cargo hold entryways are completely out of commission, too."
"Heck," Scotty sighed, "…alright, Uhura, I'm sending some help yer way, hold tight."
Catching Keenser as he crossed by, Scotty said, "Keenser, yer with me. We've gotta fix the cargo hold's entryways."
Keenser was cackling—he'd made a bet earlier that the doors were going to glitch again. The doors had glitched frequently in the test runs, and he'd been so damned certain that they'd glitch again. He wasn't wrong.
"Yeah, yeah, yuck it up," Scotty grumbled. Everything was going smoothly enough for him to take a moment to address those doors. The cargo hold's entryways would be enough of a damned nuisance for everyone on board.
Keenser called two other techs to join them—one of which being Jaylah, telling her, "Come along. You'll want to know how to fix these damn doors!"
"Does it happen often?" Jaylah asked Keenser, following not far behind as Scotty lead the small group.
Keenser was chuckling, "Always with these damn doors."
She was definitely coming with them. It was all definitely really happening, Scotty noted, feeling the same butterflies at the sound of her voice as he'd felt in the bar with her days prior. This was going to be the remainder of the long haul and she was coming with them. Damn it all, not even a few hours into the mission and he was already distracted, trying his damnedest not to glance back at her, not to overly eavesdrop on her conversation with Keenser. This was not the time nor place for distractions.
Odd enough as it was, he'd never once been so damned distracted. The minute his baby—the Enterprise, blessed be her shields, armament and beauty—needed him, girls fell off his lap like an afterthought. This was different. And that was terrifying.
The team split up at the lifts, one heading upward for the residential deck and the other half of the group following him down to the cargo hold. Just as expected, the malfunctioning of the locking mechanisms had caused some minor mayhem amongst cargo's personnel.
"Alright, alright, I'm 'ere, step aside," Scotty sighed, making way for the locking mechanism's paneling as Keenser went for the operating screen for software diagnosis. Jaylah helped them unscrew and disassemble the paneling to the hardware under the paneling when Keenser confirmed it was another upstream cable undetected error.
"Heck."
The web of wiring in this panel was categorically more cramped than he was used to in the locking hardware. Scotty gaped at it for a moment, realizing this one door was the only one he hadn't had the privilege of disassembling during the test phase. Of course it'd wait until launch to start glitching out. Just as well, of course, the damned circuitry cases were at least ten times smaller in this ship than the last.
"When the 'ell did they start making the locks so tiny?" Scotty grumbled, reaching in. Jaylah and another technician were working at the mirroring panel, adjacent to them. Turning to the tech assisting him, Scotty said, "Right, you and Jaylah. Switch places."
"Yessir." The tech said, crossing the hallway over to Jaylah.
Jaylah looked at him and then at Scotty. When she was beside him she glanced into the bulk of wiring and circuit boards. He didn't have to say a word—she was in and working on it with much smaller, nimbler hands. Perfection.
"Oh, thank god, ya get it." Scotty laughed, "…yer gonna go far, kid."
Jaylah made a scoffing noise and he caught a smirk on the corner of her lips.
If there was one thing he should have known by now, after years of doing this, it was that upstream cable connection errors were never about the damned upstream cable connections. The problem was always a very particular set of misaligned powerstream modules further into the backend of the operating panel, which, from the look of things, was going to require them to tear out even more of the paneling and get further into the bulk. Heck.
Jaylah and her long arms and small hands could only reach so far—Keenser kicked Scotty after catching him staring as Jaylah bent over and delved further down into the wall. The entire process was about two hours in by the time they reached the powerstream modules. The door managed to open, but now it wouldn't shut. There was a problem, now, with the closing functions on the other side. Following Keenser, the other two techs stepped into the cargo hold and over the next hour and a half they whittled away at the problem. Without Jaylah's suggestions, it'd have easily been twice as long.
Her suggestions came off like intuition. He may have caught himself a tad envious there—she was communicating better with his ship than he was.
Tell her your problems and she'll solve each and every one, he thought to that darling ship, the Enterprise.
The rest of Day One saw them getting to the bottom of the door mess, but there were still numerous other doors coming up glitched as the day closed. Week One saw, luckily, only small problems popping up, aside from the doors and an occasional powerstream failure to the ten-forward's lighting and refrigeration systems. When the Captain began his away missions—their first tasks were always diplomacy and establishing rapport with the civilizations they encountered—the shuttlecraft often came back with "minor damages" for which they were there to repair.
10.
"The thing about Jim and these shuttlecrafts, it's like loanin' him the keys to yer car—ye think, Oh, maybe this time, he won't bring it back in multiple pieces or with bulletholes riddling 'er undercarriage, except… nae. Every time. Every damned time." Scotty said from beneath a near-gutted shuttlecraft.
Jaylah, beside him, tugged at a steel arrow that was embedded into its frame. She looked at it through thick goggles and tilted her head in curiosity.
"…he does not regard Prime Directive much, does he?" Jaylah said—they always worked to the tune of her music—her music was so rapidly becoming their music, and she seemed to know of everything he'd forgotten or simply never heard of. He enjoyed every roaring, screaming, gritty track. As loud as their music was, he could always hear her so clearly through the beats and the shouting.
"Well, I think he tried, I do think an attempt was made." Scotty said, looking over the arrow through thick goggles of his own. It wasn't of terribly primitive design, but it was a wonder the thing had stuck on the small vessel until it docked.
Jaylah slid out from under the shuttlecraft and tossed the arrow into the pile with other debris they'd pulled off of the shuttlecraft and back under she went, beside Scotty, working at the smoke-blackened machinery.
"Yannoe, he could… do us all a favor, and maybe, for just a minute, not get himself into life or death situations. Just for, say, oh, about a day or two. Must be some kind of adrenaline junkie." Scotty said.
