A/N: Because there is a lot of life happening right now and this isn't going to get updated until Christmas break otherwise.

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Enterprise High

being a high school AU of ST: XI

with many hijinks

and much angst

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Chapter Forty-Two: An Interval (III)

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The park was brighter in the day.

Obviously. No matter how large and luminescent the streetlamps were, their halos were blue or gray, casting a white light that wasn't the same as the sun, that didn't have the sun's sweet texture. Kirk lay heavily on the grass, his shoulders pressed down, his spine lined up and his legs out straight. The sun walked up and down his skin for a while and finally laid its head on his joints and breathed so slowly that it sank into his bones.

The color behind his eyelids was becoming black from white-yellow when it went gray. "Jim," said Spock. "Taking in the sun?"

"It's getting warmer," said Kirk, putting his forearm in front of his eyes and opening them. "Look, I forgot a jacket today and I'm not going to freeze to death."

Spock did not respond. He got to his knees, steadying himself with a splayed palm as he lowered himself onto the grass. Spock lay out beside him, a considerate distance away, maybe half a meter or so. Just enough to reach over and grab Spock's hand. Just enough to want to.

"Considering our conversation last night, I am doing very well," said Spock. Kirk, by then, had moved his arm, so he couldn't look over at Spock without obviously doing so. The sun would spear him straight in the optic nerve.

"Me too," echoed Kirk, "considering."

Spock didn't hesitate. "It is gorgeous in San Francisco."

"It is," said Kirk. He squinted, then widened his eyes. There was a wide-brimmed tree at the upper edge of his vision. The leaves were a nearly transparent green. They waved like hands in the wind. People's feet crunched grass all around them; it wasn't crowded, but privacy would be hard to find.

"What do you like the most?"

The sun meant that when he looked over at Spock, he saw only a profile; a mountainous nose growing from the facial plain and the edges of smooth, straight hair. There was no color in the glimpse; there was too much shadow and too much light. But Kirk did see a glint of green in Spock's lips, pursed and hilly beneath his nose.

"Well, you, obviously," said Kirk in his head. He tried to say it out loud, just to test it out, just to see what it would be like if he had permission to say these things to the best person he knew. He looked down at Spock's hands, clasped exactly over his stomach, and said, "The company is pretty great."

Spock shifted in the grass and turned his head away. "It is."

Kirk closed his eyes. Close enough for now.

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