"Let's go," she suggests when a group of ensigns join them on the balcony, their faces flushed from dancing and their voices too loud.

"Now?" he asks as if he didn't hear her, as if the space between them was suddenly too much for her words to travel, but he did hear because he immediately asks, "Why? Is it not too early?"

"It is," she agrees, trying to look through the crowd inside for the nearest door. "But do you really want to stay?"

He doesn't, she knows, since he's already following her inside. "Go where?"

"Not here," she answers and when she keeps walking he trails after her, his boots a steady rhythm behind her as she cuts through the crowd.

When they slip outside, it's still raining, heavy drops that splash up onto her toes and leave the straps of her shoes rubbing wet against her feet, so that the first thing that she does when she gets into his car is slip them off and toss them into the backseat, only then combing her fingers through her hair to smooth out where it's been dampened.

The way he turns up the heat helps, warm air gushing out of the vents so that maybe the splatters of water dotting her dress will start to dry, or maybe the windows will just fog up like they are, a haze already edging up the glass and obscuring the parking lot from view and the building beyond it, where silhouetted against the windows, officers are still drinking and talking and dancing.

"Is it acceptable to leave so soon?" Spock asks, looking past her out the window. She steals a moment to just take him in, his eyes tracing back and forth, focused on the lights of the party like he can pick out an answer.

"Nobody'll notice," she promises and hopes she's right. Who knows who was there and who wanted to talk to Spock, and what they might be missing, some admiral or captain with whom a conversation might have opened up an opportunity for either of them. There's a part of her that would go back, but there's a larger part that wants to reach down and rub at her foot, so that's what she does, folding her leg up and digging her thumbs into where the strap cut across her toe.

"This isn't some horrible Vulcan taboo, is it?" she asks because she really doesn't want to stop, but his eyebrow is raised and he's now looking at her, not out the window any more.

"No."

"Good."

"How will you walk back to your dorm?"

"I'll figure it out."

"That is-"

"-Illogical?"

"Footwear exists for a reason."

"I'll tell you what is really illogical," she says. "The fact that there wasn't dinner. How many mini quiches is a person expected to eat?"

"If that was not a rhetorical question, I would have to inform you that I am not certain as to the answer," he says as he reaches out and adjusts the heat, turning the fan down but not lowering the temperature, even though the car is beginning to warm to the degree that it reminds her of the heat of his quarters. "Which were the quiches?"

"The egg one, with the crust."

"My mother called that yu'murlar."

"You had eggs on Vulcan?"

"Not from chickens."

"Huh." She lets her foot slide back to the floor, flexing her toes against it and working them this way and that.

The hard sheets of water sliding over the car and the fog creeping up the windows makes it harder and harder to see everyone else still at the party, so that it feels like she and Spock are very much alone, no matter how many people might be walking past them right then, on their way to their own cars or for the unlucky few, the bus stop that has a connection to campus and the rest of the city.

It makes her want to ask if he's going to turn on the car so that they too can leave, but she doesn't find herself actually voicing that since it will mean driving back, their evening drawing to an end. Instead, she just watches him as he makes another adjustment to the heater, how his gray cuff lays against his wrist and how carefully he holds himself so that his uniform probably still doesn't have a wrinkle on it.

"I did not realize that the food was so dissatisfying," he says into the silence, his hand still on the knob of the environmental controls.

"It wasn't, it was delicious," she says. "But it wasn't dinner, dinner."

"I do not understand."

"An actual meal."

"When amalgamated, the various choices likely provided the same number of calories and a comparable amount of nutrition."

"But it's not the same as sitting down at a table."

He doesn't seem to know what to say to that and she would explain more but someone does walk by right then, close enough that she can make out the sound of voices and their shadow over the car and then Spock is putting on his seatbelt and there doesn't seem anything for it but to do the same.

He drives slowly on the way back, which she chalks up to the rain and the traffic around HQ, so that it takes longer to begin to reach the outskirts of campus than the drive seemed to earlier.

It's certainly long enough that she's beginning to think more seriously about the quiches and especially about those crab cakes Olson was eating and is starting to wish she had more of both when the light changes a few cars in front of them and Spock slows even further, the rain suddenly louder as the car comes to a stop.

