100 Ways To Say I Love You
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Star Trek: Voyager
Copyright: CBS
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Prompt 30: "One more chapter." (Janeway/Johnson)
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There was nothing like winter, thought Mark Johnson, to make one appreciate the indoors. It was five p.m. and already dark outside, freezing rain rattled the windowpanes, and the street lamps outside were no more than faint, golden blurs. But inside his house, the hibiscus was in flower, the holographic fireplace blazed and crackled, Molly the dog slept in front of it, and Kathryn Janeway sat beside him on the sofa in a civilian sweater and jeans, auburn hair loose around her shoulders, blue eyes sparkling as she did what she did best: argue.
Don't get your hopes up, he reminded himself for the millionth time. She's a friend, and you're lucky to have even that much. But she had a whole month of leave saved up, and she'd chosen to use it by spending the holidays with him.
"I'm just saying," she waved the padd she had been reading, "Your Dante was in serious need of some counseling."
"It's a foundational work of Renaissance humanism. Show some respect."
"It's B-movie horror, that's what it is. This guy enjoyed writing about hell a little too much."
"He was making a point about sin as a failure of reason, and virtue as a a personal choice, as opposed to blindly following the dictates of the Church. It was thanks to artists like him that we ever evolved out of the dark ages - "
"Yeah, okay, because nothing says 'enlightenment' like having people thrown into boiling tar."
He had to laugh at the utter disgust in her voice.
"The Renaissance was important, yes, " she added, "But that's because of scientists like da Vinci who were genuinely ahead of their time."
"Da Vinci was an artist too, and you can't judge a thousand-year-old work by contemporary cultural values."
"No, you can't," Kathryn retorted, leaning triumphantly into the cushion at her back. "Because you're a university professor and you read this stuff for a living. I, on the other hand, am reading this only because you asked me, and I reserve the right to judge it as much as I want."
"Fair enough," said Mark, pushing his reading glasses up on his nose and reopening his paper copy of Plato's Symposium.
They read together in companionable silence for a while, accompanied by the patter of the rain outside, the crackling fireplace, rustling pages (his), the occasional huff of exasperation (hers, of course), and Molly's tail thumping on the rug as the young dog dreamed of chasing rabbits.
"How about dinner?" Mark asked eventually, setting his book aside and rising to his feet. "I downloaded the code for that butternut squash soup you like."
"One more chapter?"
Kathryn looked up at him with the eyes of a little girl asking to stay up past curfew. He raised a disbelieving eyebrow in return.
"What? They're just getting to the Ninth Circle."
"So you admit you like it?"
"I'll admit no such thing, I just want to know what happens next."
"You're impossible, Kath."
He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Before he could fall too deep into one of his spirals of overthinking, though (Is that something a friend would do? Did I startle her? Is this going to make things awkward?), she reached up and – with the lightning-fast reflexes of the Cardassian War veteran she was – pulled him down to her level.
"You're impossible, Hobbes. What do you call that just now?"
"Uh - "
"Come here."
She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and kissed him full on the lips, until his glasses steamed up and all intellectual arguments flew right out of his head.
Thank you, Dante, was the only coherent thought he could come up with.