The light attached to his goggles illuminated casing and bolts under a wire and metal mess. He worked to unfasten a bolt and was decidedly not succeeding. Jaylah paused what she was doing and her light swung his way as she said with amusement in her voice, "Do you need a hand?"
"I… Nae, Lassie, I got it."
Jaylah watched him struggle with it a moment longer and then asked again, "…are ye sure?"
Well, when she said it like that he couldn't tell her no. He looked at her and she shifted closer, reaching over to the wrench. Together they managed to turn the stubborn bolt, until it turned free. The force of the bolt finally turning without resistance had inadvertently landed Jaylah partly against his side, over his arm. He hadn't realized just how cramped these quarters were, or just how soft her body was, tumbling down on him. He sucked in a breath, trying his best not to make it obvious that she was making him nervous again.
Oblivious to it all, Jaylah slipped back to her place and the rest of the disassembly was smooth sailing.
"I'd like to join James Tee on an away mission sometime."
"Join him? I'm sure when the want for a technician comes along, I can recommend ye…" Scotty said, quietly wishing he hadn't said that. Away missions with Jim were almost always dangerous. Not that he didn't trust her to hold her own—heck, she was a warrior. Keeping her to Engineering was almost a waste of her combat talents.
She was a warrior. Just like Jim. An adrenaline junkie. Just like Jim. She liked loud music and shouting and heavy beats just like she liked her presence to carry that same kind of thunderstorm—just like Jim. He hadn't realized how much his mood had slipped when his mind lingered on that. She was every bit perfect for Jim.
"Do you accompany him on away missions?" Jaylah asked.
Scotty scoffed, "Nae. I'm just… just a tired old nerd in Engineering. I don't fight. Cannae even run a mile ta save me life. I don't break things, I fix things."
Finishing up the seal on a small wiring box, and fitting it back into place, Scotty said, "…I'd be a wee bit useless."
He leaned over to the toolbox beside him before making way to the next wiring box. He heard a loud thump. Startled, Scotty jumped and looked back to see the wiring box had been literally punched out of its seating by Jaylah's balled, gloved fist. She looked at him with a very stern, almost angered expression. He wasn't sure if he was terrified or turned on by that, in all honesty.
"You are not useless, Montgomery Scotty. Ever." Jaylah said.
"…thanks fer that. Ye broke it again, though."
"Then fix it."
"…but you broke it."
Jaylah grinned, then, the tension between them melting as she laughed, "…I did."
Scotty nervously shared that laugh, before asking, "…so… yer gonna fix it, right?"
Jaylah didn't fix it. Not that he really minded. When they finished up with the shuttlecraft for the time being, they were spotted in oil and grime. Jaylah took off one thick glove and wiped a sheen of dampness from her pale brow. She had looked at the shuttlecraft for a long time, standing there. There was a myriad of thoughts going through her mind, he was sure of it.
She was looking at this shuttlecraft like she'd fixed it once before, as if in another life. As silent as she was, the melancholy hanging over her was loud enough to pierce their music. Only then did he realize that there was no longer any background noise behind their music. They were alone in the hangar. Scotty hadn't heard the other crewmen and mechanics leave or finish up their own shuttlecraft repairs. Perhaps, emboldened by that moment of being alone with her, he sought to ask, finally, "…ye've done all of this before, 'aven't ye?"
Jaylah still eyed the shuttlecraft in moody silence.
Finally, she said, "The design is similar to the auxiliary crafts of the Mol-komma. Structurally, there isn't a lot of difference, either. My brother and I often repaired the ship's small crafts like this, together."
She had a brother?
"I have… good memories of ships like these," Jaylah said, hesitating before she added, "…I think."
"I think any pleasant memories with yer family are good memories."
Quietly, Jaylah said, "Yes. They are good memories."
Washing their hands and scrubbing off the oil and dirt from the repairs, Scotty ventured to ask Jaylah, "Ye said ye had a brother… what was he like? What was your family like? If ye don't mind talkin' about it."
Jaylah grinned in a way that showed teeth—particularly the sharp, fang-like canines where human cuspids and premolars normally were, "…my family… my father was an Engineer. I followed him everywhere around the Mol-komma. Mother was always partaking in diplomatic conferences. Very busy. She was a translator. When training for theArivnet began, my brother and I chose a path of machinery, like our father."
She dried her hands and her voice was softening as she reminisced, "…my father was a very serious man. But sometimes, he made Kier and I laugh. He would always look at a damaged shuttlecraft and say: This is not broken!And… it would be worse off after he touched it—and he would step back and put his hands on his hips, and he'd look at my brother and I and sigh: …yes. It is broken."
They were walking together now, and he urged her to continue. Jaylah was doing that thing again—that thing where the happiness shone in her eyes like small lights.
"My brother, Kier, would bicker with Father so much. Then I would bicker with Kier. The three of us would be bickering on what needed to be done—tackle the powerstream first, the datastream, or take the hull apart further and check connections. Connections would be fine. Kier would say, I told you! And the operations system would continue to reboot itself and Father would say, Kier, this is your fault, and sometimes… sometimes, I found a torn up piece of the powerstream system, remove it and say, I fixed the problem!"
"Did ye fix it?"
Jaylah shook her head, still grinning, "…I found at least seven other problems we needed to fix. Kier would look at me with his eyes big and he would say, Jaylah, just put it back. We had to fix it, though. Everything had to run. It had to fly. Every problem must be solved."
Something about that notion lingered on his mind—uncovering one problem only to discover several others. Maybe it resonated with him. He knew precisely what his one problem here was, and perhaps the aversion to it came with the knowledge that there would only be a downward spiral after. But she did say it rightly—every problem must be solved.
