Chapter Text
Uhura presses her interest over the course of weeks, and soon he’s letting her hold it, handle it, stroke glissandos out of it. He shows her positions and proper fingering techniques. One chord progression. Then another. She pushes him for more and more with an eagerness verging on greed. She will make music.
The sex, it seems, is secondary. The sex is… messy. Not merely the slick, slippery, sticky puddle human-ness of it all, but the mental sensation it leaves afterwards. Like a thistle stuck to the fabric of his mind. Every time they pull apart there’s another worn rough patch on his intellect.
They are discreet about their sexual activities, of course. He’d expressed the necessity of discretion after their first engagement assured mutual interest in more. But it is discretion, not subterfuge. He is Vulcan. He wouldn’t lie if confronted.
(No one asks. No one suspects at all, apparently.)
Still, he had anticipated more push-back from her, some show of resistance before she inevitably surrendered to logic. Instead, she’d snorted a laugh.
“Discretion. Oh. Yes. Definitely.” Her emphatic agreement had been reassuring at the time.
He watches now, as she wrestles her breasts into her brassiere until they are constrained, contained, un-moving sculptures. He had, at one time, admired their symmetry in an abstract sort of way – before he’d seen how they swayed and bounced when she was astride him. Before he’d cupped them in his palms and toggled the nipples with his thumbs.
She steps into her uniform. Zips up her boots. Washed clean of him, cool and dry as talc. Checks her appearance in the mirror, pats her hair.
She’s fine with their arrangement.
He’s less and less fine with her being fine about it.
“Mr. Sulu tells me the yubosie tree we are transporting to Gnora V is near blooming phase. I intended a visit to the arboretum when we had concluded our business here.”
Uhura arches a brow at his reflection, says nothing.
“Would you care to join me?”
She swipes the pad of a finger over a tiny smudge in the otherwise perfect outline of her lipstick. “If you were anyone else, Mr. Spock, that would almost be an invitation to romance.”
She still addresses him as ‘Mister’ in every conversation that does not occur in bed and even then, it’s implied. It occurs to him that Leila Kalomi had done the same thing. Is he a person who somehow compels the use of a title?
“It is only a tree, Miss Uhura. And does not the term ‘romance’ often refer to an exciting and enjoyable affair that is not serious or long-lasting?”
“Are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Spock?”
“I am. Instructing you in the Vulcan ka’athyra has been uniquely rewarding.”
She chuckles, a low rumble at the back of her throat. Between his legs, a distinct, anticipatory twitch.
“Until next time,” she says.
He does not go to the arboretum. He spends the next seven hours meditating. Hard.
^^^
On the bridge they’re the models of competence and efficiency. Two officers going about the performance of their duties.
Until one day they aren't.
“The reports you requested, sir.”
He starts at the sound of her voice. How had he not noticed her come up behind him?
“Yes. Thank you. Very good. Carry on, Lieutenant. You are dismissed.” His words are clipped, sharp-edged, too loud. And there are too many of them. Uhura draws back, eyes wide with undisguised amusement.
“Yessir, Commander, sir.” She salutes him then spins on her heel, back to her station. Away from him.
The captain shoots him a look. Confusion? Disapproval?
He bends to retrieve a stylus that clattered unnoticed to the deck, then buries his face in the hood of his scanner.
^^^
“What the hell is going on with you two?” the captain demands one morning over breakfast in the officer’s mess. His chin jabs in the direction of Lt. Uhura currently chatting with Engineer Scott, cup of coffee in hand.
Spock’s entire body seizes up. For a fraction of a second, he can’t even blink. “What have you observed that leads you to conclude there is something ‘going on’ with us?”
“At the food dispensers just now. You practically fell over a chair to avoid proximity. She rolled her eyes so hard at you I’m surprised they made it back to the front of her face. And on the bridge. You’re extra rigid around her recently. Like she’s radioactive or has a bomb in her bra.” Kirk glances askance at the object of their discussion, then up at him.
Spock realizes his current rigid stance does nothing to belie that assessment.
“Sit down. You’re giving me a crick.” When Spock is seated across from him, the captain drops his voice conspiratorially. “Look, I’m not the only one who’s noticed, okay? I caught some of the junior officers speculating. I brought the hammer down hard on that, but –”
“What sort of speculation?” Spock blurts.
“That you insulted her or hurt her feelings or pissed her off or all of the above. That you don’t realize it or don’t know how to fix it.”
“I do not believe I have said or done anything to cause her significant distress.” His mind rapidly scrolls through recent interactions to confirm it.
“All right.” Kirk doesn’t look convinced. “Then has she done something that offended you somehow?”
“I am not easily given to offense, Captain.”
Kirk makes a rude dismissive noise. “Please. All McCoy has to do is suggest your human panties are showing and you march off in a snit.”
“If the doctor believes his efforts to goad me into reacting have succeeded, he stops. But I can assure you Miss Uhura has done nothing I would consider offensive.”
“Well, something’s going on.”
Jim’s on the verge of a gut feeling. Spock knows the look. Like a cartoon hound. It is therefore prudent to surrender a scrap of the truth to put him off the scent.
“I have been teaching her how to play the Vulcan lyre for several weeks now.”
“Ah,” Jim says, sagely, leaning with one arm along the back of the chair. He takes a deep breath to better enable the spewing of wisdom. “Are you, by any chance being extra extra Vulcan and pedantic in your instruction, Mr. Spock?”
“It is a Vulcan instrument."
“Uh huh. Probably waving your big-dick intellect around more than usual, too.” The captain, his friend, seems to be channeling Dr McCoy’s colorful verbosity at this moment.
“I might take offense at the implications of that metaphor, Captain – were I given to it.”
“Oh?” Jim exclaims, all insouciance. “Which part? Big dick or big intellect?”
Spock walked right into that one. He clamps his mouth shut and shakes his head, aggrieved.
“I’m just saying, that’s a lot of one-on-one time with a human. I imagine it’s put a bit of strain on your… mmm… how shall I put it? Equanimity?”
“I have spent a great deal of one-on-one time with you, Captain, to no ill-effect.”
“Yeah. Well. I’m not a pretty lady,” Jim replies with the patronizing benevolence of the sexually experienced.
The underlying assumption at work here, of course, is not that Spock is engaged in a sexual relationship with a pretty lady, but that he is too repressed to admit the desire for one.
The captain leans over his plate once more to shovel the final glob of eggs and toast into his mouth. He talks around chewing. “She must really love the music to put up with you.”
“Indeed.”
“I don’t want it interfering with comportment on the bridge, however.”
“You have my assurance, Captain.”
It was clear he could no longer offer her instruction. They were going to have to stop. His mental control was floundering. He needed more mediation and less ... of the other.
“Is she any good?”
Spock tried to swallow whatever was suddenly stuck in his throat. “Sir?”
“Playing your lyre.”
“She is ... remarkably adept."