"I think there should be some regulation against dragging officers to something like that and not properly feeding them," she says, leaning her head against the window and staring at the water coursing down, the restaurants and shops lining the street wavy and warped through the rain on the glass.

"Perhaps when you achieve the rank of Admiral that can be one of the policy changes you introduce."

"You'll have to remind me about it," she tells him, rolling her head against the window enough to turn towards him. "I'm so hungry my memory is probably shot."

"I will."

He says it so seriously that she's looking at him and not out the windows when the light changes again, so she nearly misses the familiar pattern of lights above a shop a half a block ahead, too caught up in his tone and how he glanced at her as he said that, his eyes cutting over and then away again.

"There pull over," she says, leaning forward against her seatbelt and pointing until he slows the car and edges towards the side of the road. "There's a spot."

"What are we doing?" he asks as he pulls into it.

"Not going home quite yet," she explains, thinking only of her dorm and the homework waiting for her there, held against another few minutes being out for the night, alone with him and away from everyone at the party.

"I do not-"

"Stay here," she instructs as she opens the door and examines the rain streaming down, her skirt fisted in one hand.

"You are not wearing shoes."

"I am aware," she tells him, then gets out and shuts the door before the cold, hard rain can blow inside. She jogs over to the door of the pizza place that Gaila loves, the one she brings slices back from after long nights out at bars and clubs, so that more than once Nyota has woken up to empty containers and stained napkins on the floor of her room.

"I do not understand you," he says when she gets back, though he reaches over and takes the bag from her so that she can get into the car quickly, only slightly soaked.

"Turn up the heat," she says. "And give that back, I'm starving."

He does both, raising the temperature and letting her take the bag from him, that eyebrow of his raised as she pulls the bag from his hands. She lifts out the container she got for herself and opens it, letting herself just stare down at the pizza for a moment before carefully sliding her fingers under it. It's hot, nearly too much so, her fingers smarting with runny grease and cheese melting onto her hand and back into the container in messy, wet globs, but she can barely care because it just tastes so, so good.

"This is not a meal either," he says as she closes her eyes and chews slowly, savoring the salt and the truly, truly delicious, too warm cheese, so different than what's served in the mess hall each day, and such a far cry from what she normally eats. It's not a normal night, though, not full of textbooks and notes, or the company of other cadets and she takes another bite, and then another.

"This is the best thing I've ever eaten."

"You yourself said that a table is necessary to qualify the act of eating as a meal."

"Try it," she instructs.

"No."

"You haven't eaten all night."

"That is not nutritious."

"That's the point."

"Consuming foods which are high in-"

"-I got you a salad, but you can't have it until you've had a bite of this."

"You did?"

"I did."

He's eyeing the bag at her feet and she wants to say something about how she wasn't going to not bring him food too, but doesn't because his head is tipping slightly to the side and there's something around his eyes that she's too busy studying, before he looks up at her again and then she's examining her pizza instead of staring back at him in the small space. "It remains that pizza is illogical."

"Too bad," she says, toeing the bag slightly further away from him, so that it's resting between her leg and the car door. "Because really, it remains that I've been informed that I'm incredibly stubborn so the rational decision would be to capitulate now."

He's just staring at the piece held in her hand and doesn't move other than to let one of his eyebrows creep up again, a sight that makes her chest slightly tight. She ignores it, pushes that feeling back down until she's more sure that the pull in her, that tension, has ebbed and eased and is largely gone. It's probably too much for him, too abnormal and too human and too messy, especially in his car that he keeps so clean, and especially after a night out among so many officers, enough of a departure from the norm for her and so much more jarring for him that he likely wants to get back home and shrug off everything Terran and so foreign in the peace of his quarters. Or the ship, she reminds herself, even further away from everything that has always made him so uneasy about being on Earth.

Instead of holding the pizza out to him and trying to get him to eat it with more convincing and maybe a smile, she makes herself shrug. "It's fine," she says, trying for something casual with her tone, something light and like she doesn't care. "More for me."

She's taken another bite, the pizza slightly cooler this time around when she sees him nod out of the corner of her eye, feels him still watching her.