They parted ways to continue working elsewhere. As much as he would have loved it, they did not spend every waking moment side by side. She was still technically a trainee (although she was so, so, overqualified for such a title) and he had the grand old job of keeping the ship's heart beating strong and healthy, one day at a time.
11.
Quiet days, sometimes quiet weeks passed. Keenser teased Scotty often, "Don't call me in there with you. You get it done faster with your other half."
"The 'eck does that mean!?"
It was true, however—she matched his pace and sometimes solved problems far faster than he did. It was getting harder by the day to justify assigning her menial trainee's tasks. She belonged at the heart of the ship, right where he, Keenser and his best technicians worked. Eventually, there she moved, working beside him, walking beside him—"Commander's new aide?"—"She's not an aide, she's an engineer."—and she was all the brightest fire he'd ever seen. She was all fanged grins and cocky confidence, tools in hand, not giving a damn how dirty, cramped, or dangerous the job was.
Occasionally, a major repair called all of Engineering together to keep the ship from tearing itself apart from the inside. His poor beauty, his Enterprise, Jim seemed to steer her into the most reckless of situations and scenarios with little regard for how she felt. Even Jaylah was gritting her teeth at times.
"He wants us to put her where?" Jaylah said, sitting beside him as Chekov informed them over the comms that Jim was going to land the ship in an ice field on Idibas-12. Now, this wouldn't have riled Engineering much if the sleet and hail on the planet were, in their regard, normal water. Except, no, not on James Tiberius Kirk's watch—it had to be a bloody atmosphere of frozen salt.
Scotty palmed his tired face and said, "Captain, it is… my expert opinion that ye do not land the ship in a frozen, salty hailstorm."
"She's going to have to bear it, Mister Scott—we have no Shuttlecrafts large enough to transfer the ore reserves to Idibas-9. It'll be quick. Promise."
"You know what that salt will do to the hull, Captain?" Jaylah said.
"We've got experience with that, Jaylah. Trust me."
Scotty sighed and shook his head, murmuring to her, "In case ye 'adn't noticed yet, Lassie, when he says 'Trust me' he means get ready for extensive repairs for the next two 'er three weeks."
"I'll get the EV suits ready." Keenser grumbled.
Jaylah sighed, running her palm over the border of an operations panel gently, "…my poor house."
"We're only two months in," Scotty said, "…just wait 'till he starts gettin' bored."
The look of concern on her face—for the ship—was rather priceless. He certainly felt like, just maybe, he hadn't been utterly mad all these years for giving such a damn about the ship, particularly in Jim's reckless hands.
"Do not worry. We will fix you…" Jaylah said quietly to the ship, patting the panel before getting back to her assigned task. Scotty couldn't help but be a wee bit amused as she muttered in the way he often did during his first weeks aboard the Enterprise.
Walking away, she muttered, shaking her head, "…always breaking our house!"
12.
Jaylah always seemed happy enough just to be in the Engineering decks, working alongside the rest of the crew. However, Scotty could tell she had far more energy to burn than routine repair and maintenance tasks took out of her. When her scheduled duties were completed, she spent the remainder of her time on the sparring mats and in the gymnasiums, challenging anyone up to her ferocity. Fighting was a pleasurable past-time for her.
Bones had even commented on it, one evening he caught Scotty watching her take down Cupcake repeatedly (they were going on best three out of five—he had yet to tear her down.)
"I can't help but watch how she moves and wonder how long she's been trained to do this sort of thing."
"Ye think she was trained to fight like that?"
Bones scoffed, "Oh, of course. You don't just, come outta the womb knowing how to land a flying scissor kick to the skull like that. Well, maybe unless you're a Klingon, but—oh, oh, no—you ever take a good look at a capoeira fighter and you know that's years, years of…" Bones winced and Scotty inhaled sharply as, down on the sparring mat, Jaylah landed three heel-strikes on Cupcake's jaw with what Bones said was some kind of helicóptero kick. Bones was pulling out his tricorder when he confessed, "Doctor as I may be, I have a fondness for martial arts. Not that I'd ever break my neck doing it, myself."
Cupcake made the mistake of remaining on his feet after that (though swaying on wobbly legs.) He was out cold after one of Jaylah's roaring cries and a double-leg kick to the neck. Half of the small crowd who'd gathered to watch their match winced. Scotty couldn't help but grin madly, proud of her agile strikes and unshakeable grace. Bones whispered in mild awe, "Ohhh… that was definitely an armada dupla…"
"A what?"
Bones shrugged off Scotty's question before he stepped in to check Cupcake's vitals as their referee stepped in to call the match. It wasn't going to be best four out of six. Cupcake was out for the night. Knowing the two of them, they would be back on the mat the moment he was well enough, unless he wasn't reprimanded for being so damned reckless in training, letting himself get banged up like that. Jaylah and Cupcake had an odd friendship like that—he'd initially not "wanted to hit girls" but after taking up Jaylah's challenge the first time, they seemed to have a very deep respect for one another. It wasn't as though Jaylah won every time, either—he'd been met some mornings with Jaylah covered in bruises and sore to the bone, but she was always grinning, and always, she would tell him, "Sparring was good. Everyone had a great time. You should come. Join us, Montgomery Scotty."
She was concerned for Cupcake, but Bones was quick to reassure her, he was fine.
"Take it easy next time, darlin'," Bones sighed. Scotty wasn't sure if he was saying that to Jaylah or Cupcake.
He hadn't realized when Jim slipped into the crowd, watching from a safe distance. He wasn't taking to the mat or even to boxing like he used to. As of late, Scotty heard, Jim didn't show up—but when he did, it only ever seemed to be to watch Jaylah fight. He lingered like a shadow, clapping for Jaylah, but never quite making his appearance known. When he was found out and the crewmen stood at attention—"Captain!"—he'd have them at ease and watched only another short round before disappearing again. He grinned that picture-perfect smile for Jaylah and she called out to him to join, but he refused. Then, he was gone.
