Nyota knew she had a tendency to overanalyze things, but her tendency seemed to be turning into an obsession. She dragged herself up the staircase to her dorm room, examining her meeting with Commander Spock, carefully considering each word, gesture, and pause that had transpired. Things had never been weird until today.
If she was going to be honest with herself, it was Commander Spock, so things were always a little bit weird, but never like this. She rolled her eyes at her own inability to pinpoint why she was so nervous around him now.
Gaila seemed to think she had a crush on him, and she had to wonder if Gaila had ever actually met the man. Maybe that was her problem: the fear that other people were beginning to think there was something going on between them. That bothered her for two reasons.
The first was that people liked to gossip, but obviously no one liked being the object of gossip. If rumors went around that she liked Spock, no doubt he would eventually find out, and that would be mortifying. Of course those rumors wouldn't be true; she would never have any romantic interest in the boring, uptight Vulcan, but of course rumors didn't have to be true for them to be embarrassing.
The other thing that bothered her was the fear that maybe they were true. Gaila was horrendously perceptive. She could hone in on the emotions and actions of others, so maybe she was putting out some kind of signs that she liked Spock. But she didn't like Spock. She couldn't. She felt like she would know if she liked someone.
This was all Gaila's fault. Why did Gaila have to say anything?
She decided right then and there that in the future, she would only meet with Spock in his office, with the door open, during school hours. More importantly, she would have to tell Gaila to keep her green mouth shut. Gaila was a notorious blabbermouth, but Nyota had kept enough secrets for her that she hoped her roommate could return just one favor.
She swiped her access card in the door and found Gaila sitting on her bed in her bra and underwear, cheerfully reading something on her data PADD.
"You're back early," Gaila mused with a knowing smile. "I had hoped you'd go back to his place."
"Why would we do that?" she sneered. "There is nothing going on between me and Commander Spock, my advisor, my teacher, the Vulcan, a member of the faculty."
"You know, the more you insist there's nothing there, the more it sounds like there is," Gaila said, playfully rolling onto her back to stare at her.
Nyota sighed and looked up at the ceiling.
"Ok then, I will just say it one more time. There is nothing going on between us, and there never will be. Please do not spread the rumor that Commander Spock and I are dating, or interested in each other in any way, or that we're anything. We're not drinking buddies, we're not golf partners, we don't cheer for the same sports teams, we don't send each other birthday cards, and we don't even ask how the other person's day has been. It's strictly professional. So please keep your misguided opinions about the nature of our professional relationship to yourself. Got it?"
Gaila offered a thin smile and looked down at the floor.
"Who did you tell?" Nyota gasped.
"No one," Gaila blurted. "You're my friend. I wouldn't gossip about you, or let anyone know that you have a thing for Commander Spock."
Nyota scowled and was about to correct her when Gaila added, "On purpose."
"What did you do?" Nyota hissed.
"Well, I had remedial lab tonight and Spock was in there supervising," her friend began.
"You told him?" Nyota yelped, taking a few steps forward.
"No," Gaila insisted, sitting up and waving her hands defensively. "But you remember how we were chatting on the Academy's server? Well, I left the lab without turning the computer off, and when I went back, he was in the middle of doing it for me. I think he might have read-"
"Oh my God, you didn't," she breathed, taking a few menacing steps towards Gaila.
Her roommate began to cower defensively and rolled off the other side of the bed.
"I- I doubt he read it," she stammered. "I was only gone for a minute and he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would read someone's private messages."
Nyota furiously began trying to remember exactly what they'd said, but her mind was too jumbled to think. She knew the messages would still be stored in her log, so she stormed over to her desk and powered on the workstation.
"What are you doing?" Gaila asked, her voice squeaky and high-pitched.
"I'm just going to reread-"
She stopped herself. Would knowing what they'd discussed make this any better? Probably not. If anything, it would only make it worse. But she also knew she would agonize over it if she didn't.
"Um, I was kind of hoping you had plans or could maybe- you know?" Gaila stammered.
"You invited a guy back to the room, didn't you?"
"Well, you bailed out on going to the bar with me, and-"
The door buzzer interrupted her.
"You know, you could at least put some clothes on first," Nyota chided.
Gaila shrugged and threw on a bathrobe and moved toward the door. Nyota grabbed her running shoes and a pair of athletic pants from her dresser and retreated to the bathroom to change. As she closed the door, she noticed the guy standing in their room was a young, first year cadet. Nyota rolled her eyes: he probably wasn't even old enough to shave.
Long runs often helped clear her mind and her mind was full to the brim at the moment. As she prepared to leave their shared dorm room, her roommate and her roommate's next conquest were already sitting comfortably close to one another on Gaila's bed.
"I'm just leaving," she groaned, refusing to make eye contact.