"Very well."

"Very well?" she asks, warmth spreading through her chest so that she has to swallow so that she can keep smiling. "I don't know, your chance might be up. Forfeited for lack of enthusiasm."

"That was not stated in your previous conditions."

"I'll allow it this time," she says and then his hand is hot around her wrist, and he's leaning over and taking the absolute smallest bite that she's ever seen. "Come on, that was nothing."

"Inaccurate," he says as he swallows.

"No, that was the least committed bite of pizza ever."

"That cannot be ascertained without conducting a thorough study and reviewing pertinent historical documents."

"Intuition," she promises. "I just know."

"Insufficient scientific rigor," he says, reaching over her lap for the bag that's resting against her leg so that she has to pull her pizza out of the way, her body crowded back against the seat by his until his warmth is suddenly gone again, his salad in his hand and the sound of him opening the container filling the car.

"Thank you," he says, his fork still poised above the greens which are really a poor substitute for even what's served in the mess hall.

"Just don't go asking for my crust," she says, then leans over and snags a tomato out of the container with her fingers, pops it into her mouth before he reacts.

He finishes before she does, because she only eats pizza every so often and it's something to be enjoyed, and because he was definitely hungry, eating in a way that reminds her of that first night she was ever in his apartment, bowls of soup on the table in front of him and his appetite suddenly making an appearance after all of those meals they had shared where he had barely picked at his food.

"Any other necessary stops?" he asks as he starts the car again.

"No, but I'll let you know if I think of any."

"Do you require more time?" he asks as she slowly takes a bite of her crust.

"Just enjoying myself," she says.

He parks where he did earlier, in that spot in the lot as close to her dorm as he can get and she thinks about another night and hazy mid summer air.

"It's supposed to do this into tomorrow?" she asks as she stares out the window, the entrance to her dorm mostly obscured by the rain beating down so that she can barely make out the steps that lead up to the dorm. A Tellarite second year who lives two floors up from her room jogs up them, his head ducked against the rain and then he's gone inside the lobby, the doors sliding shut behind him.

"Rain? I believe so."

"Do you like it?" she asks, watching him watch the rain sliding down the windshield.

"I find it intriguing, though admittedly more so when I first arrived on Earth."

"Does it ever rain on Vulcan?"

"Rarely, especially where I was raised, and never like this."

"I wonder if your mother misses it," she says, joining in him in watching the slide of water coursing over the glass. "I think I would, if I lived somewhere so dry."

"That is a common complaint of those who served extended time on ships, especially officers who do not have an opportunity to assist with away teams."

"I guess I never thought of that," she says, thinking of the Enterprise up above them, the handful of times that trainings have taken her up to Spacedock and the cool, recycled air.

"Do you have a significant amount of homework to complete this weekend?" he asks and maybe that's a reason to get up and out of his car, but she doesn't move to do so.

"Just getting ready for midterms," she says, which he knows of course. "I don't think Cretek was kidding about having a lot in store for us, based on the readings she assigned for next week."

"You continue to enjoy her class?"

"It's ok." She watches a stream of water form on the edge of the windshield and run down it, out of sight. "Not as good as a parrises squares match."

"You are an enthusiast?"

"Not like Ho is, apparently." She shakes her head lightly, still watching that trickle of water, joined now by another rivulet flowing towards it. "You're working again this weekend?"

"I am."

"Tonight?" she asks, already sure of his answer.

"Yes."

"Pot. Kettle," she says, pushing lightly at the dashboard in front of her, her fingers braced against it before she drops her hand. "Sorry, that means that you're telling me to-"

"I am familiar with the phrase." He adjusts his seat belt over his chest and shifts slightly. "It was an often used utterance between my parents."

"Hypocrisy should be illogical."

"One would think."

"Well, you're missing your big chance to go to the game," she says, running her thumb under the strap of her own seatbelt but not moving to unlatch it. "Unless parrises squares was on your checklist of things to do on Earth when you got here?"

"No," he says and she shouldn't be surprised, since she can't really imagine him enjoying himself at a game like that, no matter how much Ho wanted him to go. Cretek too.

