Commodore

Chapter 4: Attraction

Rev spent the next week laying low, though there was a noticeable skip in her step. It had taken some getting used to, not being woken up in the middle of the night, not being the one giving orders, but she'd gotten back into her old routine fairly quickly. Being Commander, Rev worked in the bridge a few hours a day, and was encouraged by Kirk to speak up more like she had when she was stationed three years previously, but the past three years had changed her and she was less eager to impress her Captain, especially considering she had been his equal for two years and his superior for one and a half. Unless she was called upon, she usually stayed quiet.

Kirk tried to spend more time around his new Commander, because he sensed that she was still not getting enough love from her crewmates. She had Uhura, and obviously Chekov, who readily jumped back onto their duties as friends once she'd come back, and McCoy was often seen talking to her, but he was a decade older than her and usually they didn't have much to talk about. Rev only seemed to share formal conversations with her brother, since he didn't seem to understand why she would risk her career to get out of her role as Commodore. Yeah, she was having a fight with her brother, and it was weird to watch. Kirk was seven years older than her, but he was often categorized under 'immature,' which he took to mean he acted around her age.

Let's be honest here; he liked the young Vulcan. He admired her willingness to stay in her position even though it displeased her; he would have asked to step down. She found a way out without asking, and although it was in one way cowardly to back down in the face of an official, he understood that she felt the need to protect her crew and herself. It went further than that, though, because he often found himself actually watching her when she was reporting instead of the planet, and when she asked what was wrong he'd realize he was in a zoned-out trance and had to make her start over.

Because of this, Jim Kirk was scared. He hadn't been attracted to somebody in a long time. Before he had been assigned to Captain the ENTERPRISE, he had liked sex. A lot. He was that guy, who had a lot of sex. But once he'd become the Captain of the ENTERPRISE, he'd stopped all that. Sure, every once in a while on shore leave he'd find a pretty alien in a local bar, but he'd pretty much stopped hitting on every girl he saw. He hadn't been attracted to a girl in a long time. He didn't just want to have sex with Rev. He thought she was pretty, yes, but she was also wickedly smart, smarter than Spock in some senses, she was cool under pressure and strong and professional. He'd seen her as a child three years before, like he had to protect her in a childish sort of way, but in three years she had grown to be seemingly much older. He understood the concept of dating, of course, he'd had girlfriends before he'd joined Starfleet, but his longest relationship had been only three months long. Plus, this was Rev, she was a Vulcan, the likelihood she liked him back was, like, five million to one (either sibling could probably tell him the exact ratio, but he wasn't sure he wanted to know). Even if she did, he couldn't even think of what that would be like.

Still, it was eating away at him inside. Every time she reported to him, every time he saw her working. No, she didn't show much emotion, but when she wasn't paying attention she was quite easy to read, if you bothered to try. Hell, even her fighting was elegant. If she ever got into a tussle on a planet, she'd have the opposing creature on the ground in a few seconds, usually minimally hurt.

It wasn't fair. Most female officers on the ship would be happy to have Captain Kirk attracted to them. Why did he have to be attracted to Rev?

A week later, Rev had been to all three planets they had discovered as part of the landing parties. She was on the third now, in the midst of a fistfight with Kirk, Chekov, and two redshirt Lieutenants. Rev had an inkling feeling that Kirk sent down Engineers as bait, because they were usually ones that had just been omitted and were eager to impress.