Uncertainty
Author's Note: I have no idea when Chekov's birthday is, and I'm for sure too lazy to look it up and make sure this all fits. Mostly I put it in because the "sewenteen!" thing cracks me up and it's about time that boy stopped being jailbait. As I was writing this it occurred to me that Uhura has the rank of Lieutenant in the film, even though she has not yet graduated from the Academy. Or at least Spock refers to her as that (watch the gag reel, it's great! roflmao)
Trying not to spoil up front, but please realize I don't know anything about the Romulan language, other than that it's linguistically (and biologically) related to Vulcan. I took an example from German and used it to shake things up a bit ;) So ... don't bother commenting on that, because really I don't care.
Please do comment, though, if you want some sort of setup/prequel for this. There are a lot of S/U origin stories which have inspired me, but it may not be obvious what sort of past I'm working with.
Disclaimer: I own no rights to Star Trek. I promise to use it only for fun and to give the characters back in pristine condition! Well, maybe a little rumpled. *straightens the wrinkles in Spock's shirt and smooths his hair*
Chapter One
In which being a linguist is advantageous
Personal log, Lieutenant Uhura, Stardate 2258.67. It's four days now since the Enterprise set out on our mission. I'm unaccustomed to making personal log entries, since the communications officer's log covers all the official business. But there's a time for personal log entries, and this is one of them.
I've been giddy and uncertain since the moment Commander Spock stepped on the bridge four days ago. Giddy, because I had thought, and he had given the appearance, that he felt his duty was to his race and the reestablishment of a Vulcan world; instead, he appears and effortlessly becomes the first officer of my ship! Uncertain, because our relationship seems the same as it was at the Academy, before ... well, before all of this happened. He's friendly, but his attention to me appears calculated to "avoid the appearance of favoritism", as though he's ignoring what happened before. But he knew I would remain on the Enterprise, and once or twice I've caught his gaze, and I feel a connection. It's hard to say what all of this means to him, and he certainly isn't talking about it. Was what happened that day an isolated incident? I was excessively forward with him, and his response honestly surprised me. Maybe he was just feeling vulnerable. Maybe he regrets it, but is too polite to say anything. Do Vulcans feel awkwardness? He hasn't acted as though anything unusual happened.
I hope to clarify the situation soon. Captain Kirk mentioned that we're both on Alpha shift for the next two weeks at least, and hopefully I can pull myself together in that time to talk to him. To even broach the topic. I feel like such a fool dealing with him, a needy emotional human trying to get into a space he doesn't even want to have. I thought xenolinguistics would give me a leg up on this sort of thing, but it appears my degree is of little use in this situation.
Maybe I can write to Gaila about this. There has to be some benefit in putting up with the constant march of boys.
Nyota forced confidence into her stride and straightened her posture when she stepped onto the bridge the next morning. Kirk gave her a nod and a brief greeting which she returned in kind before relieving Ensign Jameson. Spock was not yet on the bridge, and she quickly focused herself on the work at hand. She was a few minutes early, and the First Officer had become notorious for his punctuality, always precisely two minutes early for his shift.
She glanced at the clock in the corner of her display when the turbolift doors opened. Right on time, Spock entered with Ensign Chekov. Pavel's continuous enthusiasm for his job was turning into a welcome ritual for the Bridge crew, and everyone hid smiles and chuckles as he practically skipped to his station. Spock, as usual, was not part of the Pavel Appreciation Brigade, and instead went straight to skimming the overnight shift's notes.
Kirk's voice cut through the low hum of work. "Ensign Chekov."
The boy turned. "Yes, Captain?"
A smiled turned on the corner of Kirk's lip. "I understand you have a birthday coming up."
Pavel literally puffed up. "Yes, sir! Tomorrow is my eighteenth birthday."
"Let me be the first to congratulate you." A soft chorus of "congratulations" and "happy birthday" came from around the bridge. "We'd like to throw you a little party, after Alpha shift tomorrow. Think you can make it?"
"Of course, sir!" Chekov's eyes lit up. "I am wery honored, sir."
"Things like this are worth celebrating, I think. No need to be too serious around here." Jim made pointed eye contact with Spock, who merely raised an eyebrow and went back to his work.
Uhura trembled slightly. This was her opportunity! No need to try to catch the commander on the bridge and make anything public. And really, only a few people knew what had happened between them. It would be good to keep it that way. The bustle of the party would be a good cover to catch the Commander alone. She was certain he would make an appearance, unwilling as he was to put an overt downer even on Kirk's frivolous ideas.
