smartass_captain | Some days, a man just can't catch a break. [Open, tagging Clint and Verity]

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Some days, a man just can't catch a break. [Open, tagging Clint and Verity]

New York circa 2013 isn't such a bad place, Jim has decided. There's so much to take in and watch that he's certain he could be kept busy for months on end just trying to learn everything he could. Clint had explained currency to him today--Jim knew what it was, just not how it all divvied up. He'd done a bit of research on a clunky old machine Clint had told him the name of and Jim had subsequently forgotten. Some kind of ancient PADD device on an obsolete web browser.

Some girl had shown up hassling Clint about something or another a while ago, and the archer had assured Jim he wouldn't be gone long and left. She was too young for Jim to pay much attention to, and Clint didn't need Jim tagging along for every babysitting job he ended up getting drug off to. Or it was a neighbor asking him about a leak in their ceiling, in which case Jim was just a jerk.

Wooden stairs creaked in protest when Jim finally left the apartment building, being careful to lock up with the spare key he'd gotten from Clint that was stowed safely in the pocket of his purple sweatshirt he was borrowing. Eggs again for the third day in a row didn't seem appealing, and Clint had given him a bit of money, so Jim is heading down to the corner to grab a bite of whatever awesome smelling food was being sold by the vendor he'd been watching from the window for three days now.

"Bro, look! At the corner by the falafel stand bro!"

There, at the corner, was a scruffy short haired blond in a purple sweatshirt and sweatpants, fumbling in his pocket for the correct change to pay for his order. Truly, an easier target would never happen. He didn't even look like he'd had his morning coffee yet. (Jim hadn't). The next thing Jim knows, his delicious smelling food is strewn on the street as a couple thugs in tracksuits drag Jim off into an alley trying to beat the shit out of him.

"What the hell?!" That was his breakfast, assholes!

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"I dunno, jumping off a building and chucking arrows at guys with your bare hands seems pretty legit to me." 'Superhero' is a safer phrasing than 'super soldier' is in Jim's head, so that's what he's going with. Never mind that jumping thirty meters and shit was definitely a Khan thing. Everything's fine. Plus, learning about your new friends!

He will accept the help from Verity, as he doesn't have the best range of motion in his left arm with all the taping and whatnot.

"Sure. There's naked and then there's naked. One's sexy, the other is unwashed, greasy, and disgusting." Of course Jim would be the one to have his doctorate in the subtle variances of naked.

"Well, I hadn't had as much practice, then. Hadn't trained as much with Cap, either, which makes a difference." Surely it wasn't thirty meters? Just a third-floor fire escape, and the top of the dumpster was springy, otherwise he'd've broken his legs landing (or aimed for a goon).

"Ugh, there's a reason that mind-control hippie compound we broke up didn't make the news."

Is getting dressed as fun for Jim as getting undressed? (Probably not.)

"Mind-control hippies? That seems contradictory. I thought hippies were all about free thought and free love and free cable."

Verity will resist the urge to start cleaning Clint's apartment, and will only clean up the mess she made. Then she'll clean up herself, and put away the first aid kit. And then? Pastries! They each get a box at random with a fork and plate and well Clint probably doesn't have napkins so paper towels will have to do.

Never. Okay well, maybe the first time he got to put on his Starfleet gold. Yeah that's...that's probably the only time.

"The point is, that's a level of naked no man, woman, or other should ever have to see." Or smell. Or anything, really. "It's enough to make you want to take a ten day shower just to feel some semblance of clean again."

Hell yes pastries! Jim pulls his tossed box open eagerly before poking around in it. "Hm. You want this strawberry danish thing, Verity? Clint? Looks awesome, but I'm allergic." Jim makes a face. He's actually allergic to lots of things. Which often makes enjoying food difficult. Luckily there's more stuff in here than Jim can ever hope to name, so he'll find more than enough that's safe to eat.

