By the time the last lecture was over, Hart's spirits were high. Her mind was racing with thoughts of all the possibilities for improvement she had heard throughout the day and thought about applying to the Enterprise. She had wanted to continue the excitement, hoping that Kirk would want to discuss the things they had learned with her. He met her with a surprising amount of willingness, suggesting that they retire to the bar for a little bit to continue discussing the day's presentations. She hadn't thought too much about joining him, agreeing quickly.

She was now two drinks in, and it had magnified her passion tenfold.

"Do you think we could bring that guy – Jones – onto the Enterprise? I want him to instruct our people on de-escalation theory. I think it would be really good for them. It could really help with situations on the ship. He was right – with everyone cooped up together for years at a time, people snap under the pressure. It happens more often than you'd think."

Kirk considered this. "Yeah? I guess I don't hear too much about day-to-day security."

"It's all in the reports," she said, shrugging a shoulder as she sipped her Old Fashioned. "Besides, what kind of Head of Security would I be if I had to run and ask my Captain about every little problem?"

Something about the way she used the possessive my Captain with such ease puffed him up, and he immediately chastised himself for it. She had just barely thrown him a bone, and he was drooling over it like a steak dinner. He took a sip of his whiskey to collect his thoughts before responding.

"I don't think we're in any danger of creating that dynamic. I can probably count on one hand the number of times you've asked me for help, Hart."

"Don't be ridiculous. I work with you every day."

He smirked into his glass, "Ah, but that's not the same thing."

She gave him a chastising look, but there was a playful glint in her eye that hadn't been there before. "I'm asking for de-escalation training, aren't I?"

The bar around them buzzed with conversation, and they sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes. After taking the reprieve to formulate his next move, Jim broke the silence.

"What made you want to go into security?"

Hart shrugged, "It was just what I liked best at the academy. And I had been in martial arts for years before I ever joined Starfleet, so that helped. My parents started me young. I get antsy."

This, he had noticed about her. She was hypervigilant. He'd thought it was a byproduct of the job, never considering that it might just be her. Even as she spoke now, her eyes surveyed the other people at the bar instead of landing on him. He couldn't decide if it was a sign of disinterest or a sign of trust that she didn't feel the need to watch him.

"I'm sorry if you were planning on socializing with your old friends this weekend. By all means, feel free to go out without me."

Hart raised an eyebrow. "It's a conference, not a bachelor party."

"Then what were you planning to do with your free time?"

"Order room service. Maybe take a bubble bath."

"Well, feel free to do that without me as well," he said, then, over the rim of his glass, "unless…?"

He knew immediately from the look on Hart's face that it had been a mistake. He had pushed himself back to square one. Damn this whiskey and her big brown eyes.

"Sorry," he said, shifting in his seat. He could feel a flush creeping into his neck as he scrambled to bring the interaction back to an equilibrium. He hadn't even managed to make her blush with the proposition – only himself. "Old habits and all that."

"Relax," Hart said with a smirk into the rim of her glass, surprising him. Perhaps she wasn't sending him back to square one after all.

"I've gotta say, I'm surprised you said yes to the drink," he said. "It doesn't seem like you spend much time at Ten Forward."

"I have my moments," said Hart. It was clear that the drink was loosening her up a bit, socially. "Besides, the Enterprise is work."

"And home," he added. "You've got to draw that line or you'll go crazy in no time."

"Says the man who has asked me about nothing but work since we got here."

James Kirk should know flirting when he sees it. Of anyone, he should know. But he still found himself on uncertain ground. He had caught glimpses of her playful side when watching her with other bridge crew members, but he had never been on the receiving end of that smirk.

"Didn't I just ask you to come to Ten Forward with me some time?"

"No, I don't think you did."

"Well, I think that's where I was headed."

"Shocking," said Hart.

Kirk watched her for a moment, considering.

"Alright, let's get it all out on the table."

Hart raised an eyebrow at him. "Get what out on the table?"

"You don't like me," he said, placing his glass down on the bartop with a resounding clink. "I want to know why."

Hart straightened, on guard from the sudden confrontation. Kirk kept his expression open to let her know that he wasn't angry, but he was serious.

