Hey my loves! You have my word that I have not abandoned this story and will not until it's done! I'm just dedicated to writing well and in character and sometimes the rest of real life gets in the way of that. Please enjoy this new installment :)

People were supposed to roll around in their sleep, right? Because if Yasmine remembered correctly she had fallen asleep next to Nyla, not haphazardly sprawled on Jim's upper half and drooling more than she had in a month. As the rotted Drususian roof let dew seep through and onto her back, she gingerly peeled herself off of him and patted away at the damp stain on his chest as if he'd even be fazed by it.

A raucous snore rang out from his still sleeping form, dragging her attention up to his slack face where her favorite eyes were still hidden from view. A small part of her wanted him to be awake for this, to see the sleep draining from his eyes and find out what was left when he finally regarded her leaning over him so innocently in the morning light.

But that was a very small part. The rest of her knew to move up and away from his soft glow before she stayed enraptured forever.

She had to leap her way to a standing position to get around the masses of bodies and it was only when she cleared to the other side of the tiny hut that she remembered Max Whitney's existence by nearly stepping on him.

"The potatoes, not my potatoes…" he whined at her feet between sluggish snores and she had to stifle her giggles.

A humid breeze licked at Yasmine's back through the cracks in the door as she portioned the last protein bar into fifths and chewed on an end piece, doing her best to ignore how the grime on the walls probably didn't feel too different than her unwashed body. She traced doodles like mazes against her own thigh, something Jim liked to do if she thought about it too hard.

A third voice in the symphony of morning noises rang out to rein her thoughts back in and she turned to see one chief psychologist yawning delicately from where she was nestled under McCoy.

"You're up early, Yasmine," Nyla commented when her eyes landed on the engineer, though her gaze widened and she bolted upright when she discovered how ensnared she was with the man next to her.

"And isn't it a good morning, princess?" Yasmine's eyebrows rose accusingly to pin the other woman down. "You're shit at subtlety."

Nyla stood and brushed at the remains of her dress slowly, her resigned sigh clouding as a faint blush on her cheeks. "Yeah, I guess so." She gazed at McCoy a moment more before meeting Yasmine's eyes again.

The taller woman, for one, had her jaw hanging on the dirt floor. "C'mon, I've been waiting to give you hell for this and suddenly you're just gonna confirm?"

"Sure, why not." She now had the upper hand and gave a wide grin. "Now concerning you…"

A few millennia would've passed before Yasmine considered Whitney a savior, but he came to her rescue this once with a resounding cry, "I'll fight all of you!"

The women swiveled toward him as he woke himself up and the yelling finally roused the other two heavy sleepers as well. Whitney rubbed his face, smearing dirt around and just barely missing his eyes, and Yasmine wondered how he could've possibly been given a ship to captain.

Her own captain was suddenly at her side with his groggy voice saying, "Not sure if I'm happy he didn't wander off last night."

She swatted at him and threw a glare that couldn't have hurt a fly. "Might wanna work on your diplomacy, Captain."

"Diplomacy my ass," McCoy piped up before cracking what seemed like too many vertebrae up his spine. "It'd feel a little easier if we weren't stranded like a damn reality show."

They all stumbled around and ate in restless silence as an orchestra of insect noises struck up outside the hut, singing shrill background music for a less than pretty picture. Whitney was grumpily munching and babbling on about how his ship's away supplies would've been better than the protein bar, leaving Nyla to press her side into McCoy's to distract both of them. Her gaze flitted from the other doctor's mouth to his eyes as they spoke in low tones and Yasmine could feel the mush from across the room.

Her casanova captain on the other hand kept a distance that was maybe to focus on planning, maybe to warily think about Yasmine the way she was of him. She occasionally felt his eyes searching, easing onto her like waves onto a sandy shoreline, though always when she was turned away. Her regard of his slouched form was heavy as if she'd never seen such a man before.

Apparently all it took was a little danger-filled absence to make her heart not know what the hell was going on.

Captain Whitney, bless his rotten soul, was completely oblivious to all the poignant glances and even stooped to reach directly between Nyla and McCoy for a blanket from the ground, griping, "I slept so bad last night I'll probably need a nap later today."

"Can I suggest outside? Maybe the ground will be softer," McCoy huffed, earning a loving slap on the wrist from the petite woman.

"Doctor's orders, eh?" There was ignorant pride dripping from his voice. "I'll try that now."

He marched out into the morning sun, apparently forgetting that the danger of the outside world wouldn't have vanished overnight and so Yasmine went after him in hopes of stifling anything stupid he'd do next. Jim was hot on her heels and bits of the door broke off in their hands as it slumped aside for them.

