Merlin looked her in the eye – rare enough, for the man who shares her husband’s bed – and told her he’d no idea what was coming, but that they had all better be more prepared than they were.

In which Merlin is the most harangued PA in Westminister, Arthur is on the back of the backbench, Uther harasses Merlin (though the Queen never does), Morgana is very clever, and the datebook will take its revenge.

Immortality is dull. This is the first thing Merlin learned about it - you can mope for a hundred years about your lost lover in the woods, you can have wild sex with seven bards and tell them naughty things about said lost lover, you can write a book and build a castle and set up and then destroy six small monarchies. But you'll get bored eventually. You can settle in the same village with a cat for six hundred years (it's a very special cat), and you can yell at Morgana for as long as you damn well please. You can pine and you can drink. But it all gets boring in the end.

Because this is a normal relationship that progresses along normal lines at a normal speed. Because either of them even knows what a normal relationship might look like.

Starfleet first officers did not regress to childhood without at least submitting prior warning to their commanding officers. They'd theme:established that after the whole Pon Farr mess last year. There were rules about Vulcan biology and scaring the hell out of Jim now. This had to be in violation of at least three of them.

The first time it happens, it just, sort of, well, it happens. He's sitting on the bridge, and they're kind of talking, but mostly just barking orders at everyone who'll listen because it's a bit of an emergency, and Kirk's got something about crew morale in the back of his mind because he's a damn good captain. And he's thinking about making them laugh, but he's also thinking about making sure they don't all die in the next ten minutes.

Hikaru Sulu does not gossip. He is just present when other people say things about people who are not present, and then he sometimes repeats it to more people who might be interested. He doesn't gossip, because most of it is true. OK, sometimes he's wrong, but it's not like he's going to do research.

Her first date with McCoy is a good one: coffee and a museum in San Francisco. She enjoys it, likes talking to him. His humor is honest, but he's never cruel. He’s intelligent. He’s not bad looking. He makes her laugh. He talks about Jim Kirk more than she'd maybe like him to, but maybe that’s what she’s looking for. It’s only been a few weeks, and she still can’t look Kirk in the eye. Might never be able to again.

"I know your son very well. I know that he is most likely to do what he is told not to do," Spock says, and she sees a flash of humor in his face, but maybe she imagined that, too. "I wondered if it might be in my interest should you hate me on sight."

"I do not care even a little bit. Take Vulcan or go back to Tactics with your tail between your legs, but I've done you enough favors. Leave now."

She doesn't look like she's his kid. She looks like she's Spock's kid. Sometimes, he looks at her, and he sees Spock, and he falls a little bit more in love with both of them. Sometimes, he looks over at her and realizes he's raising Spock but a girl and kind of ten times as crazy, and he wants to get in a shuttle and run away, because holy god, is his baby girl amazing, but she's also just a little scary.

Maria also has the Vulcan Flu of Very-Much-Not-Death-Now-Get-Out-of-my-Sickbay-Captain, and wants nothing more than to crawl into bed with her papa and have him give her hugs. That'd be awesome because it's very clear that also pretty much what Spock wants, but Spock can't move his arms. No one seems particularly interested in Jim when he's not bathing them or giving them tea. That's fine.

And then Jim is holding her, and smiling down at her, tracing one pointed ear and pressing a kiss to her brow - still disgusting, but Spock doesn't point that out, because he's enchanted by the way Jim holds her, by the way she fits to her father's chest, and looks up at him with Vulcan-dark eyes.