lucetilogs | .lunch with the captain and the vampire slayer.

.lunch with the captain and the vampire slayer.

Who:

a_slayer_slays
What: Lunchtime Antics
When: June 2nd, Tuesday.
Where: The Fountain then to 7th Heaven
Summary: Kirk and Buffy are going to spend some bonding time talking about childhoods, school, and just general chit chat.
Rating: PG-13? It's Kirk. There's going to be some kind of booze and swearing and sexual innuendo somewhere in here.

Usually Kirk wasn't one that would find himself early for many occasions. Sure he would always be on time, show up on his bike, and make a really good impression on the girl he was meeting. Though here on this planet that had no Federation Designation Number? He found himself wandering around most the time looking for something to do.

So he had ended up early for the meeting place for the lunch date. Well, it wasn't so much of a date. Kirk just liked to tease Buffy that it was. He could tell the girl was a bit uptight in her "save the world" mindset. The Captain couldn't blame her. He was like that much of the time as well back on the Enterprise. Though here he figured he might as well help her unwind.

He glanced around and sat on the edge of the fountain. Kirk considered it an off-duty meeting, thus decided not to wear his golden Captain uniform. Instead he just wore the black undershirt and the black pants. His arms crossed over his chest as he waited for the other part of the equation. It seemed like everything was getting back on it's feet after the crazy shit that had happened.

"Good going, Jim." he muttered to himself. "Get stranded on a planet right when global world ending paradoxes happen."

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"Well seeing how you came back to life, I guess this Spike guy being alive isn't that big of a deal either." He glanced over at her at the question.

"Yeah. I have one of the rooms in the community buildings. No sign of anyone from my ship yet."

Though the more time passed the more Kirk was thinking he didn't want his crew here. Spock would quickly grow agitated fast. At least, as agitated as a half-Vulcan would allow himself. Sulu and Chekov would probably enjoy the shore-leave. Bones would certainly lose his mind and Uhura... Uhura would probably fit in. And that sort of of terrified him.

"No, I suppose not. Would you believe me if I told you that only one of the four people living in our current house hasn't died twice?" And so, she tested him with a question of her own, glancing slyly across at him as they walked. Buffy preferred being honest with people. The unfortunate downside of being honest was that people often mistook her honesty for insanity. No wonder she was secret-identity girl.

A corner of her envied his solo living quarters. After all, it must be nice to not be surrounded by the serious over-protection from Angel and the eerie personal insights from Spike; however, the majority of Buffy's self preferred her cared ones to be close. Oh, she wanted everything all at once and thinking about it gave her a headache.

"Is it lonely, being here without them?"

A silence fell between the two as he thought about it. He was lonely for most of his life, now that he thought about it. His father died, his mother was always off world, his step-father hated him and his older brother ran away from home. The first friend he really had was Bones. The rest of his time was spent getting in fights, drinking his life away, and well getting any company for the night he could find. Of the female variety of course.

In the day he met the crew of the Enterprise and the eight days he spent being their captain... they were like his family. A family that was off in space without him, on his ship. Spock should have taken over being Acting Captain by now. And hopefully they wouldn't come after him.

"Yeah." he finally said even though his eyes were out in the distance. "It is."

She spent the silence thinking about those back home, as well. Of course, Angel and Spike and Faith's presences were major boons to her comfort level. But there were heaps of tension. Buffy had pummeled and been pummeled by all three of them. They had all had their stint on the dark side. She was still undecided about whether she would actually want either Xander or Willow to arrive. Getting through things was always easier, together--but after the chaos of the last week, she wasn't sure she wanted to put anyone through that.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Jim." Buffy's sideways smile is slightly rueful. "I know I'm probably a pretty poor replacement for whatever folk you have back home. But at least lunch doesn't have to be solo, right?"

He looked back at her with a face of almost shock. "Who said you were replacing anyone? You're a friend. Different from them because you're not on a star ship, but still a friend. That means no one can replace you either."

"Well, I didn't mean I'd literally replace them, just--Hey, you know what?" Her smile brightened, and she nudged an elbow in his direction. "I'm not even gonna bother with the arguing, because I just want to bask in that niceness for the moment. It's nice to be referred to as a friend, considering I usually have a pretty tough time making them."

Buffy slid her arms comfortably across her chest, palms resting in the elbow crooks of the opposite arm. She kicked at the ground while she walked, sending pebbles a-skitter.

"No offense to your chosen profession, but I think living on a ship in space would drive me batty so I'm glad that I'm not on a star ship. Must get some awful cases of cabin fever."