She stuffed her dirty uniform into the clothesbasket by her bed and grabbed her wristband wallet with her access cards and rushed out of the room. She ran down the stairs two at a time, hoping Gaila would remember to keep to her side of the room. It had taken her roommate a depressing amount of time to learn about personal boundaries and respecting other people's property, but she knew her friend never meant to be rude. She was just Orion.
Orion women were very communal. Nyota recalled once in their first year when she'd caught Gaila wearing her underwear, and Gaila had been very confused about why she was so offended. Gaila explained that she would have offered to lend Nyota a pair of underwear if she needed them and didn't think it was a big deal to just help herself to her roommate's delicates.
That had been the first of many cultural misunderstandings between them, but for as much as her Orion roommate could drive her up a wall, Gaila was a good friend who would never hesitate to help her if she needed it. She had been there through thick and thin, and that was more than she could say for most people.
Nyota reached the bottom of the stairwell and stepped out into the night. The streetlamps were on and illuminated the light mist that hung over the campus. She inhaled deeply, felt the humidity roll through her lungs, and jumped straight into a quick jog.
Most of the campus' running paths were crowded in the evenings, but tonight the cold weather and drizzle kept all but the most devoted runners inside. She turned left at the major fork at the edge of the administration buildings to head into the nearby park, sensing that she could use an extra long run to collect her thoughts. Her thoughts were focused entirely on Commander Spock.
She had gotten to know him on a more personal level two months earlier, during a training mission gone horribly wrong. They'd struck a Nausicaan mine, crash landed on a planetoid near a nebula, and survived together in the wreckage before being rescued.
Before enduring that hardship together, she'd always thought he was just a cold and fastidious regulation worshipper. Her opinion of him hadn't really changed: he was still very callous and very much a stickler for details, but somehow, spending hours in a freezing shuttle with him, injured and waiting to die, had given her an appreciation of his exacting outlook. He held himself to an impossibly high standard and it had saved their lives.
She began to feel the tug of a breathing cramp in her right side and realized she was nearly sprinting. She slowed to a jog, feeling silly that she'd been so engrossed in her own thoughts that she'd failed to pay attention to her running form. Her calf muscles started to tighten up and she slowed to a walk.
There were days when she still had doubts about asking him to be her thesis advisor. During their awkward dinner, he had suggested so many changes to her introduction that she'd had to stop herself from asking him if he would just prefer to write it himself. Sometimes it felt like a constant battle to keep her attitude in check whenever he opened his mouth.
That was why she couldn't understand why Gaila seemed to insist that she liked him. Maybe she thought about him a lot, but that was because she thought about her thesis a lot, and he was her thesis advisor. The crash of the Dalton II was also still pretty fresh in her mind: she occasionally had nightmares about it. Since he had been there with her, it was only natural that he would turn up in her thoughts from time to time. Therefore, thinking about someone did not equal liking them.
The steady drizzle gradually shifted into a more substantial rain. She broke into a run at the first crack of thunder, but rather than turn right to run the full four kilometers along the running trails back to her dorm, she turned left out of the park, sprinting across the busy city intersection to take shelter under the awning of a coffee shop.
She caught her breath and blinked water out of her eyes. A peel of lightning illuminated the wet concrete in an instantaneous bright haze. The wind was picking up and beginning to cast freezing, stinging raindrops into her face. Nyota turned her back to it and peered through the window of the coffee shop. It was nearly empty.
"Good evening, Cadet Uhura," called a steady voice behind her.
She wheeled around to see Commander Spock standing behind her, also probably taking shelter from the unanticipated storm. What was he doing there?
"I think 'good' is probably a relative term," she scoffed, wiping away the water dripping from her chin.
"So it is," he agreed, moving past her to enter the coffee shop.
He held the door slightly open and raised an eyebrow. She smirked and followed him inside, instantly feeling grateful for the warm rush of air from the shop's environmental settings.
"Hi there!" called a cheerful woman from behind the counter. "Can I get something started for you?"
"Oh, um, I'm just trying to get out of the weather," Nyota started to explain, instantly feeling guilty as she watched puddles begin to form under her wet feet.
"I believe it is customary to make a purchase if one intends to stay in a place of business as a means of relaxation," Spock interjected.
She had to stop herself from glaring at him. Now he was giving her a lesson on manners?
"Um, I'll take- I don't know. I don't really drink coffee?" she mumbled, moving forward to the counter.
"Tea? Hot chocolate?" the woman suggested.
"Um, surprise me," Nyota shrugged.
"Uh, ok?" the woman replied with a judgmental glance before turning to Spock. "And for you, sir?"
"Hot tea, please. I am impartial to the particular variety."
"Easy to please tonight, I guess," the woman frowned, disappearing to the other end of the counter to make their drinks.
She struck Nyota as the kind of woman who was not often given to spontaneity or whimsy and preferred hard answers to shrugs and I-don't-knows. She could respect that – indecisiveness was irritating.