"We're good," she said. "I have no problem with you."

"That's bullshit," said Kirk, before quickly adding: "Respectfully. You've never liked me."

"I've never fawned over you," Hart corrected him. "That isn't the same as not liking you."

"Ah," he said. "So you think I'm full of myself."

"I think," began Hart, pausing to think through her next words, "that you are used to women reacting to you in a certain way."

"And that bothers you?"

"It doesn't bother me. It just doesn't interest me."

"But, I mean…you've clearly thought about it."

"Look, you asked. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not the most talkative or friendly person. Don't take it personally."

"You're friends with Bones. And that guy Zhao."

"Bones, who is also taciturn," she said.

"And Uhura. And Sulu. I'm just wondering what makes me so different that we haven't become anything even resembling friends after three years of working together."

"Right now, I'm inclined to say it's because you're annoying."

"I'm serious, Hart. Why aren't we friends?"

"Oh my god," Hart said, laughing a little to dispel the tension. "Alright, we can be friends. Enough with the third degree."

He took the hint, dropping the subject and taking another swig of his drink.

"Satisfied?" she asked.

"For now," said Kirk.


His hand was hovering over the space between her shoulder blades. He could feel the warmth radiating off her even without resting his palm against the dark fabric of her shirt. She had stumbled into the wall of the lift, and he had reached out to steady her, holding back from making full contact at the last second. He was now guiding her back to the door of her room. She wasn't completely wasted, but she was tipsy enough that she had been laughing at all of his jokes for the last hour. When they reached her door, she turned to look up at him with a smile that made his stomach flip.

"Thanks," she said, and though he wasn't entirely sure what he was being thanked for, he nodded with an idiotic smile of his own.

"What time do you want to get up in the morning?"

"Uh," Hart said, eyebrows furrowing as she tried to focus. "What time is the first session? 10:00?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Let's head down at 9:00 so we can grab breakfast."

With that settled, the two parted ways, and Kirk sighed as he closed the door to his own adjoining room. He wouldn't know until morning how much of it was the alcohol, but he felt he might have actually made some progress toward an amicable relationship with Hart.

Fifteen minutes later, he was just settling down for bed when a muffled shriek sounded from behind the door to Hart's room. Kirk was on his feet in an instant, opening his side of the adjoining doorway and knocking on hers.

"Hart?" He called quietly. "Anna?"

He was just considering whether or not to apply force to the door when it flung open and a disheveled Hart stood in front of him.

"What's wrong?" He asked, looking over her shoulder into the room for the source of her distress.

"There's something in my room," she said, stepping aside. He came in and surveyed the room.

"Something like…?"

"An animal? An insect? I don't know. It crawled under the bed."

Kirk reached out for the shoe she was holding, and she gave it to him. "It's not big enough, I think."

He moved closer to the bed, slowly, preparing himself for whatever might run out. He kneeled and caught a glimpse of something black and shiny moving beneath.

"Looks like some kind of millipede," he said. She was right, it was comparable in size to the shoe he now held aloft. He tossed it aside in favor of the ice bucket sitting on a nearby table. "I'll catch it and put it out."

"Be careful, it could be poisonous," Hart was saying from behind him. To be honest, Kirk didn't love the idea of wrangling the creature, but he certainly wasn't going to let her know that. When he stepped closer and the insect registered his proximity, it shot out from the foot of the bed in a fast, haphazard motion. Before Kirk could even rise to his full height, Hart was climbing him like a tree. He grunted as she pushed off of him like a stepping stone and onto the mattress as if the floor was lava.

"Hart, I've seen you take down men twice your size," he said, trying to ignore the thought that so much of her had been pressed against him just moments ago.

"Yeah, and how many legs did they have?" she challenged him in a defensive tone.

"Got it," murmured Kirk. "You don't like bugs."

"Should we call someone?" She asked, taking another step back toward the headboard when the millipede moved along the far wall.

"No, I've got it," Kirk insisted.

