Odd.
Nyota shuffles a few more spices around in the cabinet and frowns. She's had this meal planned for at least a week and she knows she put everything on the list… didn't she?
She scratches at the back of her neck as she thinks.
"Something amiss, ashayam?"
Nyota smiles and glances up as Spock comes to stand beside her. He glances at the PADD on the counter, a recipe for butternut squash soup on display. "We had run out of cayenne pepper but I guess I hadn't remembered to put it on the list," she says.
"It was on the list," Spock says as he moves to the fridge; he produces a small bag of dark green jalapeños.
That… that isn't cayenne pepper.
Nyota accepts the bag and looks at Spock expectantly.
"This pepper was almost five credits less than the ground cayenne. Also, fresh peppers are more potent and more flavorful than ground counterparts," he says. "I know you appreciate flavor as much as I."
Nyota blinks; she doesn't know where to start but honestly she doesn't think changing cayenne to jalapeño will change the taste overly much. "Thank you, mipenzi," she says, and continues with dinner.
Next time she'll be specific.
Another week behind her.
Nyota closes the door behind her and tries not to sink to the floor with happiness; it's Friday and she's free for the entire weekend. No homework, no tutoring sessions and no TA business to speak of; an entire two days free to do what she wants.
Spock's apartment is the logical place to spend such a rare block of free time; she knows that he doesn't have much planned this weekend save a museum exhibit he wants them to see and a computer sciences staff meeting. Nyota is going to spend as much time as she can either wrapped around or underneath Spock. Yes, that is as much planning as she wants to do for the very near future.
Except for…
She can't help but hum as she drops her bag on the hook and slips off her boots. Flexing her feet she rises to her toes and dances toward the pristine kitchen. Yesterday was shopping day, and Nyota has been dreaming about bakery fresh apple tarts for a whole week. It's one dessert that Spock tends not to filch (as if she can't see him; he doesn't stop even when she teases him about how illogical he's being when he can merely have his own dessert) considering how much cinnamon they contain.
"They're going to be good, and I'm going to eat them all," she sings as she twirls and yanks open the refrigerator. Eagerly she searches through the produce and left overs to find… to find…
A lone apple pie.
Well that's definitely not an apple tart, so she keeps looking. Every shelf, every item gets picked up and moved around until she's forced to consider the unthinkable.
Nyota blinks and tries not to scowl because this isn't happening. It's just not. She is not staring at an apple pie, she knows this because she specifically wrote apple tart. They came in large, white boxes when you bought more than four at a time, and she requested six, and she made sure to ask Spock what store he planned to shop at before she submitted her few requested items because she knows how illogical he thinks it is to go to more than one store for just one item, Nyota.
She blinks again and the apple pie still stubbornly refuses to change into apple tarts. The cellophane wrapper mocks her as she closes the door with a sigh. Nyota opens it again, just in case it has decided to behave and change into her tarts.
It steadfastly refuses to do so.
It's stupid, and a little silly, Nyota knows, to sulk about a dessert but she's gone through the five stages of grief and lands back on anger by the time Spock walks through the door.
She even manages to greet him with a kiss and polite salutations before asking why there is an apple pie in the fridge.
"You requested an apple dessert," Spock says as he pulls out his PADD and places it in its place on his desk.
Nyota watches him remove everything from his attaché case and imagines throwing the pie against his back; the apple filling and floury crust sliding down the charcoal grey of his instructor's uniform.
It calms her, somewhat.
"I actually requested apple tarts," Nyota says, and despairs because aloud it sounds like she's whining and needy but she wanted those apple tarts, specifically those apple tarts. She's spent days dreaming about the light and airy crust, the thinly sliced apple and that un-replicatable caramel like sauce that melts like a dream on her tongue.
Spock pauses; probably due to something in her tone. "You did," he admits. "But-"
Nyota doesn't hear the rest of his explanation because the roaring in her ears is too great. She nods when Spock's lips stop moving and moves to the bedroom to get ready for dinner.
Next time she will be very, very specific.
"baQa'," Nyota swears as she pinches the bridge of her nose.
She looked over the list twice before pronouncing it ready; she made sure that it was in large font and there were two copies on his PADD just in case one became corrupted was lost. She even made sure her PADD received a notification when Spock opened the file; at precisely 15:00 Thursday afternoon it was accessed, so Nyota knows he read it.
She had underlined crunchy. She wanted crunchy peanut butter. That was her only request for the week.
The only one.
So why is she staring at a jar of creamy peanut butter?
The mascot on the label is mocking her with its wide smile and dead eyes. Nyota contemplates throttling a jar of peanut butter for almost thirty seconds before she shuts the pantry door.
This is getting ridiculous.
She does not wait for Spock to return by cleaning an already clean apartment. She doesn't rearrange his books by color and then put them back because she feels mildly bad about it.
She does not.
Nyota forces herself to calm down; she's been on the receiving end of so many friends' complaints about their significant others. She's had friends who were cheated on or did the cheating, were sexually incompatible or whose relationships fell apart in the face of real and unfortunate problems.
Was creamy peanut butter really on the list?
"Nyota?"
She looks up from her vantage point on the couch and watches as Spock slips off his boots and saunters across the room. He takes out his PADD and places it in its place on his desk, along with his communicator and a stack of tests that require grading.
He turns to her and Nyota can feel her anger drain away as she rises to greet him properly. Spock's fingertips are at the edge of her jaw and through the barest of skin to skin contact she can feel the general shape of his thoughts.
He had thought of her all day.
He had desperately wished to be in this exact moment, where he could hold her in his arms and enjoy her presence.
Nyota sighs happily against his mouth and pulls him closer. Peanut butter be damned.
But she's going to do the grocery shopping from now on.