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Alpha shift passed as it usually did, and Uhura left when her Beta shift replacement arrived. She murmured a soft "good evening" to Spock as she passed, which seemed to startle him momentarily. But the moment passed quickly. "Good evening, Lieutenant." She lingered a second or two, unwilling to break eye contact, but turned and walked into the lift.
It happened that her evening was decidedly not good. A case of nerves persuaded her to work a bit too hard on the treadmill, and she spent her dinner sullenly reading and icing the protesting calf. None of her shipboard friends were free, so she retired early to her quarters where she found herself entirely unable to relax. She kept rehearsing the things she might say to Spock tomorrow, but none of them seemed right.
"Excuse me, Commander, there is a personal matter I wish to discuss with you." Disgustingly formal.
"I noticed you've been ignoring me since that time we saved the Earth from Vulcan's tragic fate." Obviously a bad choice. Might as well add, "By the way, my mom is alive."
"Did our kiss mean nothing to you?!" A sign she had seen too many movies.
"What is this between us, exactly?" Too forward. Also not likely to get any kind of a good answer.
It took her a long time to fall asleep, and she was groggy when she awoke the next morning.
XXXXX
She arrived on the Bridge later than usual -- getting ready had been a chore today, complicated by the fact that she had tried to make her makeup look a little -- well, something. Not flirty, but not plain either. Spock was already there, and she couldn't avoid his greeting. "Good morning, Lieutenant Uhura."
Her breath caught, and her "Good morning, Commander," sounded strangled. Spock appeared not to notice, but Kirk caught her eye with a quizzical glance before she sat down. She tried not to blush. Leave it to Jim to know exactly what was happening on his ship, and the first officer to be entirely oblivious.
Captain Kirk sidled up beside Uhura's chair a few minutes later, while Spock was on the other side of the bridge. "So I'm curious," he said softly. "What is going on with you?"
Uhura's neck and ears grew hot. "Nothing important, sir."
"Nothing important, my ass!" He crossed his arms. "You've been acting weird, and today's the weirdest yet. What's gotten you so skittish?"
She hazarded a glance in Spock's direction. He was engrossed in a conversation several meters away, out of earshot.
"It's Spock, isn't it. What did he do?"
She blushed again. "Nothing. Hasn't done anything."
Kirk seemed about to protest, but then realization dawned. "Oh." Several awkward seconds passed in silence. "Well, if you need me for anything--"
"No thank you, Captain." She did her best not to make it sound harsh.
He studied her as she tried to ignore him. "He'll be at the party at 1800 hours. I told him it wasn't optional."
Uhura suddenly trembled. "Thank you, Captain."
"No problem." His glance lingered for a moment, but then he righted himself and stepped away.
XXXXX
The hours dragged. Uhura had little to do, but Spock was busy, his motions attracting her attention. She checked and re-checked all the operations of her console to pass the time -- of course, nothing was amiss. Unimportant snippets of irrelevant conversations flitted by in subspace, and she tried to focus her entire attention on each one. She saw when packets of information arrived from Starfleet, and checked that they went to the appropriate destinations. They did, automatically. The Enterprise's systems worked flawlessly.
Spock spoke to her once, briefly. She answered with the fact he requested, and the interaction ended.
Uhura was extremely wound up when the shift finally ended, and she rushed off as quickly as she could to her quarters. She had an hour before Chekov's party was supposed to begin, and tried to use the time to compose herself. Deep breathing and stretching helped her calm down, but she was no closer to knowing what to say to the Commander. She changed into modest off-duty clothes and, at the appropriate time (so as not to arrive early) set out for the mess hall.
She had calculated well, and the room was beginning to get crowded when she arrived. The tables had been arranged so that the guest of honor could be easily interrupted while he ate his dinner, and she smiled at the birthday crown that someone had placed atop his head. Pavel chatted animatedly with his crewmates, and glasses of fizzy blue drinks seemed to be appearing from nowhere.
Spock arrived, a few minutes after she did, through the opposite doors. The crowd shifted slightly to accommodate him as he did; they seemed wary to invade his personal space. Captain Kirk also noticed the arrival, and stood up behind Chekov and pinged at his nearly-empty glass.
"Ladies, gentlemen, all manner of people!" he said loudly enough to quiet the chatter. "I'm glad you could all make it here to celebrate Ensign Chekov's birthday." Applause rolled around the room. "Ensign, would you like to say a few words to commemorate the occasion of you reaching the age of majority?"
The crowd laughed and Pavel blushed, but stood and held his glass. "Thank you all wery much. I am extremely grateful to be on such a vonderful ship, vith such vonderful crewmates." There were a few cheers, and Pavel finished with a toast. "To wodka!"