It took a little bit more corralling than he would've liked, but he managed to get the millipede into the ice bucket and slam the lid on it after about twenty minutes. He left to dispose of the creature and alert the front desk, and when he returned with a new, clean ice bucket, Hart was tossing the cushions back onto the sofa bed. The bedding had been completely torn off her mattress and then crookedly reapplied. Her face was tired, and he could see that the adrenaline had sobered her up significantly.

"You okay?" he asked, placing the ice bucket down on the table. "They offered to give you a new room."

"I don't want a new room," she said immediately, not turning around to look at him. Was her pride making her stick it out? Was it the fact that she wanted him next door if anything else happened? "I checked everywhere, and I think it was just the one. It should be fine."

"Why don't we switch?"

"No, it's fine."

"I mean it. I haven't even unpacked. It'll take two seconds."

"It's fine, Jim."

Hearing his name on her lips effectively shut him up, and he allowed her to shoo him back to the door of his own room. She had never called him by his first name before, and he stared at her contemplatively as they stood in the adjoining doorway, considering how he might get her to say it again. She watched him, too, with a closed-lipped smile that provided little reassurance. It didn't take a genius to see that she was anxious, and his brain searched through solutions like an old-fashioned secretary frantically flipping through a rolodex to find the right number.

"You're sure you're okay?" he asked softly. "I could stay and hang out until you've forgotten about it."

She was considering it, and he couldn't believe it. In the end, though, the Anna he'd known for years won out, and she shook her head.

"That's probably not a good idea."

"Right." He had difficulty hiding his disappointment. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

"Tomorrow."


If Hart had been hoping that "tomorrow" would solve all of her problems, she had been sorely mistaken. The first coherent thought she'd had when she rolled over in bed that morning was an image of Kirk's expression when he'd offered to get her a new room, to switch her, to stay. He had taken his new commission as her friend seriously, and she almost hated him for it, because re-configuring her impression of him after all these years wasn't convenient or comfortable. She had known, of course, that he was a good person – that he was nice. But she had never really considered him in relation to herself, and it was now hard not to when he was right there concerning himself with her problems and breathing her air.

They had eaten breakfast in a companionable but somewhat awkward silence, uncertain how much of their familiarity was now the standard and how much had been alcohol or adrenaline induced.

The morning sessions passed by agonizingly slow. Much of the torture was self-inflicted, with Hart and Kirk both shifting to sit closer together than the day before without explanation or acknowledgement. Kirk discovered early on that when he moved to offer commentary on the session, she leaned in even closer to allow him to whisper into her ear and catch a whiff of her perfume, and he found himself looking for things to say despite the fact that he was barely tracking with the information. At one point, when their knees bumped together and she didn't recoil, they sat like that for twenty minutes, feeling the electric current that the contact emitted. She gazed straight ahead the entire time, as if protocols for changing security codes was the most interesting subject she'd ever taken up for consideration.

For Kirk, the physical contact was bringing forth a thousand trains of thought that he had forced himself over the years to cut off at every turn. How he had sometimes wondered, if he just grabbed her and kissed her, would she respond? If what Spock Prime said was true, there had to be some part of her that found him attractive. But she was always so closed off, so he tried not to touch her, even in small ways, without her consent for fear that he might close her off further. But God, did he want to. Sometimes, when he was walking alongside her or sitting near her, he'd test out the image that Spock Prime had painted for him, imagining that she was his wife. In those moments, when it had felt natural for her to be his, he itched to guide her through doorways with a hand on the small of her back or stretch his arm out on the seat behind her. The more time he spent in this fantasy, the more frustrated he became by the lack of real time spent with her, which was mostly why he had finally contrived to attend this damn conference with her.

And now, here she was, cheeks flushed as her elbow bumped his side and her knee shifted against his own. She was clearly uncomfortable, but she refused to move away from him, and the thought made his blood thrum with excitement. All he had wanted was to make a good impression on her, and it seemed he had successfully done so the night before. Now he needed to take care not to mess it up.

Hart was rapidly swinging back around to the opposite pole, though she continued to play with fire by keeping closer-than-necessary proximity to her Captain. She was angry at herself for feeling so antsy around a man who had done nothing but remove an insect from her room in the middle of the night. She was acting like she had never interacted with a man before. During the lunch break, she decided that she would spend the rest of the day – the rest of the conference – enforcing a professional distance.

