Christine Chapel filled a large mug with coffee then added a generous amount of sugar. It had been a busy day in sickbay, and she'd more than earned the extra calories. She was searching the crowded mess hall for Nyota and Jan when a burly man a few feet ahead of her backed up with no warning. She let out a startled cry as some of the hot coffee splashed over the rim, burning her fingers. She recognized the man as he turned to face her; he was one of the new techs in the biolabs. Was it Carter? No not Carter-Connors, Jeremy Connors.
Sorry," he said, his tone polite, though in Christine's opinion not particularly sincere. Right, sorry, but not nearly as sorry as was going to be the next time he came down to sickbay for his physical. She was able to maneuver her way through the noisy crowd, finally finding the table Ny and Jan had secured. Sulu saw her coming and, always the gentleman, he quickly appropriated another chair from a nearby table.
"We were starting to think you stood us up," Nyota said.
"I got caught up with a last minute emergency. This month's injury report may set a new Fleet record. You'd think we'd been attacked by a fleet of Klingon warbirds," she said, smiling at Sulu as he held the chair for her. It really had been an exhausting day, and she'd considered skipping this little get-together and heading straight for the lab. Her attention was drawn to a small, but quite noisy, group of junior officers seated at the next table.
"Okay, so the points are based on the risk of getting caught?" a perky young ensign at the next table asked. She seemed familiar, but Christine couldn't quite place her.
She did, however, recognize the man seated beside the young ensign, the clumsy, and not terrible repentant, Jeremy Connors who appeared to be holding court. "There are ten locations on the ship, and each one has a different point value between one and ten."
Jan rolled her eyes and chuckled softly. "What is it with this new crew? Every time I turn around someone is talking about that stupid game."
"It's called 'Ten,'" Sulu said. "It's been around in one form or another since back when I was at the academy. It's sort of like a scavenger hunt—but with sex."
Christine made a quick check of the surrounding tables and found Spock sitting in a booth in the back corner, deeply engrossed in his padd and to all appearances oblivious to the tables of boisterous humans around him.
"Decker ended up with a good number of younger less experienced people on his crew," Nyota said as she picked at the remains of her dinner. "Some of them are barely out of the Academy. Think about it, a month ago they were running diagnostic checks and computer sims, now they're coming home as heroes of the entire Federation. Can you blame them for being cocky?"
"It's more than 'cocky,' Ny," Christine responded. "You wouldn't believe some of the injuries we've been seeing down in sickbay the past two weeks—and the looks on their faces when they have to make a statement for the incident report. I know people are getting excited with forty-eight hours till Liberty but this is just out of control."
Christine found her attention drawn back to next table as Connors went through the list of the locations for the game; "See, you get one point for the utility closets, two for the Jeffries tubes, three for a conference room, four for the observation lounges."
No? Her grip on the ceramic mug tightened. It had to be a coincidence?
"Then comes cargo bay, turbo lifts, sickbay, the biolabs."
She set the coffee cup down with a sharp thud. What the hell? She realized that her companions had stopped talking and were all staring at her. "Sorry, the mug slipped."
"Mister Scott is not coming with us?" Chekov's asked.
"I tried to talk him into it. He's been working the past four shifts straight getting the warp systems powered down for Spacedock. That wackjob space probe did a real number on the dilithium step-down converters." Nyota laughed. "But you know how that man is about strangers handling his 'wee bairns.'"
"Next comes the transporter room for seven points." Connors voice pulled Christine back into the conversation at the next table. "The auxiliary bridge is eight, shuttle pods are nine. But the Holy Grail is the Bridge," he said, with a strange sort of reverent authority. "You get ten points for doing it on the Bridge"
"The bridge?" Uhura jumped to her feet and turned around to face the table of crewmen behind her. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, better be doing the deed at my Comm Station. Is that clear, ensign?" She punctuated her statement with a sharp stab of her index finger to Connor's sternum.
"Yes, ma'am," Connors said, genuine fear in his eyes. Nyota was as protective of her comm station as Scotty was of his warp coils.
"If you're going to do it on the bridge, you might as well go all the way and do it in the Captain's chair," Rand said softly as Nyota retook her seat.