He laughed a bit. Just the way he wanted the conversation to take place. "It takes some getting used to. Not everyone is meant for Starfleet either. I guess it was just always in my blood, being born in space and all."

Kirk looked at her with a small smile. "We do have shore-leave when we reach outposts or starbases. It's just like how can the old ships on the sea handle it?"

"So, if you're born in space, what nationality does that make you? A citizen of the Milky Way, or something? Or, can you be an alien if you're not actually born on Earth?"

She would come across as genuinely concerned over these matters. The details, the protocol, they interested her so long as she never had to operate within their potential restrictions. It was like learning about demon etiquette, only with less yicky demony slime. She hoped.

Besides, who wouldn't want to learn of the civilization of the future?

"Technically I'm a citizen of Earth. I was raised in Iowa by..." he stopped short and glanced up at the sky. "I raised myself."

Kirk thought that was the best way of explaining it in basic details. How was he going to say it without coming off crude? My mother was hardly there, busy being off-world. My step-father hated my brother and I and was abusive. No, that wouldn't work. Besides there was no point in opening old wounds that still hadn't fully healed.

"My mother and father were both members of Starfleet from Earth. Technically the USS Kelvin came from Earth."

Clearly, there was something more behind the curt explanation; Buffy was not going to pry. Even though the word 'friend' had been bandied around earlier, things weren't so entrenched that she could press for details. That would come later. Optimistically enough, she hoped for a later.

"Does it happen often, kids being born in space? Or are you a special case?"

"Sometimes it does, space stations and stuff. I wasn't supposed to be born in space. The Kelvin was attacked and sent Mom into labor even though she was on the proper drugs that would make the pregnancy last until they came back to Earth." he shrugged. "At least that was what Mom always told me."

"Sounds eventful. For her, I suppose. Well, and you. Big shiny bright and cold world, after all."

She tapped her palms against herself, a restless habit that filled up the spaces between mildly awkward comments. At least it was a different kind of awkward to the sort that grew and mated and multiplied in the house. At least, this awkward was just her fault. She didn't really have the words to respond to what he was saying.

"I just had your run of the mill hospital beginning. In L.A., where I lived a pretty run of the mill California girl life. And then I grew up and got responsibilities. Not necessarily in that order, of course."

He laughed. "I'm pretty sure Mom wanted me to be born that way. Having to give birth on a space shuttle while the ship you were on is being attacked must have sucked."

Oh, he knew he downplayed it. He knew how much it ripped his mother up. He saw it whenever she was drinking at home when she wasn't off-world. Or sometimes how she would look at him and expect someone else to be standing there. At least she had been there for his graduation and promotion to Captain.

"What is it like living in places like L.A.? I only really lived in San Fransisco for three years."

"It's sunny--fashionable. People wear pairs of sunglasses almost bigger than their heads, everyone crash diets and the streets are miserably dangerous after dark. I only lived in L.A. until I was sixteen. I was kicked out of my school there, and my mother and I moved to a teensy little town called Sunnydale, where everyone wore the overly big sunglasses three months too late and the after-dark was five times more dangerous."

She was simplifying things. Truthfully, she wasn't sure if she wanted to let Kirk in on her big secret identity. Making friends was hard enough without the "one girl in all the world" speech interfering. Not that she was the one, anymore. Now she was just one of many. Or, rather, one in charge of many.

"About a year ago, work took me out of the country. I was in Scotland before I was dragged here. But California will always be home."

He smiled as they reached the doors to 7th Heaven. Glancing over his shoulder and giving her a smile, he pulled the door open. The topic of home really made him wonder about this place.

"How many people do you think consider Luceti home, Buffy?"

Kirk never would find this place home. It wasn't where he felt at home. There were no ways to push himself, to make himself known to the universe here. In the end it was just a glorified prison planet in his mind. At least he wasn't mining coal.

"Some people have been here for a long time. More than a year, I think. A year can make a huge difference--even if a year never made Scotland my home, I certainly did get a homey feel from Sunnydale after just a few weeks there. It's the people around you, I think."

She followed him into the restaurant, fingers lingering on the door to make sure that it did not shut too loudly. A habit picked up from spending so much of her extra-curricular time in a library.

"I have people here, of course. But Angel, and Spike, and Faith?" Buffy shook her head. "That's not so much a family as a recipe for major disaster--but, you? What do you consider home? Your ship or the place you lived before it? Can a ship be a home?"

"Really, I never thought I had a home." His voice dropped slightly to a softer tone. "I always wandered. Enlisting in Starfleet gave me a direction... but I didn't find a home until I had to save the Enterprise and the Federation. Sitting in the Captain's Chair is where home is. I can be me and know my crew understand me and my decisions. And if there was ever a problem with my judgment? I know they would take the helm for me."