"So." Jim takes a sip of coffee and damn this verse is like the best at coffee. Jim wants to take them back to the ship with him with their magic coffee device because seriously. This is amazing. Oh wait he was saying something. "My turn for story time? Hell I figure since I'm not half dead on a couch somewhere, th'least I can do is tell you guys some stuff you'd wanna know."

Edited 2015-08-16 02:46 (UTC)

"Well, it was one mind-control guy using a commune as a front. It's both hard and weird to try to subdue muddy, naked people without hurting 'em. And it's breakfast, so I'm gonna stop talking about this." He takes a sip of coffee.

His eyes widen. He gives his cup a double-take, swallows, looks to Verity. "Oh, my god, what did you do to my coffee? This is incredible!"

Oh, but stories. "Yeah, sure, shoot." Clint will be over here, mostly ears, but also a mouth, because pastries and Heaven's Own Drip Perk.

"This is probably going to sound lame but tell us about space." Space is a good place for stories.

Verity will give Clint first dibs on the danish, but since he's busy not thinking about the hippies she'll happily take it. And she's making a note: no strawberries for Jim. She may not be keen on touchy-feelies, but she's very careful about allergens and cross-contamination and that's almost like a fair trade except not really.

And she's trying not to smirk too much about how much they're enjoying the coffee. Maybe she'll teach them later. After stories.

Jim does take another moment to just relish the god-coffee Verity has made for them. He'll explain replicators later and then she will understand because replicated food is like if cafeteria food and hospital food had a disappointing drunk baby that you had to eat. Nutritious, but library paste probably has better flavor. Don't ever explain it to Jim, make him into your coffeeslave as long as you can Verity.

There's a sort of shift in his posture that happens when Verity asks him about space. It's like Jim was remembering himself. His posture is straighter, more confident. Captain James T Kirk is on duty, for the time being. He can still be Captain Kirk while eating a spiced apple muffin.

"The biggest thing to keep in mind is warp-core technology. With it, we are able to utilize faster than light travel by taking effectively shortcuts through time and space. Starfleet has launched a five year exploratory mission that the Enterprise, my crew, has the honor of taking on. Our mission? To explore new worlds, encounter new life and observe whenever possible." There's less joking and much less swearing from Jim while he talks about space.

"Such a mission to explore deep space has not ever been attempted by Starfleet." At that Jim beams a bit with pride. His crew, his family were going where no man had gone before.

Clint nods thoughtfully, nursing his coffee (wow) and making inroads on--is that an apple fritter? Not anymore. "Found anyone friendly?" he asks, because he's been on a few space missions himself, and for what it's worth, he'd rather find space-friends than all the Kree on Hala.

She had an MRE once. On a dare. She's never let herself get drunk enough to play those games again. Replicators will not be her friend.

The shift in Jim's posture doesn't go unnoticed. Verity thinks it's a good sign; he must be feeling better. She's more relaxed too, not as constantly on guard.

"That sounds amazing." She can't hide that she's a little envious, and honestly she doesn't really try. Having a purpose would be nice. "Are there a lot of non-Terran cultures where you're from?"

"Yeah. My first officer is Vulcan. Well, half. They're a crazy intelligent race of touch-telepaths who operate solely on logic. It's as irritating as it sounds." Still, Jim sounds very fond even as he gripes. "They're also endangered now because of.." Wow. That was gonna be...a long story. A long story culminating into Jim being dead. "Some stuff that may have been the major reason I became the youngest captain in Starfleet record."

"But there's plenty of planets in the Federation. We try to keep things level--species with mind altering pheromones or things like that have to go through some admittedly kind of harsh hoops to get into Starfleet, but it's a public safety thing more than anything. Hell I was born in space."

Jim leans over and peers into Clint's box while he's talking, and steals what looks to be a chocolate chip cookie from it. Clint has plenty more in there and Jim's box was sadly cookie-free. Though considering he has coffee cake and pound cake in his, well that just means he pours himself another mug of coffee.