Scotty knew exactly what he felt on the day that Jaylah finally joined Jim and Bones for an away mission. She had been asking about it frequently—and he'd passed the word to Jim plenty. That wait hadn't been for his lack of trying. He knew she could kick ass and take names out there. Had she not been a part of Starfleet, he could see her fitting in well on some military organization elsewhere, where she would actually get her boots on the dirt and lead an infantry all her own. She was every bit brawn as she was brain.
"It's not safe," Jim had said over drinks with he and Bones in the ten-forward.
"I prefer her in Engineering with you, Scotty." Jim had said, walking through brightly lit corridors on the outskirts of the Engineering decks.
"She's not Security. I know she can fight. But I don't like the idea of taking her along, this might dangerous one coming up." Jim shrugged, before disappearing into a lift.
But finally, in fact, just a mere week after that eventful K.O. of the near and dear Lt. Cupcake, perhaps Jim finally decided Jaylah was ready. He'd expected himself to worry about her when she was away, but he reminded himself continuously—she was more than capable, more than able to handle herself if things got dangerous.
Several away missions came and went across the course of the next few weeks. Some being longer stints than others. Routine sorts of missions, exploration, science, observation. Luckily none thus far were Jim Kirk's trademark variety of "fun" but they brought Jaylah back unscathed and he was happy.
Scotty tried not to make it obvious that he saw her off in the transporter room before every leave. He always did his best not to be as transparent as glass there—no lingering gazes, no heartfelt good lucks, nothing of the Spock and Uhura variety. Just excuses to be there, pretending to streamline the transportation process and get them to the target point as smoothly as possible.
Her eighth away mission provided a small anxiety attack. Small being the understatement of the year.
It was a routine cargo delivery mission to an outpost on the planet Harziel.
"Another easy one!" Jim assured the team.
And, of course, the stakes were never so low and easy when it was Jim taking up the mission—no, it had to be damned near abandoned when they arrived, only to have the whole away team lose communications for several hours.
For several hours, he paced, panicked, tried to take over the transporter interface to locate them himself, failed, and proceeded to pace, panic, and pace some more.
Of course, he'd been at his wits end two hours in, trying to get them to re-establish comms with the team, trying to get a lock on them.
That was the real test of faith there—trying not to seem nearly as frayed at the seams as he was when Jaylah was in danger. He had to show more confidence in her, he knew, and so he did. As best as he could. Luckily, he realized, the entirety of the crew knew him to be neurotic enough in general to simply see his overreactions as normal fare.
Finally, blessedly, the comms reconnected and he had never been so glad to hear Bones.
"Mister Sulu… you're not gonna believe this," Bones's voice came over the comms-line, with what sounded like a roaring auditorium in the background.
The next part of Bones's announcement didn't help Scotty's worried-sick fears in the slightest, "…this planet is inhabited by gladiators. They have Jim and Jaylah. They're making them fight the other captives."
Gladiators?
Scotty had dropped his favorite tea cup when he heard Jaylah's telltale war cries in the background.
"…you can tell Mister Scott to relax. Jaylah's doing fine."
Doing fine.
Doing fine.
Alright, then, doing fine.
Keenser gave the slack-jawed Scotty an elbowed nudge in the side, "…she's fine!"
"Jaylah's down there, with swords, and spears, and they're making everyone kill everyone—I… I am not fine!"
Keenser shook his head and waved him off, getting back to work.
When they finally got a lock on the team's position and beamed them back, Scotty was the first one to rush to Jaylah's side. She was clad in archaic armor matching Jim's. She still held a bloodstained sword in one hand. Blood was streaked across her armor, across her face, some of it red, some of it blue where she'd been wounded, but she was sweaty and her chest heaving with quick breaths and part of him wondered if running straight for her like that was a bad idea.
She and Jim both were enthralled with the love of the fight, and even though they'd all just narrowly survived that escape, they mirrored one another's roars of victory and bumped shoulders like a pair of brothers who'd just thoroughlysmashed some arrogant git into the ground. For that moment, they were all cheers and war souls, more at home in a gladiator's armor than a Starfleet uniform. Bones and the two security officers who had joined them looked considerablyless enthused about skirting the gladiator's pit and more relieved to be home on the ship.
"…and that is how you take down seven armed Roman soldiers, non-lethally." Jim announced.
"They weren't Roman soldiers! Heck, these weren't even gladiators from Rome, we weren't even in Rome! Don't ask mehow to explain any of this, but, heck, dammit Jim, this is very high up on the list of weird shit I've seen this month." Bones barked, "…and 'non-lethally' my ass! Do you know how many femurs and necks you probably broke!? And that, that giant… that giant half-rhinoceros, half-tribble they threw at us all, I don't think that thing's gonna make it to Sunday school after the poking Jaylah gave it!"
Rome? Half-rhinoceros, half tribble?
"Well," Jaylah confessed, voice still breathy, "…he is not wrong. The monster and the snake-headed she-demon gave a good fight. Her ancestors would be proud. But we are all alive."
Snake-headed she-demon?
"…and that's the most important part." Jim nodded, walking past Scotty with a casual gait.
It was just another away mission for Jim, and Jaylah fit right in.
Bones was helping the others back to their feet, happily accepting a medical officer's spare tricorder and setting course for the medical bay. Jaylah turned to a very tired Scotty, oblivious to it all, still high on adrenaline.
"Are you alright, Montgomery Scotty?" Jaylah said through her crescent-moon grin.
He shrugged, feigned a laugh and lied, "Aye, fine, just fine!"
"This was… everything that I needed." Jaylah beamed, "…thank you for convincing Jim."