The group in the middle of the room exploded with cheers and congratulations, and from somewhere else a birthday song got going, followed by one in another language from a different area. Klingon? She was surprised that so many crew members knew the language -- although, come to think of it, they had probably just learned the song.
The idea hit her so hard she caught the counter to stop from reeling. Of course!
She sidled as casually as she could in Spock's direction. He was standing on his own near the window, glancing around the room. To an untrained eye, he was his normal, cool self -- if a little bored. But Nyota's training as a Comm officer, and three years of crushing on the object of her current attention, revealed awkwardness in his stance. His shoulders were tense, his head held too high. As she moved towards him, he glanced over and straightened very slightly. She kept her face carefully neutral and moved to stand next to him by the window. The light of the stars reflected subtly in his dark eyes; she forced herself not to notice.
"Good evening, Commander Spock." The Romulan words fell easily from her lips, and the syllables were largely lost in the clamor of the party.
Spock's eyebrows raised somewhat in surprise. "Good evening, Lieutenant Uhura." His accent was perfect, as she already knew. It sounded beautiful.
"Do you suppose, Commander, that we are the only two at the party who speak Romulan?"
Spock considered a moment. "No. Ensign Ye and Ensign Singh studied it as a requirement for the Xenolinguistics major at the Academy."
Nyota could not see the two in question, they were apparently blocked from her view by the crowd. "How do you know that?"
"I led their study group two years ago." He glanced sideways at her. "You are concerned that we will be overheard."
That hadn't taken long at all. She tried to look straight ahead. "I want to talk to you without being conspicuous."
"I believe you are succeeding in that goal."
She caught a glimpse of Musi Ye through the movement of the crowd. She was laughing, holding a nearly-empty glass, and extremely flushed -- clearly drunk as a skunk.
"What do you wish to discuss?" For a moment his accent wavered towards Vulcan, and Nyota resisted the urge to look at him. She watched as Pavel threw back a shot.
"I ... I would like to discuss what happened on ... on the day that Vulcan ..." She couldn't think of a tactful way to end the sentence.
She could practically feel the tension coming off the man beside her, and the silence was deafening in the din. When his voice came, it was softer than before. "I remember that day well."
Nyota took a deep breath to steady herself, and did not look at him. She could feel his gaze on her, though. "So do I. There are ... certain parts that I prefer to remember more than others."
"I believe I know to which events you are referring."
A smile quirked on her lips. "Care to test your hypothesis?"
There was a pause again, but shorter. "You are referring to when we ... kissed in the lift. And again in the transporter room."
She let herself look at him this time. He was gazing straight ahead into the crowd, face neutral. But his ears had taken on a distinct green tinge, which looked to be creeping into his cheeks. She had never seen him blush before -- she wasn't even sure it was possible. Her neck grew warm in response. "Yes." She let her smile creep into her voice. "How may I interpret your current physiological response, Commander?"
The green grew deeper, and he moistened his lips. "The memory of those events ... pleases me."
Romulan grammar had caused him to phrase it that way. In Standard or Vulcan he would have described his memories as pleasant. As it was, his statement was a double entendre. Nyota was quite pleased with herself, and gave Spock a time to relive what he had just said to her. "Why, Commander Spock! Are you embarrassed?"
"Vulcans do not feel embarrassment."
She nearly giggled. "I doubt that very much."
He looked at her pointedly. "And I do not lie."
They both inhaled sharply when the words came out in Standard, but no one else seemed to notice. Had she really distracted him that badly? She put aside her shame and decided this was a good thing. He was obviously reluctant to talk about what she wanted to talk about, but poking his emotions let them slip out here and there. Especially in a language he knew well, but was better suited to emotional speech than logical.
"That may be true, sir." She looked at him, pointedly speaking in Romulan again. Their gazes locked. "However, you are not fully Vulcan, and your previous statement is misleading."
He seemed taken aback for a moment, but it passed quickly. "You are very observant."
Frustration flared. "Stop avoiding." The words were harsh, and she knew it. But really, they were on the high warp express to nowhere. Reason sat down in a corner of her mind and closed its mouth. "Don't pretend that nothing happened that day. You know that I could feel you when we touched. There was an empathic connection, even though you fought it. Yes, I could tell."
Spock's lips opened, then closed again.
Nyota decided speechless was okay, and continued. "I know you have emotions in there, and I know you don't want to, but nobody can change that."
His voice was raspy. "The discipline of kolinahr..."
"Shut up," she interrupted, and his mouth closed. "You know as well as I do that that was going to be a lie. Well, maybe not a lie, but avoiding. Stop avoiding me!"
He stared at her, and she glowered back. She hadn't really meant for it to come out that way, but there it was.
"I apoliogize." His gaze flicked away. "I had no wish to upset you."