Kirk noticed the distance immediately, feeling disappointed when she moved her chair as far from him as it would go without hitting the leg of the table in their first post-lunch session. He considered asking her if she felt alright, but noted the tension in her shoulders and refrained from bothering her, as much as he wanted to.

By the time they finished the first afternoon session, Hart was feeling a little bit better about the trajectory of things. She had successfully extricated herself from Kirk's space and had even been able to focus a little more on the lecture. Just when she had begun to think the rest of the weekend wouldn't be so difficult after all, she checked the afternoon's agenda during the refreshments break.

Disarming & Subdual Techniques.

"Damn it," she cursed under her breath, shoving the agenda back into her conference folder.

"What's wrong?" Kirk asked, practically tripping on her heels as he followed her out.

"Nothing. We're in Ballroom C next."

When they entered Ballroom C, the tables were all folded down and leaned against the walls, replaced by matting that stretched across the wide expanse of the wooden floor. To his credit, Kirk didn't pester her with questions, instead slipping the folder out of her hands and checking the agenda for himself. A sturdy man with red hair and a ginger beard walked to the front of the room, corralling everyone's attention and instructing them to carve out a space on the mats with their partners. Hart sent a wary glance at Kirk, and he cleared his throat, guiding her over to a clear area.

"We can skip out on this one if you're not feeling up for it," He told her quietly. Hart wished he would stop being so accommodating, and she felt a rush of annoyance over it.

"I'm fine," she said. "I've been waiting years to throw you to the ground."

She had meant it as a barb, of course, but her cheeks colored at the double entendre she hadn't caught until the words were hanging in the air between them. A smile pulled at the corner of Kirk's lips, and it was clear he was trying hard to fight it. She rolled her eyes, turning her attention back to the instructor.

Kirk barely caught any of the instructor's preamble – his mind was whirring like an overworked computer. Here he was with a built-in and valid excuse to finally make contact with her, and he was nervous.

"Kirk?"

He turned to face her too quickly, startled from the white noise of his own thoughts. "What?"

"Your role. Do you want to be offensive or defensive first?"

"I'll take offense."

Hart nodded and turned her focus back on the instructor as he demonstrated the first maneuver. There was a deep-set line carved between her eyebrows as she took in the movements with analytic eyes that nearly rivaled Spock's in intensity. He turned his own attention to the demonstration, and his eyebrows rose as he watched the instructor's assistant throw him to the ground like a sack of flour. The man stood and made some observations about technique to further clarify what they were doing, and then he demonstrated once more.

"Okay," said Kirk, turning to her. "Ready?"

"I think asking that defeats the point."

By the time she'd gotten the snarky remark out, he had already lunged at her. The next few seconds were a whir of swirling color, and then he was on the floor, the wind knocked out of him.

"You weren't kidding about waiting years for this, huh," he groaned, looking up at Hart, who was crouched beside him. He had expected a smirk or some kind of gloating remark, but she was all business, standing and offering him a hand-up. He took the hand, valuing the fleeting contact over his pride, and stood.

"Go again?" she said simply, and he nodded. Moments later, he was on the floor again, though this time he was at least prepared for the force of the impact. When he rose again, the instructor was ordering everyone to switch roles. When they reset, Hart didn't hesitate in charging him, and he managed to get her to the floor, though he felt it was more out of brute strength than technique. He helped her up, and she adjusted her shirt, before turning to reset again.

"That didn't feel the same as what you did," Kirk said.

Hart had been considering whether it was appropriate or necessary to offer feedback, but he seemed to want it.

"Next time, try tucking your arms in a bit."

"Show me?"

Hart nodded, gesturing for him to take his stance and coming behind him. "Okay, so…" she murmured, lightly grabbing his waist and pivoting him just so. She then took his elbows and guided him through the movement. "Right here, you'll pull your elbows back in."

He was looking at her over his shoulder as she spoke and she felt her face burning under the scrutiny.