Scotty wasn't sure it was he who convinced Jim. Perhaps it was those nights watching Jaylah fight Cupcake and kick him around like a punching bag that finally convinced Jim. Maybe it was the memory of Altamid that convinced him.
He walked with her out of the transporter room, as Bones encouraged her to head "straight for medical to get a thorough evaluation." Jaylah was limping, ever so slightly. He saw the lower end of a gruesome gash, perhaps from a sword, slicing its way from just below her knee up across her thigh (obscured by the armored skirts of the gladiator's suit.) A deep, cerulean trail leaked down from the wound, streaming into her boots. She walked on the wound like she barely felt it.
Hell. She was bleeding, she was injured.
She walked on it like it was nothing. He thought to offer to help. Jaylah made it clear she didn't need his help, though. Or anyone's. She walked ahead of him, silver ponytail swaying in her wake.
Let her go.
13.
After that mission, Jaylah became a staple member of away teams. Getting her to stick around Engineering as she'd been assigned was like a game of tug-of-war with Jim, who'd found his favorite new adventuring partner. Scotty wasn't one to argue it. She thrived. He couldn't argue it if he wanted to.
Part of him had thought, "Oh, good, maybe I can finally get a break from this madness."
Except, it hardly worked that way at all. Even when days away would pass and weeks at a time could go by without him seeing her, she lingered in his dreams. Lingered in a way where he dreamt that he was working in the Engineering decks, going about the routine maintenance of the day, and she would be there next to him. Lingered in the way where she would work beside him, keeping up with him, running laps around him, coming to the conclusions he couldn't think of. Lingered in the way that she often did—when she was really there—pausing with tools in her hands just to stare in his direction.
Did she have any idea he'd noticed that out of the corner of his eye? Did she ever have any idea that he was too nervous to look back at her? Or that it was her staring that made his hands fumble or made his tools slip from his fingers?
She lingered in his dreams in the way that it was easy to forget she wasn't actually falling asleep beside him every night—dreams were always wishful thinking, weren't they?
"In dreams, it can feel like you've woken up next to that person forever. That's why it's so jarring when you wake up and they're not there. Never there in the first place. Makes you wonder if you've lost your love-damned mind," Bones had shrugged, at the tail end of a conversation in the arboretum.
Cautiously, Scotty had been sure not to mention that the "someone" in his dreams had been Jaylah. But no matter how much he skirted her name, he had a sense that Bones could diagnose the exact cause of all his symptoms. Maybe at this point, his playing along with the vagueness of it all was just pity.
"Ya ever experience it?"
Bones snorted as he scrawled notes on some kind of botanical herb project in his tablet, "…the ex-wife."
A pause, before Bones gave a weak chuckle, "…aw, hell… I haven't thought about her in years. Thanks for breaking down that steam train."
Bones glanced out through the viewing pane at the garden's edge, at the blur of stars flooding by in warped colors. Bones was quiet then, eyes distant and his very soul elsewhere for a moment. For all the talk he'd had thus far about the fabled ex-wife, Scotty would have never expected such an emptiness behind the doctor's eyes.
"If it ain't workin'… just gotta move on. Chances are, you're just trying to fix what ain't broke."
That metaphor made sense.
14.
Days later saw the occurrence of one of Jim's more "hare-brained" (as Bones put it) away missions. A small outpost station had been held ransom by K'normian arms dealers. Thankfully, Jaylah had stayed behind this time, at Bones's orders. He had wanted her off that leg until the muscle healed properly and above all, the mildly-hypochondriac doctor vocally dreaded the potential of some space-infection eating at her healing wound.
A firefight ensued, that led to hull damage on the ship and possibly the premature end of one unfortunate shuttlecraft. The poor thing had come back all of held together by its last threads.
One of several power cores had been hit on the port side bow of the Enterprise, which resulted in intermittent gravity plating malfunctions. Of all the things that would break, it was the one thing the ship was always designed to see broken absolutely last. On the bright side, despite concerning errors in the port side gravity plates, the inertial dampeners were untouched. It was pleasant knowing they wouldn't be smashed into particles the next time they jumped to warp speed, he reminded himself through a rather messy shuttlecraft cleanup.
Despite how poorly their equipment had fared, the entirety of the away team had returned blessedly unscathed.
There was some "sensitive data" in the shuttlecraft's recording banks that Jim wanted salvaged. Getting the shuttlecraft's system back online was the first step. Jaylah had been quick to help tackle that problem.
Keeping the damned thing from overheating and shutting down mid-transfer, however, was the next task. There would only be so many attempts viable before the data drives were corrupted from the continuous rebooting.
"Commander, we're getting another transfer error on our end."
"Aye, I'm gonna stop the data transfer an' reset the system."
Chekov's voice answered over the comms, "Data tranz'fer iz at 86%, if the rate of intermittent zystem crashes iz conzistent, ve zhould be fine to proceed."
"I think we should pause it here," Jaylah said from under a cave of wire and circuit casings in the cabin's bulkhead, "…better not to risk corrupting the files so far into transfer."
"She's right, I'm gettin' errors on this end, Chekov, the system's too banged up to keep from overheatin'."
"Can confirm. It is quite hot in here." Jaylah said, trying her best to keep the cooling system from failing again. She was on her back, having climbed into the gutted operating panel.
After such a long time down there with little progress, he considered trading places with her. If only to look at something other than those damned system error notices.
It was either that or fight off the want to watch her legs under a short red skirt. Her wound was bandaged with wraps that accelerated the healing process exponentially, but she had to replace them often—thus, for the first time, she was wearing the uniform without her trademark black leggings.
Only a wee bit distracting.
Try not to be a jackass, try not to stare.
Doing his best not to stare, Scotty wound up staring. Unconsciously (entirely consciously) inching back a bit when Jaylah climbed further into the gutted operating panel, he caught a flash of black panties.