She watches rain fall into a puddle on the sidewalk, the drops splashing up each time they hit the surface, over and over again, little jumps of water that make tiny leaps towards the sky.

"My father took me to a match," Spock says in the quiet.

"Really," she says, turning back towards him.

"I was twelve. I believe it was intended as a relationship building experience."

"Intended?"

"It was not ever repeated. I am not certain it was entirely successful."

She lets herself lean slightly towards him and doesn't try too hard to tell herself to move back away again. "Did you enjoy it?"

"It was certainly interesting."

"He liked my paper," she says and smiles, just a little. "Found it logical. Compelling, I think he said."

"You spoke?" he asks and seems to be unable to quite mask the surprise that briefly colors his expression.

"He sent me a message. It was nice." And strange, but she doesn't bother telling Spock that since he seems to be thinking the same thing, his eyes flicking over at her.

"His statements are factual."

"And nice," she repeats.

"Accurate."

"Sweet of him," she says just to see if she can get Spock to smile.

"That is not a descriptor that has ever been used in reference to my father."

"I don't know about that," she says, thinking of what Spock must have been like when he was twelve, trying to imagine it and keep at bay the smile that's threatening. The expression on his face, that particular blankness that he carries, is enough to prevent her smile from blooming, so that instead she just adjusts the seatbelt across her chest. "I'm sorry you two aren't close."

"There is nothing for you to apologize for."

"Regardless," she says.

He watches the rain tick down, drop after drop falling onto the windshield in front of them in an endless beat until he ducks his head and examines what she's guessing is an overly interesting spot on his slacks.

"Thank you."

She gives him a gentle smile even though he's not looking. "What is it that I say next? That there's no thanks necessary?"

He blinks and something about him eases, his fingers swiping over the spot on his pants he was staring at as his head comes up. "I believe the appropriate response, then, is the utterance of 'still' which has no significant or substantial meaning, and yet this fact does not stop humans from over using the statement."

"I never said we were logical," she tells him. "What game was it? That he took you to?"

"The Terran team was playing Andor."

"Was Puri there? Did you two run off and hijack the scoreboard? I can just imagine it now, you furiously coding, Puri coming up with things to write up there."

"A missed opportunity, to be sure. Perhaps it would be wise to not mention it to the Doctor. I am uncertain he would be able to refrain from carrying out such an idea, even as an adult."

"Him or you?" she asks and Spock doesn't answer but she catches how his mouth twitches before he turns to look out his window to hide it.

"Have you been to one?" he asks.

"A game? Yes, but there's really no sense in going again if we aren't going to get Puri to agree to such antics," she says. Spock isn't going tomorrow night anyway so she can smile to herself at the thought and ignore the fact that it will only be a thought, something to imagine and picture in her own mind, that there won't be an opportunity to let Puri know exactly what they've been talking about.

"You did not enjoy yourself?"

"No," she says, shaking her head. "Anything would have been an improvement, even parties with no real food."

"The Terran team was unsuccessful?"

"No, no, I went with this guy," she says before she's really decided if that's something she wants to tell him, and then squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head again at the memory, thinking that she needn't have shared that. "It was terrible."

The rhythmic fall of rain fills the car again and she finds herself picking at the arm rest on the door, running her nails over it again and again so that she has to make herself stop before she leaves any lasting mark there, marring the pristine interior of Spock's car.

"It was fine," she corrects because it wasn't really that horrible, not compared to other situations over the years.

"Did he wear his uniform?"

"What?" she asks, shifting so she's facing him again. "No, why?"

"I have been informed that such attire is inappropriate for those types of circumstances."

She finds herself laughing at that, her hand falling away from the arm rest. "Thankfully he didn't, though I wouldn't have put it past him."

"Perhaps he would have benefited from your guidance."

"Not deserving of it, trust me," she says, hearing the note in her own voice, the strength of her words surprising to her. She runs her teeth over her bottom lip, bites at it, and sighs. "I thought… I don't know what I thought. That he'd be more interesting than a brick wall and had better manners. Turns out I was wrong on both counts."

She adjusts her skirt over her lap, touches a damp spot that has yet to completely dry as she waits for Spock to say something, though he doesn't.