He looked down at her with a small smile. "The Enterprise is home because of my crew. But even if all of them were here in this place... we aren't doing our mission. We're being held here unable to explore and be ourselves. That's why it'll never be home."

There was a small pause where he smiled a bit more. "Of course pleasant company like yours defiantly helps."

Buffy picked out a table, dragging a chair away from it in order to sit. His comments allowed her to reflect on their common ground. Sure, she wasn't a leader in the much of an official capacity, but Buffy was a leader. Well. Okay. Semi-official, with the creation of the Slayer Organization. But that was neither here nor there and certainly no where near the verbal component of this conversation.

"For your sake, then, I hope you don't have to have my pleasant company's help for long. If your chair of a home is where you'd rather be."

She sat, fingernails tapping the table-top once she was sitting. Buffy nodded in the direction of the empty seat across from her. "Grab a chair, Jim."

When she had said it, he was already pulling one over to sit across from her. He leaned forward on the table, looking at the small decorations. It reminded him of that night in the Riverside Bar where he had decided to join Starfleet. It seemed almost like a lifetime ago now. But now he was glad he got into that bar fight with Cupcake.

"Well if you don't mind me asking? I'd love to have your pleasant company as long as I'm here. Never know, with the two of us, maybe we can figure a way home."

"What a think-tank, we'd be. A--from what I can tell--headstrong, hotshot captain and an irrational California girl. We'll be up for all the best Nobel prizes. Believe me, I am much better at being the solution rather than thinking of one. I'm an action-girl."

The self-deprecation was thick, but not without a smile to soften it. After all, flattery makes for miles and all this insistence on the pleasantness of her company brought a warm, happy flush to her face.

"I think cleverer folks than me have been working on trying to get home for far longer than I've even been here. But then again, maybe they're thinking to hard on it. Maybe what they need is some action."

"You know, that's pretty much exactly, what I tell Spock."

Kirk placed the menu down and looked at her, his hands complimenting the scenario he was about to give her. "Alright, so you have this one bad guy ship who blows up six of your fellow ships. Your the First Officer on board, right?"

One of his hands moved to the side. "The bad guy ship is going this way. However, your Acting Captain wants to go back to the Federation." his other hand moved in the opposite direction. "He thinks that running back to the Federation to regroup will even the odds of the fight against this ship." he moved his first hand in a circle.

"So then, as the First Officer, what would you do? Would you stand by the Acting Captain's assessment and run back to regroup, or go after the other ship?"

A wedge of Buffy felt as though she was being tested. How would her answer influence Jim's opinion of her? She watched his hands, listened closely, and inched to the edge of her seat. But her answer was clear--ignoring all the conflicting factors about what might be right and what might be prudent, she presses one hand down on the table's surface and uses the other to point out the hand that Jim was using to stand in for the enemy ship.

"I'd have to try. Who knows what the lost opportunity would cost the group as a whole, and if the chance to try and take that one down was there, I'd have to try. Running away to fight another day only works if you actually can fight another day--and if you can fight another day, you may as well fight now."

She holds her position, still pointing stiffly at the bad-guy-hand. After all, how many impossible enemies had she pursued relentlessly, only to bag the victory anyway? It was not a case of being cocky, but a confidence in the fact that falling back to regroup can easily be just as fatal as giving chase.

He let himself grin. Kirk knew he liked her for a reason. Of course, Buffy was a very attractive woman. But she was smart and knew that sometimes you would have to throw the rules out the window to get something done. If Spock ever showed up it would drive him nuts having someone else that thought like Kirk.

"That was what I said to do."

Good. By his grin, she guessed that she passed the test. Buffy rapped her knuckles loudly against the tabletop in triumph. She liked triumph. Triumph was definitely her colour.

"What you said--so, you're telling me that's something that actually happened? And did you really go after the other ship?"

She was still leaning forward, but with the utility of pointing out her actions no longer needed, now she was sitting like this to hang off of his words.

"What happened?"

"Nero had attacked the other Starfleet ships and a planet named Vulcan, Spock's homeworld. Spock was Acting Captain because Captain Pike had been taken by Nero. Spock wanted to regroup with the fleet and try to take on Nero that way. I told him it wouldn't work, that we should take the opportunity and go after Nero ourselves. One heated argument later and I was thrown off for mutiny."

He loved telling people the stories of what had happened on the Enterprise. Their eyes lit up in to such a state of wonder and amazement that it was hard not to smile back. And Buffy was willing to listen.

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