I am a jackass.
Clearing his throat, Scotty said after the last shutdown warning, "We keep tryin' ta salvage this thing, we're gonna end up losin' it entirely."
"92%. Keep the system running just t'ree minutez longer." Chekov said.
System overheating warnings were beginning to pop up with greater frequency, just like the last six times the damned thing crashed. Scotty glanced up from Jaylah, a tired groan, "…shite…"
Another overheating warning sounded, this time with glitched audio accompanying, "Warning, a pr—pr—with the cooling syste-em-em-em—as been detected. Please begin standby and soft-reboot seque-que-que-que—"
"Shite!" Jaylah yelled from below.
A burst and airy whir from a coolant tube below the operations panel sounded. He heard Jaylah's reflexive half-hiss, half-roar. Before he could ask if she was okay another coolant tube blew out of its seating near Jaylah's exposed leg, spilling steam and boiling coolant inches from her thigh. Jaylah's free hand caught the thrashing tube quickly and turned it away from them both.
"Shite!" And down the system went again, just seconds before the data transfer reached 94%.
At least it was further than they'd gotten before.
Silence fell over them.
"Iz everyt'ing okay down z'er, Commander?" Chekov asked.
Scotty answered, "Oh, fine. Just another day in the office, Mister Chekov."
"…I will retrieve new coolant tubing." Jaylah sighed.
"Nae, I'll do it, and ye've been down there a good two hours now, take a break." Scotty said, as the interface screen flickered in and out of life, "Give us about fifteen minutes, Mister Chekov, we need to replace the cooling system with a temp. Otherwise, I don't think we're gonna get this thing up an' runnin' long enough to salvage anythin'."
"Understood, Commander." Chekov said.
The comm fell silent. Jaylah was still handling damage control in the control panel. She didn't seem to be budging from her place.
"…we need new coolant."
"On it," Scotty said, standing and making his way around Jaylah for the shuttlecraft's exit.
Before he could cross past Jaylah, however, his foot was caught between her two booted ankles. He looked down, catching himself before she tripped him. Had it been literally anyone else, he'd have been annoyed with this prank at such a time. It surprised him how welcome her tight hold on his leg was. Physical contact was nice.
Scotty quirked a brow, amused, just slightly, "What are ye doin', Lassie?"
"You know what you did, Montgomery Scotty."
Know what you did… Scotty felt his cheeks grow hot as he turned away and tried to tug his leg free to no avail. He half-panted, half laughed, "Wha-what? I didn't… do anythin'?"
"Is that correct?"
"That… that's the God's honest truth, I… wha-what, uh, what did ye think I…?"
Jaylah was laughing—something low and almost like a purr. He wanted to melt. He feigned a small smile as he looked back at her with a quirked brow.
"You are amusing, sometimes."
"Sometimes?" Scotty grinned with mock-indignance, "Only sometimes?"
She swiped her legs sideward unexpectedly, and he was face-down on the shuttlecraft's floor in half a second at best. He groaned and cursed and confessed, "Alright, alright! I'm sorry, I'm sorry I looked!"
"At least buy me a drink first."
A drink?
Scotty almost looked back at her in question before thinking better of it, from his position—it was only inviting another blow of punishment from an ill-timed glimpse.
"Of 'cerse. Noted." Scotty grunted, climbing back to his feet and rubbing at his chin unceremoniously, "…yannoe, I miss it, a bit. Drinkin' with ye."
Jaylah had climbed out from under the panel and was dusting herself off. She looked up at him with a soft expression—not a smile, but not the typical, stoic fare she gave most others. He didn't catch this face that often, but when he did, he always made note of it in his mind. That calm before a cheeky smirk.
"Ye've… been goin' on all these away missions. Kinna miss ya around 'ere."
Her eyes narrowed, her corners of her mouth hinted at a rise. She tilted her head ever so slightly, and he knew by now, this was her form of a quirked eyebrow, given her lack of said eyebrows.
"Alright, I admit it, I've been missin' me favorite cadet up 'ere."
"After this, we drink again." Jaylah said.
Well, he couldn't say no. That sounded like an order.
He tried to look like he was thinking about it, mulling the offer over in his head, even though the answer was a resolute yes before she'd even finished her sentence. Trying his best to not look as excited as he was, trying his damndest not to show how much his spirits had lifted (and perhaps failing miserably,) Scotty answered, "Works perfect f'er me. If it works perfect f'er you."
"Get the coolant." Jaylah said, before climbing back into the panel.
Scotty had made it a few steps out of the shuttlecraft and well out of Jaylah's presence when he fist-pumped the air and voicelessly cried out, "Yes! Yes, yes, yes!"
Drinks with Jaylah again. It was everything he needed and then some.
Except it didn't pan out that way.
Before he had even made it back to the shuttlecraft, his arms full of new coolant system tubing and supplies, Jim was crossing past him with a quick pace and clear purpose.
"Captain." Scotty acknowledged.
Jim nodded back, "I need to borrow one of your engineers."
Of course he did.
"Permission to speak freely, Captain?"
"Go on."
"She's got a job to do here, too. It's what we had her assigned to do?" Scotty tried to make this reminder as casual as he could.
"Noted, Scotty." Jim said.
Jaylah's evening was reassigned to another away mission, responding to a distress call on a stalled out ship. They needed someone who knew their way around disabled impulse drive systems.
Don't say a damned thing.
15.
In the ten-forward's bar, over the whiskey and small-talk Jim all of dragged him up for, Scotty half-joked, "Yer stealin' me best cadet."
Jim shrugged, "She's carving her own path. I just open whatever doors I can for her."
"What a gentleman."
"Trying my damndest to stay one," Jim laughed.