When he keeps silent, she adds, "It was a long time ago. My first semester here."

"You did not repeat the experience?"

"Stop it with the inquisition," she says, letting go of the fold of her skirt she finds that she picked up and was rubbing between her fingers so that she can nudge his arm with her knuckles, the fabric of his dress grays soft and warm. "And no, I didn't."

"I am simply curious," he says, which she knew but there's something else there in the way he looks away from her, something that makes her duck forward and try to catch his eye again.

"What, you're not going to share your own wayward adventures?" she asks even though she knows the answer, knows that whatever it was that passed between him and T'Pring did so recently enough that it left little time between the end of it and the beginning of the summer and sitting here now, months later, the rain beating down, alone with him in his car, she finds she's maybe ok with not knowing what transpired in those few weeks, if anything did at all. Unlikely, she thinks, remembering him back then. But possible maybe, which is fine. Really fine. Very much none of her business.

"Cretek has a thing for you," she says before she can stop herself then wants to cover her face with her hands or maybe just step out into the rain like it could wash away the moment or perhaps ask him if there's anyway he can possibly, with that perfect memory of his, forget that she said that. "Sorry, sorry, I-"

"She has said as much."

"Right." She unfastens her seatbelt, reaches into the backseat for her shoes, hooking the straps over her fingers and not looking at him. "It's-"

"Would you like to-"

"What?" she asks when he doesn't continue, and when he stays silent she tightens her grip on her shoes. "I'm sorry I said that, it was- I shouldn't have brought it up."

He nods, still watching her and she reaches for the door handle, her cheeks flushed too warm for it to be from the heat of the car.

"Goodnight," she says.

"Nyota it is not-"

"No, it's fine," she says, firmly so that she can hear how much she means it, her words strong enough to counterbalance the heat creeping down from her face to settle inside of her chest. "It's like I said, right? Half of the Academy? Of Starfleet? More?" She gestures to that jacket on him and if she could, she would point to that dry humor of his, the list of everything he's accomplished in his few years out of the Academy, that kindness that seems fundamental to him so that he's probably the most decent and thoughtful person she's ever met, but she can only point again to his dress grays and that's not really sufficient to explain everything that there is about him so she lets her hand fall back into her lap. "You could have been there with anyone tonight."

The fall of the rain patters down around them, a steady staccato that batters his car, obscuring the world through the windows so that it's just the two of them, the air between them warm and weighted, until he draws in a breath and says, "I was not."

"No," she nods, tugs at her skirt. "You weren't."

The rain starts to course down harder, the sound of it picking up and the patter swelling into a drum on the roof of the car, the parking lot around them washed out in a stream of water gushing down the windshield.

"You give the impression that such would be straightforward," he says and she wonders if she's supposed to hear him over the beating of the rain, or if his voice is pitched low like that so that she's welcome to ignore it if she wants to, to let his words slide past her, out into the darkness of the night beyond them. "I have not found that to be the case."

"No," she says again, and nods once more for good measure, her fingers still picking over the folds of her skirt. It's anything but simple, and he's anything but uncomplicated, a jumble of a shaken up puzzle wrapped up inside of a person, the pieces of him difficult to pick through, to make sense of and to see clearly except in snatched moments here and there.

She's getting better, she thinks, at noticing, at taking in everything about him, all those different facets and irregular components of him that shine through now and again.

Mercurial, she thinks, utterly and painfully and wonderfully one of a kind.

"I wish it was," she hears herself say.

She watches his lips move over words, ones she thinks are in agreement, but she can't hear them over the pound of the rain or maybe it's her own pulse, a batter of sound that drowns out what he said until he pulls in a breath, his forehead knitting together. "Nyota, over the course of the summer you harbored significant concern regarding the course of your career and if the Lieutenant or another officer has said or suggested that-"

"No," she says, much louder, cutting him off so that his eyes snap over to her and then away again, his attention centered on the dashboard. She helps him stare at it, sure that they can bore right through it. "I don't. It's ok."

"You are certain?"

"Yes," she says.

