This one's short, I know, but the next one is like 6k to make up for it.
Jim meandered down to the library, enjoying stretching his legs after so long cooped up in his rooms. It was just past two in the morning and he had no fears about running into Spock now; even though he probably wasn't sleeping, he tended to respect the need of the lesser creatures about him for rest and remained in his own rooms.
Stifling a yawn, he pushed open one of the two carved-wood doors to the library. It was quite nice; it had an open second floor ringed by a walkway that allowed for more bookshelves and was a bit longer than most of the rooms, with windows along one wall between each bookcase and a sitting area before a fireplace at one end. It was one of his favorites in the citadel.
The lights, fire-colored wall scones, were on. Jim blinked himself out of his late-night trance and swept his gaze over the room again.
And locked eyes with his daughter.
"Jane." he said, in some poor combination of greeting, question, and consternation.
She looked at him shyly from where she was, reaching for a book on a shelf just out of her reach.
"Admiral."
Jim stood in silent awkwardness for about a minute.
"What-" he cleared his throat, shaking off his unease. He was charming, goddamnit. He could talk to his own daughter. "What are you doing up so late?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"I see. So you decided to visit the library, naturally."
"Indeed."
Jim had to bite the inside corner of his lip to keep from smiling at the reply.
"I'm sure someone could fix you up a glass of warm milk."
She made a face and didn't comment.
"Ah." Jim held up a hand in a sort of 'got you' motion "Vegetarian."
Jim walked over and plucked the book she'd been reaching for from the shelf. With some surprise, he found it was the one he'd come to retrieve.
"This is a bit advanced for someone your age, isn't it?"
Jane puffed up with a familiar haughty air that had Jim smiling in spite of himself. "I am one-quarter vulcan."
"Of course." he said, still not handing her the book "I have no doubt you could read it. I meant that it's...mature, I suppose. Not the kind of thing someone with a full life ahead of them would appreciate."
"Why not?" she asked, leaning up to read the cover "What's it about?"
Jim turned the cover over to see the stone-caved face of a man beneath bold, rough-edged font naming the novel The Emperor's Last Island.
"It's a story about Napoleon Bonaparte, a famous ruler on Earth. At the end of his life he was exiled to an island called Saint Helena."
"Do you like it?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Oh, boring reasons. I identify with Napoleon, I suppose."
Jane's face scrunched up in confusion at this and Jim took pity on her. He tucked the book under his arm and gestured to the rest of the bookcases.
"But enough about that. Let me see if I can find you something you'll like better."
She trailed after him as he moved back through the shelves, considering.
"I still want to read that book."
"Maybe later. Aha, how about Have Spacesuit, Will Travel?'"
"I read that one already."
"Good tastes, then. The Hobbit?"
"That one too."
"Peter Pan?" she nodded "Treasure Island?"
Jim stopped looking at the shelves to look at her.
"Well, you're quite well read. If this keeps up I might have to move on to Shakespeare's book of sonnets."
"I read it."
Jim paused.
"Is that so. The Martian?"
Again, she nodded. Jim thought back on the book and sent a silent apology Spock's way.
"Sherlock Holmes and The Great Gatsby as well, I should think."
She seemed to have figured out he'd cottoned on and took great interest in the row of books beside her.
"How about," he asked "A Tale of Two Cites."
She looked up and shook her head as he'd known she would. That book wasn't left in the library.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you read whichever books didn't have any dust on them."
Jane didn't confirm or deny this. Jim knew enough about her father to know what that meant. Armed with new knowledge, he turned to another shelf and ran his fingers over the spines until he found what he was looking for.
"Here we are; Dealing with Dragons. It's about a spirited girl who runs away to live with a fearsome dragon."
She took the book skeptically.
"That sounds illogical."
Jim walked back to the couch and sat down, talking as he went, confident that she would follow if she wanted.
"She doesn't think so."
Jane did follow, and sat tentatively on the other end of the couch.
"But dragons aren't real."