Dear friend or not, Scotty wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or punch the guy sometimes. A fake laugh sufficed, before he downed the remainder of his drink and said, "Right, that's that, then."
"You're throwing in the towel a few shots early tonight."
Denying that and doing his best to hide how much he did not want to have more drinks with Jim, listening to him gush over how "hot" Jaylah was—and there wasn't a damned thing Jim could say that Scotty wasn't already painfully aware of—Scotty shrugged, "Cupcake's horoscope advised me against it. Kinna takin' it seriously this time."
"Suit yourself."
Scotty paused, one hand still around the glass. Maybe it was the sudden absence of Jaylah in the Engineering decks, under the shuttlecrafts, next to him digging through paneling and wiring, maybe it was the sudden lack of her that reminded him of her when he looked at the empty glass.
"Jim… promise me you'll keep 'er safe."
Jim only gave the most oblivious and arrogant grin that was his trademark shine—the sort of smile he used to be able to laugh off so easily as Jim being 'just Jim' regarding reckless behaviors.
"Of course. She means the world to me, you know."
"Don' tell me that, tell her that."
"I do. Every chance I get. I don't think she cares that I care."
Was that so?
Quirking one brow, Scotty couldn't help but ask, "…'n why's that?"
"She's not down there to show off or be vainglorious. She's down there to do a job. She knows when a guy's just being a shameless flirt. Just tumbles right off her. Doesn't have time for it. I know that type."
"Yannoe that type?"
"I know that type. Gotta respect her for it. Breaking hearts and taking names. If I were a little younger and a tiny bit more of an asshole, I'd call that a challenge. Guess I'm just not that guy anymore."
"Huh. Well that was, uh, sort of a confessional there."
"Yeah," Jim said, thanking the bartender for the next beer and luring Scotty back with another round, on him, "…stay and join me, Scott. One more round. I've got a broken heart and Bones is fed up with listening to me cry about this girl."
"Is that right?" Scotty asked, keenly interested now. Was he supposed to feel this amused? There was a word for that—schadenfreude, was it? He was all too familiar with Jim's occasional bouts of melodrama when a girl he particularly fancied blew him off, but this… this was some kind of crossed wirings in the machine of fate itself.
"I think I'm in love with her."
"Ya don't say?" Scotty said, leaning forward and resting his chin in one hand.
"I mean," Jim looked around, as though to be sure word wouldn't get back to Jaylah through anyone within earshot, and said, hushed, "…you ever see her move? When she fights? When she runs? When she's just… walking through the halls, chest forward, head high… kinda looks like she could tie you up and break you six ways from Sunday?"
Well, he hadn't not thought about that.
Scotty made his best attempt to look like he didn't understand exactly what Jim meant as he nodded, "Uh… well. I… yeah. Of'cerse. A girl like that. Walks with a lot of, uh…"—he took a swig of his drink, trying to find the word—"…purpose. Lot of purpose, ah… knows where she's goin'…"
"Purpose. Yeah. Exactly, that. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time I said it was love at first sight, man, but…" Jim confessed with a daydreamy sort of smile, "…I do believe it was love at first sight, my friend. Admiration. Challenge. Started watching her training when she was in the Academy. Sparred with her as much as I could. For a minute there, I thought of her more like, more like a rival. God… never thought I'd ever meet a girl I could say was like… like my other half. Fighting with her, moving with her, fighting beside her… where's she been all these years?"
On Altamid, you ass.
"And I've been trying, trying to tell her how I feel. But you know. We can't just jump into bed with crewmen and cadets like that," Jim said, as Scotty mentally noted this was definitely a sign of how drunk the good Captain was when he stated that sort of fact, "…you know, man, we've got rules. Standards. Rules."
"Aye. Rules. A job to do."
"A job to do. Right." Jim said, "…but… God, what I'd give to run into her while on shore leave. What I'd give. Just to be in the right place at the right time, just have her fall into my lap. Tell her, 'Jaylah, I've been in love with you since, since the moment I first saw you, and you're everything to me, and just, run away with me, Jaylah. Let me be your main man, Jaylah.' And just… I don't know. Well, I do know. We all know after that. But… you know?"
Scotty was trying not to laugh—maybe he was just cracking at this point. He took another, much longer swig of his beer. Jim went on.
"She hasn't spoken to me in a couple of days. Think she's mad at me."
"Why's that?"
"Well. I don't think she knows what a kiss is."
Throw me out the airlock.
Jim was absently rubbing at the back of his head as he went on, "…it was just one of those moments, we were alone. It was cold. We were both on night watch around camp. Snow everywhere. She was huddled up to me, I was huddled up to her, and we were talking, and you know, the moment just seemed right."
"Talking about what?"
Shrugging, Jim laughed, "Hell if I know. Just talking, man, you know. She was rambling about the shuttlecraft's damages, I think. I kinda zoned out. Can't help it, she was beautiful. I went in for a kiss, like an idiot—"
"Absolutely like an idiot." Scotty agreed.
"—and she just sidestepped it like I didn't even exist. At least, I… maybe she didn't notice. That's it, she just didn't notice. She doesn't know. That makes sense, right?" Jim looked at him.
Scotty nodded.
Jim began rambling about the emotional reaction he'd bottled up since then, just letting all of his bruised ego pour out. Scotty glanced at his watch and considered how much bourbon he still had stashed away in his quarters. He hadn't plowed through it all yet, had he?
"I guess I'm just kicking myself over nothing. Think I should give love another chance."
Squinting, Scotty asked, "…di'nt ye just say that was, categorically, a bad idea, given our jobs, the rules, all that…"
"Love is love, Scotty." Jim said, looking at him with a deadpan expression.
Scotty wasn't sure if this was the alcohol or sarcasm or something else entirely talking.
"You can't fight love." Jim said, more serious than ever.
