Disclaimer: This brilliant writing is by an independent author that don't own NO Trek!
AN: Wow, I really didn't expect to get, like, any response, so all those follows and favorites were so awesome, they just inspired me to get writing, so thanks SO much, everyone! If you're just following for the prospect of a good Romance story, imma warn you right here and right now that I have no BetaReader and no fucking clue. Normally my terrible memory and heavy course load would keep me from even reading fanfics, but y'all've been so nice, here I am!
-ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE! Lol, sorry, had to. Anyway, imma try and switch to Janie's POV for this one, so we'll see how badly it crashes and burns. FOR SCIENCE! :D
Jane stepped off the shuttle bringing her and her now infamous brother back from their summer vacation of more work, and, naturally, more fights, back in Riverside. She sighed. There were only so many places in Riverside to work for, and at this rate Sam'll have been fired from all of them before they graduate. Frustrated, she pursed her lips and gazed down at the empty slot in the early morning of her schedule this year. She got the feeling that she knew exactly what she was going to fill it with, after all her brother couldn't look after her forever, and he couldn't keep getting fired because of her either.
Preoccupied with exactly how she wanted to go about implementing her little idea, she only partially acknowledged her brother's goodbye, knowing she would see him later. Her legs carried her automatically towards the suite-style dorm she had shared since freshman year with Uhura (much to her amusement), Christine and Gaila. They'd all become great friends after all, so maybe they could help her with this. Before she could even finish that train of thought she walked right into a wall. 'Leonard's right. I do need to stop staring at the ground when I walk.' She thought absentmindedly, then looking up, realized it wasn't a wall.
"Oh… Oh. O-oh! I am s-so sorry! I um, I, I-," Jane quickly gathered her things against her chest, and clutched her arms to herself tightly as intense brown eyes stared down at her with one eyebrow quirked, the lack of emotion seeming paradoxically intense. "S-so, so s-sorry, u-um, sir-," She noticed belatedly the black color of his uniform and felt herself go pink with embarrassment. The gazes resting on her only made her feel worse. "S-sir, um, C-commander? Captain? I, uh-," And god dammit why didn't he just say something?! Couldn't he see her floundering here?! She was shaking for Pete's sake!
"Commander will do just fine, thank you."
"A-ah, yes, Commander, I-I, ah, apologize f-for, um-," Here her rather impressive string of words was smoothly cut short as his once again eerily inflectionless baritone silenced her.
"At ease Cadet, I assure you no offense was taken." The Commander's head quirked subtly to one side, his eyebrow falling but otherwise remaining expressionless.
"Y-yes, Commander, th-thank you." She snapped off what must have been a warp speed salute before hastily ducking away from the unnerving man. Jane hunched her shoulders in, hoping to lose his intensely empty gaze as she slipped into the crowd. The feeling of his eyes boring holes into her head, however, would not leave her for at least an hour yet, and she quite nearly forgot why she was going to talk to her suite-mates before move-in day in the first place.
GUESS WHOOOOO DUN-DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUUUN! ABOUT A WEEK LATER
Now that the foggy weather had cleared up, Jane could finally start putting her new morning routine into practice as she filled that annoying free period on her schedule. Having Gaila consent to come with her upon realizing that she too had a morning reprieve in her course load made it just that much more enjoyable. Not only had Jane heard that Tai Chi could be relaxing and good for your health, but also that it built patience, balance, strength, and could even be used as a possible form of self-defense.
The club president was a rather amiable (though she may not seem it) Vulcan that prided herself on knowing at least the basics of all forms of martial arts from both the Terran and Vulcan cultures. T'Remberale was quite willing to accept rookies into their sessions, something for which Jane was particularly grateful, as the other, more aggressive martial arts clubs were more for competing than relaxing, and she didn't think she could handle that kind of stress. 'No,' she thought, remembering the unpleasant comments she'd received on her physical capability when trying for the other clubs and dojos on campus, 'I definitely could not handle that.'
No matter how encouraging (neutral, but Jane liked to think she was being encouraging) their instructor seemed, Jane still felt oddly out of place, and quite distinctly ungraceful next to her Orion suite-mate. Gaila was moving slowly, steadily and confidently through the various open-handed short forms that T'Remberale was currently teaching them. She moved like opaque green molasses, so fluid it made you think for a second that she may not be solid.
Huffing in frustration, Jane quickly realized how ridiculous it was to be jealous over her friend's abilities. Everyone had their talents, after all. That was one thing she knew for certain, seeing as she was the only one in the whole suite that could cook a decent meal without relying on pre-packaged foods, something that her friends had professed envy for on multiple occasions. Really, she had no right to be jealous. Jane flicked her eyes back over her friends' perfect form; she was something though. Not only all of that, but Tai Chi was designed to bring you peace, and she supposed that getting all worked up over how much better at this Gaila was than her wasn't the most peaceful thought to be dwelling on.