"You said you've been t'space before, right?" Jim points at Clint after a long sip. "No pointy eared robots, blue antennaed guys or green skinned pheromone spewing mind controllers?" He's curious as to how different this universe's galaxy is. Or..you know. Maybe they were looking in different places is all. Space was a big damn place.

Edited 2015-08-16 05:05 (UTC)

Jim's welcome to cookies; it's share and share alike. "Uh, well, there's blue guys and green guys," he admits, "and they hate each other. The Kree and the Skrulls; they had a war, Earth got caught in the middle, we ended it for 'em. Sometimes, one side or the other thinks it'd be a good idea to invade, and we have to fight 'em off."

He takes a sip of coffee and chuckles, admitting, "you're not gonna believe this, but I actually died fighting 'em off, one time." Oh, right. Coffee. Take a big drink of coffee, it's too early for beer.

"Youngest captain and you get the first deep-space mission? You must be really good at it." She's not entirely sure what his job is besides making sure everyone else is doing their jobs, but that's pretty important. Otherwise, it might all be pillow fights and naptime and nothing would ever get explored.

Verity has no interesting "so this one time I ended up dead" stories and is very glad of that. Being as she's the only one in the room with that privilege, it seems to have fallen to her to be the comforter. This is disturbing both in its unfamiliarity and its genderedness. But here Clint, have a little pat on the arm.

Time to change the subject. "Skrulls are the shapeshifters, right?"

"Well, yeah you could say that." Jim Kirk is a pillar of modesty. "Pretty sure my CMO and first officer would disagree though." Bones had a habit of telling Jim that what he was really good at was putting himself in harm's way to try and save his crew.

"Shit, was that the fire thing?" Jim remembers Clint saying he couldn't handle fire because he'd died one time. "If that's a different event I'm gonna feel really bad in like a second here. Been there, done that and I couldn't imagine dealing with it again." Jim stares down at his half eaten slice of pound cake. He seems to have deflated back into just Jim again. Jim has a lot more weaknesses than Captain Kirk does. Something most super hero types probably understand pretty well.

He gives a long look Clint's way, then toward Verity. He doesn't know what all she's suffered through, but knows that she had mentioned being cursed too. "How are you sane? Either of you?" Jim suspects they may not be. He sure as hell doesn't feel like he is, most of the time.

"There, uh, was fire that time, yeah," Clint admits. He's quick to move on to Verity's question, though. "Yeah, Skrulls, shapeshifters. The Kree infected 'em with something, form-locked 'em for years. Fixing that helped end the war. Then one day, we get crazy religious-zealot Skrulls coming down, shot-up on superhuman DNA to copy people's powers. That's gratitude."

And that probably answers Jim's question, too. It's not whether Clint is sane, it's that the universe is crazy.

Jim's so modest he could give lessons, except that would require admitting he's good at it. His deflating like that is no good. Verity wants to cheer him up, but she's not sure how.

On the bright side, he gets an answer to his question. "Clean living and Jesus." She deadpans it so well, given the fact he's never seen how much she drinks he might believe it.

"Okay, but how did they end up in the beef supply? Because I have seen some things at the supermarket that really shouldn't be there." Oh yes, she can see the Skrull steaks. Good going there, Richards.

"You eat the aliens you meet? The sentient ones?" Please please let that be a joke because really that's harsher than the Klingon conquest modus operandi. Jim isn't that hungry anymore. The box of parties is set aside.

He will, however, keep his coffee. Caffeine is essential for starship captaining. And he doesn't want to be the only one just sitting there for story time.

Clint chokes on his coffee. "Skrull steaks?! Seriously? What the hell? Like, recently?"

This, um, might be news to him, too.

"I don't eat them," she protests. "I don't think anyone means to. But. Is it possible some were hiding as cows or something? I mean they are shape-shifters, who knows where they ended up?"