"Then, you'll engage your core more," she continued, placing an open hand on his stomach for emphasis. He sucked in a quiet breath, and his abdomen jerked under her touch.

She pulled her hand away, "and instead of strong-arming me, you can use my own weight against me."

He nodded wordlessly, and she stepped back, returning to her starting place on the other side of the mat.

Kirk knew he needed to pull himself together. He had been a puddle of jelly under her touch, and he wanted to smack himself for acting like a teenage boy. It's just the anticipation, he told himself. He had been wondering about this for so long now that he didn't know what to do with the crumbs he was now being offered. Bones and Spock had been right – he shouldn't have come here with her. It was only going to add kindle to the fire of the angst he'd been secretly nurturing. Still, he couldn't bring himself to regret it.

This time, when Hart lunged at him, he took her advice and got her to the floor much more smoothly.

"There you go!" Hart said, climbing to her feet with a helping hand from him. She seemed to be energized by the movements, having forgotten her previous reluctance about the seminar. He fought the urge to smile under her praise, and they watched as the instructor demonstrated the next maneuver.

Hart thought she was doing an excellent job of staying focused and on task as they worked through various maneuvers and exercises together. It wasn't until they moved to the floor that she had trouble controlling the trajectory of her thoughts. The instructor had demonstrated how to break out of a straddle hold where the wrists were pinned above the head.

Though this teacher had some interesting tweaks in technique that she wanted to try, she couldn't say that she wasn't already well-versed in these defenses. However, it was clear that Kirk could use some work in this area, and she didn't want to skip out if it was something that could help him get out of a scrape in the future. Wanting to cut down on any awkward exchange, she simply lay on the mat, gesturing for Kirk to go ahead and play the aggressor first, as they had been doing.

Kirk mounted her carefully, sitting on his heels to ensure that he wasn't flush against her hips, and his eyes followed her hands as she crossed them above her head. He considered asking her if it was alright, but thought that drawing attention to the position might make it weird when she otherwise didn't seem to care. He leaned forward and grabbed her wrists gently, having difficulty avoiding eye contact as his face hovered over hers. Hart's feet were planted on the floor behind him so that her knees were bent in a "V" and their bare feet brushed against each other.

"Ready?" She asked. Kirk nodded.

This escape maneuver really did require the element of surprise, so the instructor had encouraged them to simply work through the succession of moves slowly for practice, rather than actually attempting to throw their attacker off.

Keeping this in mind, Hart narrated her movements as she engaged with him.

"So, my hips come up," she said, beginning to thrust upward. Kirk hesitated, rising up a bit to provide room for her, and she paused, her teaching tendencies coming out again. "No, don't pull back. I have to knock against you."

"Right, sorry," he said as they assumed the original position. He chanced a glance at her face, and she didn't seem bothered at all. This time, when she thrusted into him, the movement knocked him forward, just off balance enough that when she jerked her arms down, it left him face-diving into the floor with nothing to stop him. He turned his face to the side at the last moment to save his nose from the impact, and the next thing he knew, Hart's arms were locked tightly around his waist and her face was tucked into his stomach.

"That's it!" The instructor encouraged as he passed by. "Make sure there's no distance between you when you grab him, that way he can't get enough leverage to pull you off. Cling like a koala."

Hart released Kirk after the instructor passed by and patted his thigh, signaling for him to get back into position. She seemed wholly focused – she hadn't been lying when she said that releasing kinetic energy like this kept her from being antsy. They practiced the maneuver once more, and this time Kirk was able to buffer his fall a little better.

When it came time to switch positions, Kirk was determined to hold the same composure as she had. He lay down, and she wasted no time mounting him, intent to get their practice in before the instructor began speaking again. Unlike him, she didn't keep any distance between them, seating herself on his hips the same way she would if she were an aggressor trying to pin him down. Kirk hoped she didn't notice his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. She leaned forward to pin his wrists above his head and nodded at him.

"Go ahead."

Kirk thrust his hips upward, knocking her off balance. Hart fell into the face-dive, turning her head to the side, but her contact with the ground was muted as Kirk grabbed hold of her hips instead of making his next move, trying to pull her out of the fall. When she regained her balance, she gave him a chastising look.

