works_in_space

Jim couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t too surprised that he found himself tossing and turning at 0200 hours, given all that was going on.

Within thirty-six hours, the annual promotion lists would arrive from Starfleet Command. Jim knew of at least eight captain’s chairs that would be filled, and was sure that Sulu would fill one of them. He was also quite sure that despite his recommendation, Chekov would not be promoted, the black mark of Reliant’s destruction a permanent one. Jim didn’t look forward to congratulating one of his officers while another tried to hide his disappointment. Handling Sulu’s departure would most likely be awkward for the next few weeks.

Then there was the matter of talking to Bones. The good doctor was practically hovering every time Jim entered the room, trying to find out just who had put the spring in Jim’s step. Jim hated not being able to tell Bones about Laura, or about Milliways. He also hated facing the possibility that Bones knew all about the Bar, and that neither had ever confided in the other. He almost hoped Bones had never been there, that the Leonard McCoy who’d left his mark in the Bar was from another timeline.

In which case Jim would have to prove that the Bar was real, and that he wasn’t pulling an elaborate prank on Bones. Bones was the sort who could assume that Jim was telling him to butt out of his captain’s private life by making up a crazy story. And all that would do that make Bones stop asking about the new woman in Jim’s life. And start trying to find out who she was through more underhanded tactics.

Just dealing with Bones alone, Jim thought as he rolled over again and saw that all of six minutes has passed since he last saw the clock, would be enough to keep me up.

But Laura…she was a category all to herself. In a good way, he would note, but it had been so long since he felt like this about a woman. Since he met Antonia. (Was there something about seeing a woman on horseback that made her that much more alluring?)

There had been other women. With Teyla, in retrospect it seemed clear that she was not ready to find someone from outside her people. As much as he likes Leela, theirs was a relationship between two very physical people, with the bedroom just being a natural extension of the sparring. He would miss it, if things kept going well with Laura, but he also never saw it as being particularly deep. And with Gillian, the gulf of three centuries was just too large to bridge. (Perhaps if they met on the neutral ground of Milliways instead of in her time, things could have been different.)

Which brought Jim back to Laura. He’d know her a week. And he just couldn’t stop thinking about her. Or stop smiling. Some of this was physical, of course. But he was sure there was something more. He just couldn’t say why. It was as if he saw something there that was invisible. But that made no sense.

He tried to tell himself to stop analyzing things. At worst this was turning into a memorable fling with a smart, gorgeous, and self-assured woman. There was no reason to try and get under the surface of things. Or to do anything than enjoy whatever time he and Laura managed to share. But there was always a part of him that was thinking. Or perhaps strategizing. And it was making strategies for seeing someone who lived in another time. And for finding the moments to meet her in the Bar. And for finding a way of showing her his time and his world without breaking the temporal prime directive.

He knew that he needed to take a breath. Even assuming that she wasn’t going to find her way home and then never find her way back to the Bar, it was too soon for grand planning. Besides, he barely knew her. He didn’t even know her last name. And there was something nagging at him. How certain words and reactions seemed very well chosen. How, even in the throes of passion, Laura was in remarkable control of her body, like a trained athlete and not an amateur dancer. How he wasn’t quite sure she had shown him her real self.

He knew that was just being a little nervous about things. Nothing more. He knew that even at his age, even with his (only partially earned) reputation as a ladies’ man, he tended to worry about losing control even in a romance. Laura wasn’t being mysterious. Or any more mysterious than anyone else at a place like Milliways. And he would probably admit that maybe it was part of her allure that she played it close to the vest.

He looked at the clock again. 0230. He decided he’d spent enough time overthinking. He would deal with Sulu and Chekov and Bones in the morning, and he would let things happen without his command at the Bar.