TRAAAAAANNNNSSSSIIIIITTIIIIOOOO- NOPE! JK, IMMA WRITE THIS ONE OUT
As the first semester came to a close, Jane found herself beginning to improve at Tai Chi, even if she occasionally required personal attention from T'Remberale or Gaila in order to master a certain form. She squealed in delight in the middle of their suite, Gaila just having helped her to learn the final form in their latest sequence. Her verdant friend sighed in mock exasperation, but still couldn't keep herself from smiling at her introverted Tai Chi partner. Janie, as she now insisted they all call her, had become much more comfortable with her suite-mates over the semesters of shared stress and midnight munchies.
Of course they weren't such close friends that Uhura, as she preferred to be called, would ever tell them anything about the science officer she was snogging, beyond the fact that he was a science officer. Just like how Gaila never revealed all of the juicy details of her nights out partying with her fellow budding archeologists. Christina wouldn't give them any hints as to what kind of research she was helping her xenopathological professor do. And Janie refused to divulge the secret recipe for her infamous, mouth-watering, white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. They all had their secrets, and they all liked to keep it that way.
That's not to say that they never poked or prodded or pried. They just respected each other enough to know when to stop, since they all valued their own privacy enough to not deprive the others of it. Many an exam week night were spent giggling and teasing each other over their various idiosyncrasies more than actually studying since none of them were even in the same field. Gaila was in the archeology track. Christine was in the medical track with Leonard, and their classes sometimes coincided with Jane's, who was in the psychology track. Even Uhura's communications track occasionally led her to taking the same classes as Gaila, so they weren't completely isolated, even if they generally had different schedules.
Sam ended up being the odd one out, much to Jane's disappointment and discomfort during their freshman year, as he had decided to go into the command track. He was like her security blanket, and not having him around all the time had made her very first semester much more nerve-wracking than it should have been. Luckily Leonard and Christine were there for just enough of her classes that she began to relax, and Sam grudgingly admitted that it was alright for his suite-mate to be around his little sister since he helped her in class. He still flirted, the incorrigible tease, but she'd learned to take it much better after the first few months, though he still made her blush fairly often.
Whenever she wasn't cooking, baking, spending time with her friends or brother, or lately, practicing Tai Chi, she was studying. Captain Pike had managed to somehow snag them a full ride at the Academy if they could maintain their grades, and there was no way Jane was going to take that for granted. She noticed the decisions Christine had to make in order to maintain her job down at the mall so she could help pay for her tuition, and she saw just how much sleep Uhura sacrificed to keep her work-study status in order to help pay for her tuition; Gaila's parents were wealthy enough to send her here without debt. So Jane was often easy to find either in the library or behind their dorm building with her nose stuck in a book. None of them wanted to get pushed into active duty in order to pay off severe student loan debts.
Sure, they all understood that service would be required of them once they graduated anyway, but Starfleet had more than enough members at the moment and only a limited amount of credits that could go towards their education every year, so in order to raise both recruitment and funding, they kept the Academy open like a regular college, except that if you couldn't pay off your tuition, they would simply recruit you into the Reserves or to small tasks like patrolling a colony or maintaining some random, lonely outpost and take it out of your paycheck. The more you owed them, the more likely you were to get put on active duty and sent to either the Klingon or Romulan border, where the more dangerous and high-paying jobs were. It didn't seem so bad until you did the calculations for whatever little, unimportant post they stuck you in and realized just how many pay checks they'd be swiping from you. Even though the galaxy was certainly crawling with super intelligent species higher education wasn't cheap, and Jane tended to like being able to make her own decisions about where she'd live and what job she'd take, thank you very much.
So it certainly wasn't a surprise when Janie grabbed her bag after calming down with a quick glass of water and said she would be out on the common with Leonard, studying for their neurotransmitters quiz.
"Girl, I swear, you really should just kiss that man." Gaila grinned mercilessly at her friend's reddening cheeks.
Janie just choked out something about coming back later and fled, her hands winding tightly into her long blonde hair as she bit her lip. 'Maybe I should just go to the library today. It is pretty cloudy out.' Nodding, she decided that the library would be her best bet. 'Sammy's probably roping him into something like he usually does anyway.' She mentally rolled her eyes before tucking her head down into her hunched-up shoulders (though she didn't stare at the ground anymore, learned that lesson the hard way, literally) and rushing towards the West side of campus. The library there was particularly nice in that even a few of the Vacuum Rooms (they jokingly called them that due to their complete and total silence) had floor-to-ceiling windows where you could see out onto the bay. Those went fast though, which meant she would have to hurry to get one before the Sunday cram-session students took them all over.
"Hey! ...Janie!" She stumbled a bit at the sound of Leonard's voice. "I thought we had a date?" Leonard stared at her, eyebrows furrowed.
'Damn him!' She blushed, automatically averting her gaze towards the sidewalk beneath her feet. She took a shaky breath, prepared to splutter some lame excuse about wanting to be alone when he broke off her train of thought with an easy chuckle.
"Relax, sweetheart, I was just teasin' ya."
Now blushing with indignity, Janie pressed her lips into a thin line, struggling to keep her exasperated gaze on his stubbly smirking face.
"A-are we going to st-study or not?"
His face broke out into a full-blown grin at her annoyed tone.