"With the Captain in it, Jan?" Sulu asked with a wicked smile.
"Who am I, a lowly CPO, to kick the Captain out of his own chair, Hikaru?"
"I don't know what's gotten into people lately." Christine said.
"Lighten up, Chris, we were all their age once," Janice said, obviously surprised by the sharpness in Christine's voice.
"When I was their age, I was engaged to Roger and working sixteen hours a day on my Ph.D." Christine leaned back into her chair and sighed wistfully. Her sex life with Roger had been good. She had been young, and fairly inexperienced. He was a tender and companionable lover, though not very adventurous in bed, at least not with her. Who knows what he and his little sex android Andrea had been up to in the caves of Exo III?
"I don't suppose I was ever really their age. Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you, Jan. I'm just tired."
"Come with us to Cabo, Chris. The beach is hot and the drinks are ice cold," Nyota said. "You've been holed up in the biolab for the past month."
"I'm presenting at a conference in London, and I've still got several hundred uncatalogued specimens—which is my cue to bid you all goodnight. I need to get a couple of hours in before bedtime."
"Christine Chapel, you are the only person I know who'd blow off a week on a sunny beach for a boring medical conference."
"I didn't blow it off, Ny, and it happens to be the most prestigious medical conference in the entire Federation."
"I know, sug. I'm proud of you, but life isn't all about work. You need to have some fun too."
"I'm sure I'll have plenty of fun in London." She glanced around the table, favoring the group with a smile and small wave. "Goodnight."
Christine was pressing the panel to summon the turbolift when she sensed soft footsteps and the subtle spicy fragrance of Spock's Vulcan incense.
She sighed, crossing her arms across her chest.
"No," she said, still facing the doors.
"No? I do not recall asking a question," he said as he placed his hand on her shoulder, and gently turned her to face him.
"Are you crazy?" she asked as the lift doors slid open. She pulled away from him and took a step back. "Someone could see us."
He gestured for her to go first then followed behind her.
Lift, biolabs," she said.
"Halt lift, hold."
"I have to go to the lab. I've got stacks of specimen slides to catalogue for my presentation."
"I believe you'll find that all of your slides are catalogued and loaded into your tricorder."
"They are?"
"I took care of it during my meal break." He didn't say, "so that we can go somewhere and fuck like bunnies" but then he didn't really have to, the way his eyes were burning into her kind of said it all. She now knew something else about Vulcans, or Vulcan sexuality to be precise. Apparently once you managed to flip the on switch, there was no off switch. Not that she was complaining. Vulcans were touch telepaths with amazing physical control and in the past four weeks he'd become quite skillful in reading, arousing, and satisfying her desires.
"That's so sweet—but we're not having sex on the bridge, Spock."
He raised a puzzled eyebrow.
"Don't even try to deny it, buddy. The utility closet on seven, the Jeffries tube, the biobed in sickbay? You've been playing that stupid game. Have you lost your mind?"
"You seemed to enjoy varying our locale."
"I thought you were being—I don't know: more spontaneous. It seemed kind of romantic. Seriously, the bridge? We could end up in the brig—how many points is that?"
"There is a window of approximately forty-five minutes between the start of the shutdown sequence and the arrival of the refit team. That should provide us more than sufficient time."
"This is about Jim? Isn't it? This whole thing with the points: it's about beating Jim?" Yet another fun fact she'd learned about Vulcan males: under that peace-loving, logical, Surak-quoting, veneer, deep down they were just like any male. They were highly competitive, particularly when it involved another male and "their" woman—with "their" being a designation that could apparently be applied retroactively.
"This has nothing to do with Jim, Christine."
"It was one weekend, Spock. One damn weekend, the weekend that we got the news that you'd gone running off to Gol and left us behind without so much as a word."
"I have explained—"
"I know now." She touched his cheek and gave him a soft kiss. "But then, we were both just hurting…lonely…lost. It happened. And I'm not going to say I regret it to salve a boo-boo on your primal Vulcan male pride. I wish that I hadn't told you about it." She signed and leaned against the railing of the lift. "But you would have known anyway, wouldn't you?"