"Oh on the contrary. I met a group of dragons on Berengaria Seven once. Charming creatures. They made the warmest sweaters."
The book was at once clutched to her chest and forgotten entirely.
"Did they knit?"
"Sort of. It was an art I've never seen duplicated. See, there were these bushes there that grew everywhere, and they were covered in a sort of cotton substance..."
Somehow, neither book was read over the next few hours. Jim would finish regaling her with one story only to accidentally mention another, and then he'd be off again, barely able to keep up with her questions. He talked about the dragons and the beings so advanced they may as well have been gods, the ones who taught him things and the ones he managed to help, travelling to the past, travelling to the future, traveling to places farther and stranger than either.
Only when the sun was beginning to peak up over the edge of the planet did either of them slow down. By that time Jim had just related as much as he knew (and possibly more besides) about tribbles, and Jane had slid down against the backrest with drooping eyes.
"Could I be a Captain one day?" Jane asked sleepily.
Jim stroked her hair and her eyes closed.
"You could. You can be anything you want."
"Really?"
"Yes."
Spock nudged open the door to Jane's room, surprised to find her sleeping. Normally she would be up with the dawn, her youth and heritage granting her a shorter sleep schedule, but now she lay curled under the blankets, her hair disheveled and expression slack despite the sunlight streaming in through the windows. Spock walked to her and sat on the bed to rouse her.
"Jane."
Jane stirred when he touched her shoulder, reluctant to wake. Eventually her eyes drifted open. She blinked, then looked at him.
"What-" she yawned "where did the Admiral go?"
Spock's blood turned to ice in his veins.
"The Admiral was here?"
"Mmm-hmm." Jane sat up, rubbing her eyes. Then she glanced around and tilted her head slightly.
"Not here. The library."
She started rummaging around in the blankets with all the coordination of the recently awakened. Spock was about to reach out and catch her attention when she spotted what she was looking for on the windowsill.
"My book." She picked it up with a light smile and finally looked at Spock.
Spock did set his hands on her shoulders now, his chest tight.
"Jane, did the Admiral hurt you?"
Jane was, by necessity, wise beyond her years. From the way her smile fell away, he knew the meaning of his words was not lost on her.
"No." she muttered, holding the book up as though it were a shield. "He just told me about the stars. He wouldn't do anything bad."
"Jane, you don't know that."
"Yes I do. I'm not like you but I still know things."
She was fidgeting with the corner of the old book in her hands, tiny papery bits coming off as dust as she did so. Wincing for it, Spock set one hand over hers and willed himself to be calm. Jane was unharmed.
"You must be more careful, Jane. You remember how to call for me if anything ever happens."
Pouting very slightly, Jane nodded and tugged on the parental bond just to prove she could.
"Good." he glanced at her book, looking to distract himself. "What have you found?"
"It's a book about dragons." Jane said, just the slightest bit sulky.
Spock extracted it from her hands and turned it over, looking at the cartoonish cover that had been painstakingly restored at some point. He shifted so that he was beside Jane on the bed, leaning back against the wall, and raised his eyebrows at her. She raised hers back.
A moment later she settled in next to him as he flipped open to the first page.
"Linderwall was a large kingdom, just east of the Mountains of Morning, where philosophers were highly respected and the number five was fashionable." he began.
Jim had had two glorious years cold-free before his body cottoned on to the fact that he was fooling it with space, and then he'd gone right back to catching a bug in Earth's November no matter where in the universe he was or what the weather might be like there. Usually, it was annoying. Tonight it would be a godsend.
It was one of those rare storms where the rain clouds failed to cover the moon, so the drops shimmered with white light as they fell and shattered against the earth. It was such an enchanting sight that Jim didn't notice Spock until he was well within view on the garden path.
Spock had no umbrella. He stood in the garden barefoot and shirtless, his face and hands upturned to the rain and his eyes, thankfully, closed. The moonlight shone over his wet skin, casting him an in an alabaster glow. Jim's breath stuttered in his lungs. He hadn't been so close since the auction, and he looked so very beautiful, so ethereal and otherly. Jim was at once aware that they were not the same and glad for it.
Then Spock opened his eyes just slightly, and Jim snapped to reality just in time to drop his umbrella enough to cover his face.
There was a beat where the only sound in the garden was the patter of rain on cobblestones and the canvas of Jim's umbrella. Then:
"Admiral."
Spock's voice was even and blank. Jim knew the tone was hiding more, but, he noted with sadness, it had been too long for him to identify what that might be.
"Not the best of weather for tanning." Jim tried for light. His voice was rough and strange with the vestiges of his cold, the only reason he dared to speak.
He wished he could look again, drink in the way Spock's hair abandoned formation with the weight of the water it held, see his deep brown eyes reflecting the moon's pale shine.
"Nor the most common time for a stroll."
His voice was suspicious and intoxicating. Guilt and longing welled up in Jim's chest alongside shame. He was a coward, he realized, but couldn't bring himself to lift the umbrella. There were no scars on Spock's body, but there were more lines on his face than there should have been for a vulcan of his age. Jim warred with himself in the drifting silence. He couldn't face Spock now, unstable and hesitating. Not yet.
The rain pattered about them, soft and soothing.
"It is an old vulcan form of mediation. The planet had little rain, but what did fall was thoroughly appreciated." Spock offered.
Jim smiled a bit.
"I've always liked this kind of storm."
Spock's hands fell to his sides and into Jim's mostly obscured line of sight as he turned to face him.
"If I may ask." Spock began, his voice low but startling nonetheless "Why did you purchase us?"
Jim rolled his shoulders. "The mansion seemed a bit lifeless, before."
There was another silence, this one measured and tense. Spock wasn't having that, then. His fists stayed open at his sides only through practiced control, Jim suspected.
"Do you have any children, Admiral?"
"I do." The words were strange on his lips. I do, except, he thought.
"Imagine," Spock said, slow and careful "you had to weigh the virtues of letting a man your child admires groom her for an unknown fate, or of saving her that for the inevitability that one day, further off, someone much less desirable will do the job."
Jim's heartbeat stuttered at the words. With rising horror, he thought back on the past few weeks from Spock's perspective.
"Admiral, I beg you, call upon me instead."
"No." Jim said too quickly, gripping the handle of his umbrella so tight it creaked. A second later, when Spock's fingers twitched, he realized his mistake. "I mean." he rubbed a hand over his eyes "I've been a fool yet again."
"Admiral?"
Jim pulled himself up, drew on the Captain to give him strength. "I have no intention of calling on either of you in such a manner. Doctor McCoy will assure you of the same thing."
"He has." Spock conceded. It didn't sound as though he cared. "You must understand my continued vigilance."
"I do." Jim pursed his lips.
There was a pause.
"Our former master also had no such desires, but he gave no illusions to his apathy on the matter in his search for a buyer."
"A buyer?" For Jane? The thought of it sends horror along Jim's spine and a vicious joy for their previous master's fate skittering through his thoughts.
"He had retired from the military and was a trafficker by trade. He did find one, shortly before his accident."
Spock's voice was just this side of aloof, like the non-sequitur was about as relevant as the weather despite the way it hung in the air for Jim to mull over. Spock was threatening him, he realized. Jim should not have found that as attractive as he did.
"I see." he said evenly "Is there really anything I could say that would allay your fears?"
It wasn't a question, more a statement to lead Spock to a conclusion he already knew.
Predictably, Spock replied "...I suppose not."
Jim turned around on the path to head back inside "I thought not. I will endeavor to make sure there are others around, should I encounter Jane again. I've already found she's hard to avoid." There was a hint of fondness in his words that he couldn't hide as he spoke "I'll leave you to your meditation. Goodnight, Spock."
Jim doubted he'd be sleeping that night.
Spock doubted he would be able to return to his meditation. His skin was still outright tingling with the proximity of the Admiral's mind, overwhelming and distracting, addicting and entrancing.
And so strangely familiar.