She tried to brush back the wet tendrils of hair that were stuck to her forehead and glanced down to notice her black sports bra was clearly visible through her soaking wet, light gray running shirt. She casually crossed her arms across her chest and felt her cheeks beginning to burn.
It shouldn't have been a big deal. He'd seen more of her than that back on the Dalton II when he'd helped treat her broken ribs with the bone knitter. Still, that had been different. She dared herself to look at him and tried to act casually and she noticed for the first time that he was barely even damp.
"So, what are you doing out in this weather?" she asked.
"I was on a personal errand and did not anticipate the weather would grow worse," he explained. "I stood under the outside canopy for several minutes, but the storm became severe enough that the canopy's ability to provide shelter from the rain became inadequate."
"Here you go," the woman replied, coming back to the front of the counter with their drinks. "Who's paying?"
"Huh? Oh," Nyota winced, scrambling for her chip card from the wallet on her wrist.
Spock handed the woman his card and she scanned it in her register. Nyota finally managed to fish her card out and tried to hand it to the woman, who looked at them both innocently.
"Were you two not together?"
"No," Nyota said flatly. "Why would you think that?"
"You came in together."
"Sure, but we're not together," Nyota argued, pointing back and forth between Spock and herself.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," the woman said, looking down at the register and shrugging. "It's only my second day. I can probably figure out how to give you a refund, if you-"
"It was a misunderstanding. The amount is inconsequential," Spock interrupted, collecting his tea and moving away from the counter.
"Commander Spock, no," Nyota groaned. "You don't have to buy me a- what is this?"
"Hot chocolate," said the woman behind the counter.
Nyota cringed. Hot chocolate. Like she was seven years old. "You really don't have to do this."
"It is of no matter," Commander Spock insisted, taking a seat at a table by the kitchen.
She reluctantly picked up the cup, knowing that continuing to protest would only make it more awkward. Just as she was beginning to wonder if it was possible to feel more embarrassed, she immediately realized it probably was. What should she do now?
Would it be more presumptuous to just park herself in the seat across from him, or more rude to sit at another table by herself, especially after he'd just bought her a hot beverage that she didn't even want?
He looked up at her and despite her soaking clothes and chilly weather, she felt herself beginning to sweat. She took a few test steps forward to see if she could read from his body language whether he'd intended for them to sit together. She could sooner read the body language of a corpse. He was Vulcan. He would wear the same neutral expression, regardless of whether he was at a funeral or a championship sporting event.
Why was she making this more difficult than it needed to be? She huffed and quickly strolled up to his table and sat down. He seemed unfazed and she began to relax, even if only a tiny bit.
She hunched her shoulders forward to allow her wet shirt to hang more loosely, rather than allow it to remain plastered to her chest. She took a sip from her drink and sputtered. It was scalding hot, so she set it down carefully on the table and looked at Spock. He was watching her with a measure of disinterest and she tried to think of something to talk about. They had discussed her paper at length over dinner and she couldn't think of anything new to say about it.
Then she remembered her conversation with Gaila and that stupid checklist, and things went from a little uncomfortable to completely, utterly, painfully awkward.
"How is your tea?" she croaked.
"Adequate."
She frowned. In the weeks since he'd been helping her with her thesis, they had been getting along reasonably well. Sometimes she'd stay in his office later than she intended to, casually discussing mathematics or debating the evolutionary linguistics of Federation Standard English. She felt annoyed that all it took was one silly conversation with her roommate to make things weirder than they had ever been with Commander Spock.
He was interesting and he had a wide range of interests. So did she. So did a lot of people. That didn't mean she liked them. As the seconds ticked by, the silence began to grow more uncomfortable.
"Um, thank you, for buying my drink, even though you didn't exactly mean to," she muttered, reaching for the cup to take a slight sip of the still steaming liquid.
"You are welcome," he replied, setting his teacup down.
"I haven't had hot chocolate since I was really little."
"I have never consumed that particular beverage."
"Really?"
"Chocolate produces mildly intoxicating effects in members of my species."
"So what do Vulcan children drink when the weather is cold instead?"
That prompted a long conversation about Vulcan cuisine and approximate Terran analogs. In the middle of their discussion, she found she was smiling inwardly. Sometimes coaxing him into conversation could be tricky, but all it took was the right catalyst.
So what if Gaila thought she liked him? She obviously didn't. So what if Gaila thought that him buying her hot chocolate on a cold, rainy night meant they were on a date? It obviously wasn't. Gaila was very intuitive but she could still be wrong.
Several hours later, the woman running the shop politely asked them to leave so she could close up for the night and Nyota was surprised to find the weather had cleared while they had been talking. They parted ways at the door, since she was going left and he was going right. She stretched her calf muscles by standing on the tips of her toes and broke into a run back toward the dorms. She felt good – better than good, even.