"Give and Take"

She learned to take what he offered, and what he offered, more often than not, was small. A slight smile here. A tense of the jaw there. A look that lingered perhaps a half second too long after she made a particularly intelligent observation on whatever material she was assisting him with that week. The smallest thing could make her heart race once she learned how to gauge his reactions.

It wasn't like settling for less, though she knew a lot of people would think of it that way. It was like having more. Every appreciative glance and every compliment was dutifully memorized, written down in the walls of her heart for careful studying at a later time. She memorized the arch of his eyebrow and the tilt of his head when she said something awkwardly human, the ghost of a smile that graced his features when she surprised him. Often, she found herself thinking of the way he'd said her name that first time, lips wrapping around the syllables with a deliberate slowness, like he was trying to memorize her as well. She never seemed to forget anything; she had always been an excellent student, and this was surely no different.

He learned her also, slowly and against his better judgment. He became familiar with the frankly curious look on her face when he spoke of things she'd never heard of, the determined slant of her eyes when she disagreed with something he'd done. He found himself on multiple occasions, illogically, goading her into defending her argument just so he could hear the bite in her voice when she said something she believed in. He remembered the high color that had come into her cheeks for many days after he had first called her by her given name.

After a while he attempted, without allowing himself to consider what his actions might mean, to distance himself from her. He changed to longer routes when he knew they would involve seeing her; he placed her on another ship knowing the logical decision would be for her to be on the Enterprise. Neither of these things seemed to affect them in the least. He kept his eyes down instead of on her own while she demanded that she be moved, but this was no great victory, not when it secretly pleased him so that she memorized his compliments.

By the time she followed him into the lift after completing his first and only log as captain, he was sure nothing she could do would surprise him. But she pressed into him, and wrapped her arms around his pain to make it her own, holding him in a way that was so new and yet so familiar it made his breath stutter. Melting into her, he found something there, something he hadn't considered in his calculations before. It didn't fix everything, but she didn't expect for it to. She took what he offered and in turn she gave what she had.

It turned out to be just enough.