Mostly to Jim she offers, "I can make sure you don't get any of that. And I'm sure Clint's going to get the Avengers on this. Right, Clint?" Don't make her beg, dude.

"Couldn't they like shape shift out?! Before the slaughterhouse?!" No Jim there aren't skrulls in the cake and muffin you ate probably. Apples are probably still fine. They better be, as Jim's second favorite food. But burgers were no longer safe. Not in this world. Goodbye, number one food.

Jim is suddenly glad he hasn't asked Clint to go out and try real food that is not replicated. If he'd eaten a burger since he got here, he might just vomit right now. The idea of eating another humanoid race is pretty horrific to him.

"...At least the coffee isn't aliens." Mutter, worry, sip.

"Yyyyyeah, I gotta make a call, 'scuse me." There's a phone on the wall in the kitchen, but he's going to go get his cell phone from upstairs, because speed-dial. Also so that it's maybe a little muffled while he does battle with the Fantastic Fone-Tree and maybe chews out the smartest man on the planet for hypnotizing alien invaders into the food supply and not telling anyone about it.

Verity nods in acknowledgement when Clint leaves then turns her attention to Jim. Specifically, trying to get him to focus on her instead of freaking out. "Jim. Look to me."

Does he remember this from before? The touch of her hand, the steady insistence of her gaze? "Jim. Listen to me. I promise I won't let any of that near you. I promise. It's going to be okay."

It isn't the same, Jim. There's no cannibalism here. Probably. And even if there was, he didn't take part in it, even by accident. Verity's right. Everything is okay.

"Just...shocked me, that's all." Yeah, brush it off, laugh, smile. You're Jim Kirk, nothing gets at you. Except she's Verity Willis and even if you can bullshit yourself, you can't bullshit her.

"It's happened, before. Is all." It's his way of an apology, sort of. It's at least an explanation. For the lie. Jim lies a lot but it's usually to cover his own weaknesses.And suddenly it's becoming very real just how far into him Verity can see. He shakes slightly, gulps in a deep breath. He'll beg Verity if he has to. "Don't make me talk about Tarsus. Please."

Not today. He doesn't want Clint to know how broken he is, to see him like this. There's no helping it with Verity. She's nice though, so Jim figures he'll let her know a bit more than most others. Until she gets sick of him and leaves. They always do.

From upstairs comes a muffled, "Reed, you got some 'splainin' to do!" Beat. "Explaining. It's a--dammit, Reed," before it gets too quiet to make out individual words.

The lie doesn't upset her. Not this time. There's a little flicker in her expression, a look like she's anticipating pain, but no anger. She'd lie to herself about this sort of thing too if she could.

"You never have to tell me anything you don't want to," she assures him quietly. "I'm sorry I upset you. I should have been more careful. I'm sorry."

Will he accept a hug from her? Because she has this hug she wants to give him. It's a little awkward, but it's genuine, and maybe they both need it right now.

It occurs to Jim suddenly that since he'd arrived in the nexus all he'd done was show weakness. He jerks his head in a nod and grips at her shoulders when she hugs him.

"This isn't me. I'm not like this." The self loathing drips from his voice. This is you, Jim. This has always been you. Abuse, abandonment, death. Jim doesn't want to be here, suddenly. He wants to go home, where he's in control and no one knows what's in his head.

"It's not."

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These notes are real. I actually have notes.

I'm the same way, tbh.

That metaphor, oh god.

Really not appealing. Probably very accurate.

Now imagine eating that for 5 years straight.

"Space, the... ah, fuck it, let's go get a burger."

https://youtu.be/RrxlbLVcpqI

Shore Leave is a beautiful thing indeed.

http://i51.tinypic.com/2djt288.jpg

http://bit.ly/1uCey68

Ha!

Re: Ha!

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Skrull_Cows_(Earth-616)

What the ever loving fff-

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