"Well, you're doing a crap job of that." Romulan had been a good choice, she thought again. "It's pretty clear to me that you don't have any experience with girls." In the language she spoke, this carried the additional implications that he was a virgin, and would probably always be one.
Color tinted his face again. "It is true that I have never had a romantic relationship."
"Do you think you have one now?"
The forthrightness of the question startled him. "It ... is difficult to tell. I realize that this is the point of our conversation, but I do not have a concrete answer."
"Spock." She lifted a hand and touched his arm. A very intimate gesture, to a Vulcan, though much less so than the one that had made him blush before. He flinched, but did not pull away. "You don't get it. I'm not trying to analyze what happened. What happened was confusing, and more so when it stopped. I want us to decide what happens next." She sighed. "What do you want?"
He looked at her carefully. "It is apparent that Captain Kirk has not told you of the message I intended to send to you, in the event of Mr. Scott's inability to remove me from the Jellyfish at the right time."
"Was he supposed to?" Her hand dropped in surprise. Yes, he was avoiding again, but this was a new development.
"No. In fact, he did not allow me to complete my request to him."
"So what was this message you had for me?"
Spock broke eye contact, but did not move away. Their hands were very close together. "I requested that, in the event I did not return, he would tell you ..." The last word seemed to be choked off. "You must understand I was in a peculiar state of mind that day."
The words stabbed her in the chest. "That's what you said to tell me?"
"No." He looked back. "That is merely an explanation of my motivation, to enhance your understanding." He stopped. "I wish to retract my last statement. I fear it will be misleading."
"It never happened."
He recognized the hyperbole of her human expression. "I did not actually complete the statement to Captain Kirk at the time, as he interrupted me. But my intent was clear, I believe. I asked him to ..." He glanced at her, then away, and the flush became apparent again. His next words spilled out very quickly: "I asked the Captain to tell you that I love you."
Nyota's jaw literally dropped. She stared at him, while he stared into the party. Several young ensigns were standing on a table, supporting Chekov between them. The birthday boy was obviously intoxicated, speaking and laughing loudly over the noise. People clapped and sang and shouted as he tried to do a little dance, but did not have it in him. The party raged, and Nyota was speechless, transfixed by the words that had just been spoken to her, by an alien, in an alien tongue.
She tried to swallow, and made a pathetic sound clearing her throat. The words she spoke were breathy, barely audible. "Will you ... could you please repeat that in Standard?"
Spock got a little greener before his composure returned. He turned and faced her. "Would you like to continue our conversation elsewhere, Lieutenant? The noise in this room is becoming excessive."
Words didn't work, so she nodded. With impeccable calm, he moved on the edge of the crowd to the door, and she followed with as much businesslike indifference as she could muster. The noise diminished dramatically when the doors closed behind them, but they were not alone. She followed him to the lift.
"Deck Three," he instructed as the doors closed. Then, without hesitation, he pushed the hold button. His brown eyes held her gaze with an intensity that was at once enticing and frightening. "Would you like me to tell you the exact words I intended to speak to the Captain?"
Please, God, yes. "Yes."
His look held her, both of them unmoving. "I quote. 'Please tell Lieutenant Uhura that I love her.'"
Nyota's mouth was open. She knew she looked like a fool. But ... this was really the last thing she had expected to hear. She wasn't sure how to respond. Love? Love? Three years of illicit crushing and a total of one minute of chaste kissing were very confused by the statement. On some level, she scolded herself for imagining he had ever said such a thing.
Spock tilted his head very slightly. "Nyota?"
She blinked and closed her mouth. It was the second time he had ever addressed her by her first name. Basic training kicked in. "Sir."
"Nyota." His gaze seemed to soften. "I do not wish for our relationship to be military in nature. It would preclude the question I wish to ask you now."
Her breathing was rapid and shallow, but she maintained eye contact.
"May I kiss you again?"
She all but lunged at him. Noses bumped, hands grasped shoulders, and gasping breath pierced the still air. His lips were hot against hers, firm and seeking. She held tight to the sides of his face, and he clutched at her back with both hands. His back bumped the wall of the lift and their intensity grew. Parting lips, searching tongues, tilting heads, racing hearts.
The lift chimed at them politely. It had places to go.
Suddenly they were apart. Nyota was dizzy and steadied herself on the bulkhead. Spock indulged the lift and released the hold. Moments later, the doors opened on Deck Three. Spock looked at her intently, and his breathing was ragged. "Please accompany me."
How could she say no?
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Thanks for reading, friends! Second chapter is forthcoming. Please let me know what you thought in the reviews. Do you need any background? I could do a chapter zero.