Yasmine was a few hours away from being completely accustomed to the lush greenery sprouting from every direction and she wasn't even surprised when mugginess wrapped around the trio and she breathed more of it in. Another beat later and the pair of doctors followed them outside in solidarity. Despite the migration stillness fell on them once again, though this time Jim was left at her side with his bouncing nervous tick pushing his elbow into hers at a steady rhythm.

Shoving her hands deep in her jumpsuit pockets and fiddling with the phaser still rested in one of them, she said, "Look, I'm all for action but we could've figured out what we were doing inside where visibility wasn't an issue."

Before anyone could offer a response a faint sparkling sound picked up from behind her, growing louder and more familiar by the second. Yasmine whirled toward the ending transporter noise to find Uhura standing there with a bundle of fabrics propped on her hip.

"Thank god it's you all!" she breathed, then tapped into her earpiece. "Away party located, we'll be ready to beam shortly."

Nyla rushed forward to wrap the woman in a hug. "Can I say that I love you? I'm just so happy for a real rescue! We can beam now, no need to wait."

Uhura laughed before pulling away to toss a clean black jumpsuit at each person. "Sulu's worried about contamination and I think you're ready to change anyway." Turning to the one unfamiliar face, she extended a hand. "And I'm Lieutenant Uhura, sir, you must be Captain Whitney."

"That's a complicated name, are you a complicated woman? I would've gotten stranded sooner if I'd known all these fresh faces were gonna come save me." His leering caught her off guard and she ended the handshake as soon as it began.

"Sir, for your safety," Jim forced a laugh through gritted teeth, "I suggest you at least attempt to be professional with the Lieutenant."

Yasmine used her lean frame as a shield to block Whitney from Uhura's view as she approached the other woman. "I'll be saving most of my questions for Mr. Scott, but are there transporter problems I should look into once we're back?"

"You're asking what took so long, Yaz."

"I'm the engineer, if something's wrong with the system I need to know." But after a sheepish smile she added, "But yes, I've been on this damn planet too long."

They shoved like schoolmates and Uhura smiled widely while tapping her earpiece again. Suddenly she brushed past all of them with more frantic tapping. "Spock? Spock, can you hear me? Enterprise, come in. Come on, dammit!"

"Lieutenant, what's wrong?"

"Shit, we were afraid of this." She closed her eyes, willing it to all go away before facing Jim again. "The Drususians have been trying to get a lock on the Enterprise, most likely to jam communication functions. We've avoided it so far but they apparently caught up. We're supposed to beam any second now and if that doesn't happen then they got to the transporters, too."

The tattered group dangled at the end of baited breath as moment after moment dragged away and they were still on the planet. Finally it was long enough and Uhura shook her head though it was still held high.

Whitney groaned, "So we're still stranded but with an extra mouth to feed and no more food?"

McCoy patiently waited to see if anyone else wanted to input before he bellowed, "Good god, man, it's not a captain's job to despair!"

"Yeah, I usually leave that to you, Bones." Jim's clap on the back rang out and would have echoed if not for the moss bedding the ground.

But it was all just faint bickering to Yasmine, who whirled toward the back of the hut and let her gaze fall on what they'd all nearly tripped over the night before – a mass of overgrown and gnarled-together pieces and parts from ancient technology, even by earth standards. Parts from the likes of grounded cars of the time and the first wired computers.

She walked over and started picking her way through it, brushing rust away from what she remembered studying as an engine part and saying, "Uhura, when the Drususians were tracking the Enterprise could you tell what technology they were using? Or how they intended to jam her?"

"Lower-frequency radars than our own that could overpower our systems."

Whitney spoke up when Yasmine pulled up a few more pieces. "You think you're gonna just science the shit out of this?"

"No, sir," she let wicked smile flick across her lips, "I'm going to engineer the shit out of it."

"Just please for the love of god watch out for tetanus in all that ancient crap," McCoy hissed.

Yasmine nodded dismissively with her newfound sense of purpose coursing under her skin and she gathered the first few fragments she'd need. "Get comfortable 'cause this might take awhile, but I think I can get us back our transporter."

She set to work and the crowd dispersed for the most part, with McCoy trailing after Nyla back inside the hut for another round of inventory and Kirk managing to engage Whitney in a tense enough conversation about Starfleet administration. Uhura lingered with Yasmine and immediately became a second set of hands, tossing the engineer what she needed and even pushing away thick flyaways when she was too engrossed to notice.

At a pause in the clanking around, Uhura spoke up. "So what exactly happened down here? How did you get Kirk and Harlow back?"

"We actually didn't get the chance to help them," Yasmine scoffed as she pried two cylinders apart. "They'd broken out of the castle's dungeon by the time we broke in. All McCoy and I got out of it was managing to escape with captain jackass."

"So he's been this terrible the whole time?"

Yasmine gestured to where Whitney was snapping at Jim with his arms coiled like an angry five-year old. "From the first second we found him."

"God, and Commander Y'hara is one of the hardest workers I've seen. I hate that she's stuck under him."

"And I know it's driving Jim crazy that Whitney's allowed to represent Starfleet same as him."

Uhura paused, Yasmine cringed. "Is it 'Jim' now, Yaz?"

"Nyota, please," she brandished her phaser before aligning two pieces to weld together, "not while I'm working."

Uhura's eyes burned into Yasmine from the side but the latter just cleared her throat and blazed into the metal before her, doing her best to block thoughts of her captain from her mind. It was a wonder she didn't jerk and slice someone's arm off when the exact voice she was chasing away lilted from behind her.

"Ladies! How are things going?"

"Captain, with all due respect," Uhura tossed over her shoulder, "that's your bargaining voice and I'm just beginning to understand the setup Yaz put together. Whitney should be your job."

Jim sighed and crouched beside them, his nose childishly poking right in between. "I'm begging you, you're my communications officer. Can't you communicate with him?"

Yasmine played witness to a staring contest between the pair that had probably threatened to burn down a building or two at the academy, but finally Uhura grunted as she stood and stretched her long legs.

"There should be overtime for this."

"Why is my undying gratitude not enough for anybody anymore?"

Uhura waved him off with a smile and strutted toward Whitney, and if she wasn't busy trying to save their asses Yasmine would've wanted to watch the ensuing commotion. Instead she finished another thin band of welding and rocked back into a fully seated position to reach for another rusting chunk.

Jim was still right there and when his eyes searched her a little too long she cleared her throat. "Look, I'll take some of that undying gratitude if you'll find me something like a screwdriver."

"The tool or the drink?"

"Either would help." She leaned into him with a nudge and suddenly didn't want to lean away as the stress and exhaustion seemed to vanish where his muscle met hers. But he quirked a smile and left them both hanging for the muddy meadow while she turned back to the intricate wiring board she was digging up.

Minutes ticked by and so did a few pestering insects, one of which Yasmine was smacking away when her hand collided into Jim having returned. He handed her what was only half of what she was looking for, but thankfully the important half. She jammed the flathead into a crevice and was prying them apart when he spoke up.

"I'm glad you're ok, Yaz."

"And I wasn't even the one held captive by aliens. You're lucky, too."

Her chuckle bounced off his sobered expression as he sat across from her, his cosmic blues taking her in and threatening to say what she'd been stiff-arming since they reunited.

"You know, Bones and Nyla seem to have it figured out."

"It, Jim?"

He cleared his throat while Yasmine began furiously untangling more wires. "Themselves. I mean, we've done a lot of these dangerous missions together and haven't been too shabby behind the scenes either."

Yasmine didn't quite know why, but the longer she stalled the less scary was the pounding of blood in her ears. "Great sex tends to help morale, hm?"

"Something Bones is apparently gonna give me hell about for awhile." They laughed together and she thought she was out of the woods until he continued. "Look, I thought about –"

"Ow, shit!" Her palm grazed a freshly seared engine part as Jim's dangerous talk distracted her and after rubbing spit on it she said as delicately as possible, "Maybe we should talk later. The therapist is in the hut anyway, why don't you go talk to her?"

Jim pulled off the kicked puppy look well but sauntered off anyway, though Yasmine's nerves didn't fade with his absence. Instead the jumble of stray parts she was sorting through rendered themselves useless and her half-creation came to a complete standstill. No antennae, no signal minimizer, and not a damn clue why the thought of Jim kissing her for something more than pleasure was enticing as it was.

And terrifying, of course.

But she'd never get a chance to explore that feeling if they were trapped on that godforsaken planet for eternity so she snatched up another coil of aluminum to experiment with. Piece after piece broke too easily or wasn't a proper conductor or just wasn't cooperating with her ancient Tetris game and by the time she noticed Jim scurrying back from the hut with wide eyes she was ready to nosedive into oblivion.

"Look," she huffed when he was standing next to her again, "I aced mech history but how am I supposed to use a goddamn muffler?! People were cavemen back then."

"Speaking of cavemen, don't go near the hut right now."

Yasmine nearly choked. "At least you've got a bargaining chip now." She pushed the heels of her palms into her eye sockets and rubbed until the bursts behind her eyelids were more colorful than the vegetation around her. "This fucking jammer isn't getting anywhere, it's like I'm in day one of the Academy again."

A loud clang erupted when she tossed a pipe away and it landed on a sheet of metal, and apparently it startled Jim into action.

