7. Rose

"Is it food? It looks yummy."

Scotty's eyes close for a second while he repeats to himself that Gaila is not from Earth, and it was likely she wouldn't understand a romantic gesture.

"No lass, it's a flower, a rose."

"I know its a flower silly, but Uhura puts them in salad. Natus – natstut – nasturtiums!"

"Flowers in salad? Ye dinnae get that where I'm from. Uhura must be posh."

"So you can't eat it?"

"Um, no. Besides, it's thorny. Look at the stem, see? Come to think of it, I wonder why they didnae engineer them oot."

A red-nailed fingertip caresses a barb on the slender stalk, and Gaila smiles an interior, Mona Lisa smile. "But that's why it's beautiful."

.

Four days later, Scotty answers his door to Gaila.

"I got something for you." She hands a flat box over, balanced on her two palms as though it was a silver salver and, with authority, says, "Turkish delight." Eye-balling the label on the container, she nods towards it.

"Made of roses."

8. Corundum

Something was wrong with the flitter component in her hand, it felt wrong. She wished Scotty was a teacher, he would never mock someone for saying the inanimate 'felt wrong'. One of her professors looked at her like she came off the last cargo freighter as a stowaway. Well, chuulak him. Anyway, Scotty being hidden away in the depths of R&D was all together better. That's where Starfleet hid all the good toys.

At night in the 'shop', it was quiet. During evening sessions the repair pits were noisy, music blaring out and engineering cadets treating it like a club. That's when she did simple, obvious jobs, repairs that didn't need too much diagnosis or thought.

It was too small to look at with the naked eye, so she mounted the engine-part on a thin graphite rod inserted into a turntable, ready for the scanner. The laserscans were old-fashioned but cheap, and made an accurate image. Once she mapped the part, she could blow the copy up and look for flaws.

But for her steps, occasional breath, and the whirr of motors as she aligned her equipment, all was still. A soft buzz swelled in the hard-surfaced room as the laser pulsed up, but instead of quietening to a hum there was a loud crack, and Gaila started, then sighed and fired a quick query off to the computer. So much for a quiet night in the lab. Before she could start putting things away, her communicator rang 'Scotland the Brave' so she flipped it open and greeted the caller. 'Hey Scotty.'

'Howzit going?'

'Crystal snapped in my laser, none left in stores. I can't repair the scanner anyway, not allowed after the last time.'

'I'm finishing up here, I'll get you one from R&D, what size was it?'

.

In the end, Scotty didn't touch the laser, he let Gaila fix it, assisting as her OR nurse. Head down in the workings, without looking round, she slapped the shattered slivers of the laser's ruptured crimson heart into his hand.

'It must've had a flaw,' he said, 'to fail like that.'

Gaila straightened, her work complete. 'It did its duty.' For no reason she could think of, her voice was harsh. 'Can I see those pieces?'

'Aye, sure.' He held out the shards for her inspection.

'If I use these crystals, if a rich man offers them for me to appraise, to trade, they are corundum chromium. If the same man offers them to some society dimwit, to wear round her scraggy neck, they're rubies.'

Starfleet's brightest engineering star lowered his small burden onto the workbench behind him, and took the Orion's hands in his. 'What do you think's better, Gaila?'

'This is, this is better.'

Chuulak - a type of Orion public execution by slow torture to deter others (thanks Memory Beta)

Happy Valentines from Scotty and Gaila.