It's fine, she starts to say again except that the jab of nerves that she's carried with her since the other night with all of the officers and very likely from before that, from over the summer when everyone would look between her and Spock and form their own ideas, spoken only in small smiles and that flick of their eyes from him to her and back again - all of that has been bubbling and building in her for so long so that instead of telling him that it's really, really ok, she finds her free hand fluttering in her lap, refusing to stay still and her attention shifting to glue itself to the water sheeting down the window.

"She-" she starts, then reaches down to adjust the bag by her feet where it's threatening to tip over so that empty napkins and the salad container might spill all over the floor of the car, because she's not going to say Cretek's name again. "Everyone, Ho too, I mean, and the Admiral and-" She gets out a laugh that sounds half mangled, a rather wild version of what she was going for as she picks at the edge of the bag. "They think we're…"

Whatever it is that they were doing over the summer. She adjusts her grip on her shoes, presses her lips together and looks up at him, feeling a catch in her throat as she swallows, and a jump slightly below it, somewhere in her chest or stomach or maybe just everywhere, the entirety of her feeling flighty and fluttery and like the car isn't nearly enough room to contain all of this, that throb in her stomach that started sometime last summer and has never even begun to ebb.

"I am aware."

"Right."

She could reach for the door handle right then, her shoes still caught over her fingers and her dorm right there, so close to where they're sitting, though she's sure that if she does, life will jolt back into action, that this pause, this stilling and slowing of the evening that they've created will be punctured in a wet strike of rain on her skin and they won't get back here, to the quiet and calm of the small space of the car around them.

"I didn't go out again with that guy or really anyone else until this summer," she says, her fingers twisting around the straps of her shoes.

"You did not."

"No," she says, then drags a smile out of herself, aims it down at her lap and breathes out something that might be another laugh, one towards herself or towards him or maybe - probably - towards them both together. "I guess I was apparently waiting around for the most horribly awkward cup of tea that anyone has ever had."

"If it was so unique, it is fortunate that I was on hand to experience it as well," he says with all of his normal gravity, that seriousness and sternness that clings to him and which makes her smile, makes it grow wider and tug at her mouth until she can catch his eye and see that light in them, that shine that she sometimes thinks she could spend days studying.

He adjusts the heat, then smooths the front of his jacket, then tucks his hands together in his lap and says, "I understand that your first experience with the sport might preclude future interest. However if you do wish to attend the game tomorrow night, I would be amenable."

"Oh," she says, an odd rush draining out of her, leaving her closing her mouth which she didn't realize was parted and rubbing her palm quick over her thighs. She doesn't think he wants to go, not really. And she has a lot of work. A lot, a lot of work. She's nodding anyway, and asking, "Don't you have to be up on the ship?"

"Not all evening."

"Ok."

"Is than an acceptance?"

"Yes?" she asks and when his eyes fall to her mouth, she realizes that she's been smiling.

"I believe it is incumbent upon myself to remind you that you repeatedly informed me that my own manners were severely lacking."

"You drove me home," she points out, of all the things she could say to that, that thought rising to the top of everything he's done for her. "And yes, I do want to go. With you."

She unbuckles her seat belt, leans across the car, her hand rising to his cheek to turn him towards her so that she can kiss him, his lips pressing against hers gently, softly and so slow as she remains there, uncomfortable with how she's sitting, the armrest digging into her side and barely balanced, unsteadily leaning into him.

His fingers rest on her jaw before sliding back into her hair, cupping her head as he begins to kiss her more firmly, deeper and thorough and still painstakingly slow. The tug of his lips on hers and the soft sound he pulls out of the back of her throat as she tries to press closer to him makes her want to shove everything between them out of the way, the gearshift and the armrest and the space between their bodies until there's nothing left but the two of them.

When he finally breaks away, their lips parting with a soft smack that's loud in the quiet of the car, she's still leaning against him and stays there caught up in him, unwilling to make herself move.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," she whispers, feels the movement of his nod against her, his nose brushing against her own and the pull of the scent of his skin and his touch on her still, so that it's not right then that she moves back, opens her door and steps out into the night to return to her dorm, but much later, losing herself in him in the meantime, the moments stretching elastic as she lets herself kiss him again and then again, minutes ticking past them and counted out in the patter of the rain.