"Yeah, sure, I guess." He led her back over to the spot he'd already been occupying when she tried to walk by, PADD lying face-down in the grass; looks like Sammy wasn't keeping him occupied. If there was one thing she'd noticed about her brother, it's that he was certainly much less overbearing when they were on campus. She didn't blame him, though. After all, this place felt more like home to them than Riverside, Iowa did now, or it did to her at least. She could only conclude that Sammy felt the same for him to be acting this way, especially around Leonard, who he'd apparently nearly beat to a pulp during their first week in-suite together.
Sighing, she looked sympathetically over at the older Cadet sitting next to her; some things never changed. Brow furrowed in concentration as he skimmed over the chart of empathic neurotransmitters, she couldn't deny that Leonard was a handsome man. He looked back up at her and suddenly Gaila's words raced back to the forefront of her thoughts.
"Girl, I swear, you really should just kiss that man."
Eyes widening in alarm, she whipped her head back around to face her own PADD and let her hands flutter over the touch screen, trying frantically to remember which excitatory chemical she had been in the process of memorizing; she determined not to think any ore on the subject.
"Janie? Are you alright?" He sounded both worried and amused at the same time.
"N-n-nothing, it's nothing, nothing…"
"If you say so. But it is rude to stare. If you'd wanted to look at me you could've just said so." Oh, she could hear the smirk in that one.
'I need to stop blushing, goddammit!' Janie thought, frustrated with herself for the umpteenth time that day. Sometimes she really wished she had confidence, except that that sometimes was about once every one-and-a-half seconds. Really, she would love to be able to go more than half-a-minute in the company of someone besides her brother without having to curl her bangs around her fingers or bite her lip or shuffle around uncomfortably. Making eye contact and actually being able to speak to her commanding officers would be nice, too. As soon as she graduated and got her officer's commission, she determined that she would take up a position in research, preferably on some tropical, sparsely populated planet where she could spend her time studying the psyche of various non-communicative species.
Eventually the clouds started to darken ominously. Declaring their study session officially over with a joking, overly-flourished and elaborate bow, Leonard helped her pack up her things before he unceremoniously shoved all of his materials into his bag. He said a quick goodbye and said he'd give her regards to Sam before breaking into a light jog towards his dorm.
Feeling much more at ease now that their study session had gone on as planned and without a hitch, Janie decided to make her way to the library so that she could download a copy of the book her psychology professor had assigned them on Friday. Looking up, she estimated that she would have enough time before the storm hit. Normally she would download this from her dorm, but she had a textbook that she needed to remove from her PADD before she would have enough room for Sybil, and Uhura still hadn't returned her data stick.
Striding right for the nearest interface as soon as she walked in, she stumbled for the second time that day upon seeing Uhura. Her back to the door, she had her fingers intertwined with that of a very familiar tall, dark-haired figure. Both were gazing intently at a terminal as he navigated through the library's catalogue.
'Today is just not my day.' Janie mentally cringed as she sucked in a steadying breath and tried to turn around and leave. 'I can always just ask her for the data stick when we-I-she gets ba-
CRACK!
'Dammit.' She groaned in her head as the clouds opened up and rain began pouring onto the concrete in front of the sliding glass doors. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the tall man's ears twitch, which, she realized for the first time, were pointed, and no doubt highly sensitive. Fidgeting and hunching her shoulders in, she tried to make herself as indistinct as possible in that bright red Cadet's uniform. She felt her suite-mate turn around, and was in the middle of frantically debating whether or not it was worth going out there just to avoid her when the long fingernails inevitably tapped her on the shoulder. Feeling Uhura's irritated gaze bore into her back, she merely hunched her shoulders even more in guilt and trepidation. Her hands automatically found their way into her hair and clenched tightly.
"It's alright, Janie, I'm not mad at you." Uhura sighed gently.
Jane slowly relaxed her muscles at this reassurance, letting her digits resume their normal tangling with her hair, though her eyebrows were still scrunched doubtfully as she turned her head to peek at her friend. When nothing but weariness and amusement met her gaze, she shuffled around to face them fully. Her eyes darted around the room, looking anywhere but at her suite-mate and her rather impassive boyfriend; she frowned a bit. Wasn't she forgetting someth-
"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, snapping to attention. "I-I'm so sorry, Commander! …a-again…" She blinked, shame and embarrassment trickling into her voice. 'I wouldn't be surprised if my face is now permanently frozen in a worried expression.' Janie thought bitterly to herself.
Uhura recovered from her surprise only to hide her face in her hands as she attempted to quiet her giggling. Sometimes her suite-mate was just too funny.
Her boyfriend, on the other hand, merely raised an eyebrow. "There is no need to formally recognize me off-duty, Cadet."
"O-oh…" She relaxed her posture uncertainly, still finding his regard uncomfortable.
"Oh! That's right! Janie, this is…" Here Uhura paused momentarily, as if unsure how to introduce her own boyfriend "Spock. Spock, this is my suite-mate, Jane, y'know, the one that made those cookies you like so much!"
'What?! When did she give him my cookies?!' She blinked. 'And isn't Spock one of her language prof- Oh, shit…' Janie's eyes were saucers as she switched her gaze back and forth between the two. 'No wonder she didn't want anyone to know about this…'