"You have to follow-through with the hold," She said.

"I don't want to break your nose," said Kirk.

Hart laughed. "You mean this nose?"

She pointed to her nose, and not for the first time, he took in the pleasant curve of its bridge – the way that it slightly crooked to the side before returning to its natural course.

"It wouldn't be the first time. Let's go." She said, returning to the starting position. Kirk realized his hands were still cradling her hips and he pulled back, joining them above his head.

As he shifted into position to begin again, his hips shifted as well, and Hart's hips moved forward almost on instinct, just the tiniest bit, to push against him. She immediately cleared her throat, finishing the reset by grabbing his wrists, although she refused to make eye contact with him. Kirk could feel the familiar stirring in his uniform trousers, and, despite his body's opinion on the matter, he decided the sooner he got out of this position, the better. He thrust upward, drawing a sharp exhale from Hart, but before either of them could be too embarrassed about it, she was face-planting into the mat. In her flustered state, she hadn't turned her face to the side quite enough, and her nose did, in fact, collide with the floor. Kirk wrapped his arms around her waist tightly to complete the maneuver, and when he released her to allow her to sit back on her heels, blood was running over her mouth and chin.

"Oh, god," he said, shuffling out from under her and to his knees. He placed one hand on the back of her head and the other under her chin, tipping her head back gently. "Anna, are you okay?"

"Yep," she said. Her face was beet-red, and she was avoiding his eyes. Kirk waved at the instructor, who made his way over and clucked his tongue.

"This is why we do it slowly, everyone," he said, making it a teaching moment for the rest of the class. "But this goes to show that it does work."

"You got a medical detail somewhere here?" Kirk asked, cutting him off before he could draw more attention to them. He helped Hart to her feet as the instructor told him where to go and then led her by the elbow out of the ballroom. She was prodding at her nose, eyes watering.

"Don't touch it," he said, swatting her hand away.

"It's not broken," she said with relief. "I'm almost positive. I'll be fine."

"Humor me," he said, guiding her into the room where an on-site nurse was standing by for the conference. The nurse made quick work of it, scanning her nose to confirm that was, in fact, not broken, and then stuffed some cotton into the nostrils to stimmy the bleeding. She insisted that this was the easiest and quickest way – to just let the nosebleed run its course, and Hart nodded, eager to interact with anyone else besides Kirk, who was looking at her like he'd just killed a puppy and couldn't stomach the thought.

"I'm so sorry, Hart," he said the moment the nurse turned her back. "I should've gone slower."

"It's fine," she replied, waving him off. Her voice was nasally from the cotton still filling her nostrils, and she wanted to crawl into a hole. "You'd be shocked if I told you some of the injuries I've gotten doing this. It's part of the job."

The nurse came back to take the cotton from her nose and was delighted to find that the bleeding had stopped. The pair thanked her as they were ushered out of the makeshift infirmary and back into the lobby of the hotel.

"I really am sorry," said Kirk, turning to her. "But…I did warn you about the nose, you know."

Hart turned to him sharply, mouth ajar. Finding that she had no retort, her mouth snapped shut. "You did."

Kirk grinned.

"Let me make it up to you," he said. Hart straightened, suddenly feeling the weight of his expectant gaze.

"A raise?" she asked, trying to make light of the moment.

"I was thinking more like dinner."

"Oh," Hart said, shifting on her feet. She pressed on her nose to test the tenderness, needing something to do with her hands. "You don't have to do that."

"I want to," said Kirk. "I mean, if you have plans tonight, I can take a raincheck, but…" he trailed off, waiting for her to make her excuses.

Hart tried. She really did. But, she couldn't for the life of her grasp at one and hold it in her mind.

"I don't have plans," she finally admitted. "I mean, I'm here to work, not to play around, so…why would I?" She then added with an air of importance, drawing a smirk from her Captain.

"A work dinner it is, then," He said. "We can talk about security all you want."

Hart's expression lit at that as she followed him to the elevator. "Good, because I do have a couple of ideas from this morning's sessions…"