"Yaz, hey, looks like it's time for a breather." His gentle hand to her arm stifled any protests and further productivity and he helped her to a standing position. "Nyla and I ran across this little waterfall not far from here, whaddya say we go wash up a bit?"

She hummed a note of contentment at the thought of feeling even slightly cleaner and her mouth twitched into a smile like his. "Maybe it'll have better water pressure than 4112, hm?"

"There's the Yaz I know. Thought I'd lost you for a minute there."

Maybe she should say something about how she'd never stray too far from him, how she wanted to always be the woman he knew too well, but instead she strolled silently beside him toward the waterfall. It didn't take long for the sound of rushing water to lure them onto a small muddy precipice followed by a brief climb down to the pooling of crystal clear water.

She peeled off her jumpsuit and he his ragged party clothes, leaving skivvies on for a semblance of decency. Her touch breaking the water's surface also broke the cord of tension wrapped around her spine where Jim's hand then took up residence, easing them in as the cool water slowly climbed higher and higher on their frames. Drususian crickets sang as the noon sun filtered through broad leaves onto the pair and splashing water kept their quiet conversations a secret for only the nearest trees to hear.

"Water's a good look on you," Jim mused as she began to scoop it onto her shoulders.

"You sure it's not just the wet t-shirt contest over here?"

His head lolled with the grin tugging at his mouth. "Not this time. Your tats look great though."

A slight blush blossomed and she glanced down at herself. It was true she had a fair few tattoos and they never got to see real sunshine, and the ink now stood out almost delicately against her damp bronze skin.

He reached for her again, this time his fingers grazing the constellations etched on her ribcage as he dragged her to him and pressed a longing kiss to her burning lips. New energy pulsed through her and she gripped him tighter than before, not letting him go until they were trembling from the strength of the embrace.

Her mouth melted into his a few more times, tasting every bit of salt and dirt and tension those lips had borne in the days past before she pulled back to smirk up at him again.

"Well I'm glad prison didn't change you in that regard."

The warmth of his body still against hers was nearly suffocating in the humidity around them and yet his gleaming smile somehow still seared hotter. "I wasn't about to be sucking face with the aliens, if that's what you're saying."

"If you're gonna do that to me," she swayed away toward the steady stream of water from the rocks above, "guess I should wash my face, hm?"

The actual waterfall was a siren beckoning to her, dragging her away from the open and unruly expanse of ocean that was Jim Kirk and she followed it willingly, relishing the cooler water draping over her form to scrape at the filth caked on her skin that Drusus had so kindly offered. Yasmine dragged her hands through the length of her hair, stretching and twisting her body for the benefit of the man behind her who was thankfully still silent. They could do all the important talking later, if ever.

A gentle shove forced her exit and then a spray of droplets signaled Jim's body under the water and she turned to catch his darkened hair shaking in her face, eliciting the first childish giggles she'd felt since beaming down. She shoved him back and they wrestled for the water, glinting eyes and wide grins sparking this way and that.

"Alright, alright, I give." She let her hands slide down his arms in lazy defeat, relinquishing herself to his guidance as he slowly turned her around and began kneading at her shoulders.

They'd never had such a spare moment that wasn't spent with greedy hands pulling at clothes but Jim passed over her bra as his skilled fingers worked through her taut muscles. The miles between them since they'd reunited seemed to close as he wouldn't let her falter under his touch, instead letting his lips follow delicious suit and speak volumes of sweetness into her skin.

Another set of tattoos sat along her spine, mandalas graduating in size that he had kissed before and he set to work kissing again with a heated open mouth. On his way up the simple presses turned into playful bites that scraped at something inside her and by the time his teeth were at the bend in her neck she had to whip around to stop the smile on her mouth from tearing her cheeks in two. She wasn't getting into heaven anyway after that sinful mouth of his.

"Yaz," he breathed into her, smile faltered but achingly gentle, nearly stumbling on the slippery rocks beneath them as he leaned into her.

Her nose was rested next to his, lips grazing as she responded, "I know, I know." She knew the words caught in his throat and the ones in her own, hammering in contrast to her heartbeat softly thundering against his under the spray of the waterfall.

But she wasn't about to let the threats on that planet prematurely push her to word vomit about something she wasn't even sure was a good idea, a trait she and Jim shared for better or for worse.

"Much as I'd like to put in for vacation time right here," he eased off with a grab to her ass that she returned, "that jammer isn't gonna stop distracting you till it's done."

"Blame Scotty for my work ethic when we get back."

They patted dry and redressed best they could before treading reluctantly back toward their little blip of civilization and Whitney's bothersome yammering echoed to interrupt their last kiss as Jim's groan rumbled against her lips.