He nodded then wrapped her in his arms. "I ask forgiveness for my jealousy. I am finding that some feelings are less simple to integrate than others."
"We'd better figure out where we're going before someone reports the lift out of service. So we're faced with the age old question, 'your place or mine?' What's your preference?"
"You know my preference, Christine." He tightened his embrace and brushed a light kiss on her forehead, then released her.
"I know. I'm saying never. I'm just not ready to go public and move in with you yet. Why don't we see if we can survive five days in a hotel suite together first, okay?"
"That is agreeable. I will leave the venue for tonight's assignation to your discretion."
"Lift, deck seven," she said, and brushed against him seductively.
"Halt lift," she said. "Revise destination: ShuttleBay. Come on, lover boy, we've got maybe thirty minutes tops till the gamma maintenance team logs in, so nothing fancy."
"I shall strive to be efficient but thorough."
"Then all we have left is the bridge, but not at the comm station, okay? Nyota would have a fit, and trust me she would know."
"I concur with Chief Rand-if we are going to make love on the bridge, then it should be the Captain's chair. However, I would prefer the Captain not be present." The arched eyebrow was at odds with the gentle humor in his voice.
"What about the security video on the bridge?"
"I can loop a digital feed that will override the cameras."
"Wow, you've really given this a lot of thought."
He sighed. "Perhaps it is more about Jim than I've been willing to admit?"
"You're kidding?"
"No, Christine I'm not—ah, sarcasm," he said with a sharp uptick of his eyebrow. "I confess that my logic in this pursuit has been somewhat questionable. In some ways I am still grappling with my emotions to find an appropriate balance. It is not necessary for you to humor me in this manner."
Grappling…emotions…balance. Christine felt a familiar flutter of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.
"You are chewing your lip again." He brushed his finger lightly over her lips, then frowned. "Something I said has unsettled you?"
She stared down at the decking, feeling suddenly small, and vulnerable. "It's just…what if when you find your balance…what if there's no place for…"
"For us?" He gently tipped her chin up until their eyes met. "You believe that my feelings in regard to you are transient?"
She wanted to say no, but she felt her throat tighten. As much as she wanted to deny it, the simple truth was that she didn't know. Some inexplicable combination of his failure to achieve Kohlinar and the meld with V'ger had left him emotionally open. But there was no way of knowing if that openness would last, if she would wake up one day and find his heart once again closed to her. Was that why she'd insisted they keep the relationship secret, why they'd been sneaking around like a couple of teenagers?
She felt herself trembling as all of the fear and doubts she'd been holding back for the last month came rushing forward, and she struggled against the tears that she knew were coming. And then…he laughed. He was laughing.
"Vulcans do not fall out of love, Christine," he said, pulling her into a gentle embrace. "And I am in love with you. It appears I have been remiss in properly conveying that sentiment." He brushed his fingers lightly through her hair sending a primal surge of desire through her. Gods of every universe, the man could play her body like Mozart at the piano.
"Is it not ironic?" he asked softly. "My insecurity about the past, and your insecurity about the future, we have each allowed our fears to come between us in the present. V'ger may have opened the door, Christine, but I chose to walk through that door of my own free will. I chose to come to you."
She smiled and knew it was a ridiculously sappy smile, but she didn't care. "I think we've missed our window for the shuttle bay. We'll have to wait for tomorrow night."
"Or perhaps we can just be gracious and concede this particular competition to Jim."
He wrapped his arm around her and she leaned into the gentle warmth of his embrace.
"So, you love me?"
"I do. And you do not love Jim?
"I love him, but not like I love you, so none of that…you know, chopping him up with a lirpa stuff."
"Acceptable. So then we are back to the question: Your quarters or mine?"
"Both."
"Both?"
"I want to swing by my quarters and pick up some toiletries and clothes for tomorrow, and then I want to go to your quarters."
"You want to sleep in my quarters, the whole night?"
"Well, not just sleep." She bumped up against him and brushed a light kiss against a particularly sensitive spot on his ear and was rewarded for her effort with a deep sigh and a hungry kiss. It was a good thing they were both off duty tomorrow; she was pretty sure they wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight.