Chapter Text
Nyota was sitting at her desk playing games on her PADD while she waited for Christine. They'd been on opposite schedules for a couple of weeks and hadn't gotten a chance to talk. But now they were on the same shift again, so they could get together for tea and games, and given the rumors flying around the ship, Nyota wanted to check in to see that Christine was alright.
Half the rumors painted Spock as some sort of cave-man sexist pig throwing a temper tantrum. Half of them painted Christine as some sort of sex-crazed nymphomaniac. All of them had Christine as the subject of a brutal dressing-down.
None of it made any sense. Spock was unfailingly courteous and respectful in the best sense, and, like Captain Kirk, never failed to support the female officers and crew under his command when the situation called for it. Nor was he prone to viciousness of any kind. Sardonic was as bad as he got. Christine was a professional and would never sexually harass anyone, but especially not a patient.
And none of that even took into account what came after, with Spock countermanding the Admiralty's orders, the back-and-forth to Vulcan or not, Spock having a wife no one knew about (with poor Christine being right there when the surprise was sprung, which hadn't exactly quieted the rumors down any), and then the captain coming back to the ship unconscious. From Vulcan, of all places! One of the safest planets in the Federation! Nyota was confused and upset, and she didn't like either feeling.
The door chime rang. "Enter!" Nyota said.
It was Christine, impeccably groomed and styled as always, but still visibly worn.
"Christine!" Nyota said, tossing her PADD aside. She got up and hugged her friend. "How are you holding up?"
"Oh, please, Nyota, not you too," Christine said with a groan, sinking into one of the chairs. She buried her face in her hands. "Spock was ill and not himself, and anything else is bound up in patient confidentiality."
Nyota took the other chair across from her friend. Christine was so obviously disturbed by the whole thing that that couldn't be the whole story even without considering the rumors. "Must have been some illness," she observed carefully.
Christine snorted. "You don't even know the half of it, and that's all I'm going to say. But I can tell you that if Vulcan actually gave Starfleet Medical details on certain aspects of Vulcan biology, along with the cultural issues surrounding them, this whole mess would have been handled quite differently. And that's all I'm going to say. Frankly, this whole week has been hellish and I don't want to think about it one minute longer."
"All right," Nyota said quietly, taking her curiosity and locking it away for now. She wouldn't want to challenge Christine's professional ethics, and in any case, supporting her friend was more important than Nyota's questions getting answered. "What are you up for tonight? Game? Movie? Do you want distraction or just relaxation?"
Two days later, Spock asked her if she would like to resume their weekly jam sessions. He'd skipped the last two without notifying her; looking back, Nyota wondered if that missed session had been the first sign something was wrong.
She had to think about it; she'd always enjoyed playing with Spock, he was the only musician on the ship who could really keep up with her. And she considered him a friend (although, given Vulcan emotional reticence, she had no idea whether he considered her a friend). But that had been before he'd said … whatever he'd said to Christine. Before she'd been so forcefully reminded that he was alien, and that there was a lot about Vulcans that nobody knew because Vulcans just didn't talk about themselves.
Nyota got along just fine with people of many different races; you had to, as a communications officer. But she didn't like how he'd treated Christine, and she didn't like realizing she understood him less well than she'd believed she did. They'd never been close, but they'd been comfortable in each others' presence, and Nyota was decidedly uncomfortable now.
In the end, she went; whatever had happened between him and Christine, he'd been ill at the time and Christine didn't seem to be holding a grudge. If Christine wasn't, then it would be unreasonable of Nyota to do so when she didn't even know what had happened. And it was in one of the private gathering spaces on the rec deck, which was neutral territory if anything was.
Besides, the underlying problem was that Nyota had thought she'd understood Spock, and realized she was wrong, and a lack of understanding wasn't a problem that could be solved by avoidance.
"I apologize for missing our last two sessions without notifying you," Spock said as he tuned his lyre and she soaked the reed of her algaita.
"Apology accepted, Mister Spock," Nyota said. "I understand you weren't yourself." That she was not holding against him. The inconvenience was minor, and it was likely a symptom of his illness. It didn't make her any more comfortable about the rest of the situation, but she appreciated the courtesy.
"I was not," Spock said briefly. Was she imagining things, or was he uncomfortable? Sometimes Spock was surprisingly easy to read, for a Vulcan; sometimes he was perfectly opaque.
"Can I ask if you've apologized to Christine?"
That stopped him. His head shot up and he frowned slightly. "What should I be apologizing for?"
"What should you be apologizing for?" Nyota was incensed. "I don't know what happened because the rumor mill has gone crazy and she won't tell me because of confidentiality issues—although how you can claim confidentiality when it was in a public corridor with multiple crew members walking past is beyond me—but you tore a bloody strip off of her in public, and started a lot of very nasty rumors about both you and her, and you're the first officer and you've been mostly off duty since then so you may not have gotten any grief for it yet, but she has had no such protection."
He was very nearly green. "I did not—there are a number of substantial gaps in my memory of the last week. And there were occasional hallucinations and a number of very odd and lifelike dreams. I do not remember any such exchange, but that means little; and I cannot give you any idea of what my mental state was at that particular moment."
"Then why weren't you in sickbay?" Nyota demanded. "You were even still on the duty roster at that point, and if what you say is true you were certainly not competent to be giving orders for lunch, much less anything else."
"Unfortunately," Spock said, "when one's mind is imbalanced, rational judgment is often an early casualty. By the time the symptoms were undeniable, I was not capable of formulating a logical response to them." He hesitated. "May I ask what the rumors are?"
Nyota summarized them briefly for him, not going into the gory details but giving him the broad strokes of the main rumors.
"I see," he said, when she had finished. His shoulders were drooping, and he would not meet her eyes. His hands were clasped tightly in his lap. She had rarely seen him this discomposed. "Yes. I shall have to apologize. The altercation, whatever it was, was undoubtedly my fault, as was the public nature of it." He looked troubled, and slightly folded in on himself, and Nyota felt sorry for him. The whole thing must have been a nightmare—possibly literally.
"But you are better now?" Nyota said. "And Doctor McCoy knows what he needs to know should it happen again?" She was dying to know the whole story, but it wasn't her business as long as it didn't interfere with the running of the ship.
"Correct on both counts," Spock said, "although the chances of it recurring during the rest of Enterprise's five-year mission are miniscule."
"All right then," Nyota said, reassured that things would return to normal between them. She checked to see if her reed was ready. "Since the last time we met, I finished transcribing the next duet in the sequence into European musical notation, would you like to try it?"
"Certainly," Spock said, sitting up straighter so that he was a model of Vulcan stoicism. Nyota tucked her curiosity away and turned her attention to the music.
Spock took his time putting his lyre back in its case, so that Uhura left the practice room before him. He very carefully and deliberately did not watch her go, focusing instead on asserting his biophysical control so that he could stand and walk back to his quarters with no outward sign of his arousal.
He had always known that Uhura was a beautiful woman; that was obvious to anyone with eyes. But he'd never reacted so viscerally to her or any woman before, save T'Pring at the wedding-that-was-not.
Her hands as she'd trilled! The dance of her fingers over the instrument! So precise, so graceful! He had not been able to tear his eyes away, and felt ashamed at how he had gawked at her. She, of course, had not noticed; hands were not generally a major part of human visual erotic stimulation, and Vulcans certainly did not spread the details of their own sexuality around. Spock could not quite decide whether it was better that she had been unaware of his gaze (thus sparing him embarrassment) or if would have been better had she had known (thus being able to decide whether or not she wanted to be so gazed at).
Spock walked quickly to his quarters and took out the medical tricorder Doctor McCoy had given him for self-monitoring. His endocrine system was within normal tolerances, and none of the secondary symptoms of Pon Farr were showing. He was merely aroused.
He should have expected something like this. Vulcans matured differently than humans did, with two puberties, one in adolescence and the other at first Pon Farr. He was now fully adult, not subadult, and sexual responses were stronger in this stage of life. Moreover, he was no longer married; his bond with T'Pring had ever been tenuous, but it had curbed and absorbed some of what little sexual drive he had had as a subadult. Now, he needed a new mate, and every fiber of his body and brain knew it.
Nyota Uhura was beautiful, intelligent, competent, compassionate, and musical, and he respected her a great deal. Moreover, she was the woman he spent the most time with both in public and in private. It was only natural that he should find her alluring. If she were Vulcan, and not his subordinate, she would have been very nearly the perfect woman for him.
Alas, even if he wished to have a human mate (and after T'Pring, the idea had a certain appeal regardless of Nyo—of Uhura's—personal attractions), she was still his subordinate, and the regulations concerning such relationships were stringent, for very good reason.
This would require a great deal of meditation.