"…right." Scotty answered slowly, warily.
"I'm going to tell her."
He wasn't sure what kind of drop he felt inside, when Jim said it, but Scotty certainly felt something akin to being dropped down a rickety carnival ride.
"Tell 'er what, now?"
"Tell her I'm in love with her. No action, no fumbling, no romantic kissing in the dark, just straight words. Doesn't have to be anything more. Just a feeling between two people. Don't care where it goes from there. I just want her to know."
"Sir—Sir, ye… ye'know, I, I just cannae recommend that, just, as your Chief of Engineerin', as yer friend," Scotty said, hurrying after Jim, who rose from his chair and made a path for the door. Scotty followed along, but not without taking a step back to grab Jim's discarded jacket for him. Hurrying after, he called out Jim's name and rambled, "…as one of yer crewmates, as, as a guy who's had, more than a few really awful runs with women, I just, just cannae recommend that."
"Thanks," Jim said, accepting the jacket as Scotty handed it to him, "…you're a good friend, Scotty."
"I'm really not, though, Jim."
"Don't be so damned humble. Half of what you heard, I wouldn't dare tell Bones."
"What about Mister Spock?"
"Well, I'd tell him, but he'd probably cite at least twelve conduct violations before I finished my first beer."
"Well, Sir, in his defense," Scotty nearly bumped into a medic coming around the corner who'd stopped to salute the passing Captain, "…in his defense, he's not wrong."
"Name me one good reason I shouldn't at least express my utmost admiration for her."
"Uh…" Scotty genuinely thought about this, realizing fast that they were headed toward the gym where Jaylah was likely exercising or sparring—and they weren't far off and getting closer by the second, "…ahh… well, your workin' rapport, on away missions, ta'gether, it might, might strain that relationship."
"She compartmentalizes well enough, I doubt she'll even react to a thing I tell her that's not an order."
"Maybe that, that right there is why she doesn't react to a thing you tell 'er that isn't an order."
"What are you implying, Scotty?"
"I'm not implyin', I'm sayin' that maybe ye just don't really know 'er the way ye think ye know 'er."
They were stopped at the doors in front of the gym, now. He was sweating. His fisted hands (when had he balled his hands into fists?) were trembling (when had he started trembling?) Scotty wasn't sure if he was angry at what was about to happen as much as he was at the way Jim consistently seemed to not know Jaylah at all. Scotty wondered just how, just when, he thought he even knew her any better. On what grounds was he any different than Jim at that very moment, he wondered.
Jim took a breath. Was he psyching himself up?
"Don't do it, Jim," Scotty said.
"Thank you, Scotty," Jim said, hands on Scotty's shoulders with a tight, loving sort of squeeze, "…thank you for coming with me. For being the moral support I needed."
"Don't do it, Jim," Scotty repeated.
Jim's breath still smelled like beer and whiskey, "Alright. Scotty. You're actually really bad at this moral support thing. I was going for reverse-psychology."
"Reverse-psychology, right," Scotty made a hollow laugh, "…well in that case, do it, go in there 'n tell the girl how ye feel, tell her ye love her and have been too much of a damn git thus far ta say anythin'! Tell 'er she drives ya crazy, tell 'er ya can't stop dreamin' about 'er, tell 'er she's everything in the world ye wish ye could be, and then some. Then stand there while she says nothin'. Walk away from it like ye said nothin'. Feel miserable after it all because, suddenly, after that, she doesn't want anythin' ta do with ya. After that, everythin' ye did have with 'er, is suddenly nothin'."
Jim squinted and said, "…you really have had some bad luck with love."
"…a divorce and a half." Scotty confessed.
Jim gave Scotty a firm pat on the shoulder and then entered the gym.
Oh, heck. Here we go.
Scotty stood by the door, letting his head hang low. He leaned against the wall, feeling, all at once quite light and heavyat the same time.
"Montgomery Scotty?"
That voice. That voice.
He bolted around. There she was, dressed down in her sporting clothes, with a duffel bag of her gear slung over one shoulder. Jaylah tilted her head to the side, confusion on her face. Her hair was still dripping wet from the showers in the adjacent corridor.
"Yes, hello!" Scotty straightened up, trying his best to look alive. An odd silence. One fist lunged out and slammed the gym door's locking mechanism.
"Are the doors jammed again?"
"Aye," Scotty said, nodding with a deep sigh, "…the doors on these ships. Who, who assembles them?"
Jaylah shrugged, smiling, "Who knows?"
"Who knows!" Scotty repeated, drumming his fingertips on the door.
He heard the door's opening mechanism whir to life but stop mid-process as the locking system kicked in. He glanced over as the red, "lock" light flickered green. Scotty slammed his hand down on it again, back to a very locked red.
"Is it working?" Jaylah asked.
"Oh, ye'know… it's …intermittent," Scotty cleared his throat, wondering if this counted as an act of mutiny—he was definitely weighing his options, "…so… ah… ye like to go fer a jog? Around the ship?"
Jaylah looked to be thinking about this for a beat before she reached out one hand to Scotty, "Yes. I would like to run with you, Montgomery Scotty."
"Oh, thank God!" Scotty half-laughed, half-sighed, sweating and red. The locking mechanism turned green again. He slammed his fist down once more, again, it was red.
Jaylah eyed this motion with curiosity.
Luckily, the doors and walls of the ship were all soundproof. But that didn't stop the softest sound of pounding on the other side. Scotty's eyes shifted sideward nervously for a moment before he took Jaylah's hand. Another zap of static electricity—"Ow, sorry!"—"Sorry!"—and then they were running.
"Luck!" Jaylah grinned.
"So… so much luck!" Scotty said, leading the way, hoping to get as lost as humanly possible.
All the bloody luck in the universe and he couldn't hold all of the words in for much longer.