10/11/15: Friends, we are imminently approaching the end. There's a handful of chapters left - if you want to know how many, feel free to either ask or check out my posts cataloguing the last few weeks of writing, all under 'the place between' tag on my tumblr, or hang in there and wait for the trusty 'the end' that will follow the last chapter, which we are rapidly - and sadly, because of what an incredible journey this has been - coming up on. Happily, there's still a bit of story left before we reach the last of it, so I hope you continue to enjoy!
…
"What are you doing?" Gaila asks, too loud and too close so that Nyota can't help but jump in surprise, smearing the eyeliner she was very nearly done applying.
"Dammit Gaila," she says, wiping at it with her knuckle and then the side of her thumb.
"You stop, your Cardassian paper doesn't care how you look. I know you and your homework have a close relationship but really, Ny? This is maybe taking it a bit far."
"Can you warn me next time so that I'm not in danger of stabbing myself in the eye?"
"Can you maybe tell me what warrants getting all dressed up?" Gaila asks. "Or who? Oh stop, you're just making it worse."
"Don't," Nyota says but that doesn't keep Gaila from grabbing a tissue in one hand and Nyota's chin in the other, turning her face up and wiping at the corner of her eye.
"Answer," Gaila instructs, her touch far more gentle than her voice is.
"No."
"Tell me," she says, picking up the eyeliner again and tilting Nyota's chin slightly to the side. "Or I'm going to make this so slightly uneven that it will make anyone who likes precision and exactness and is a fan of things being all in order and capable of noticing when they're not absolutely crazy."
"I'm getting a new roommate."
"No you're not," Galia corrects as Nyota feels her carefully correct what had smudged. "You're just finding new and more interesting places to sleep. I can't believe you came home last night, do Vulcans melt in the rain? Is that their greatest weakness besides irrationality and being allergic to having fun?"
"He had work," Nyota says, pushing Gaila away and leaning forward to inspect herself in the mirror, trying to find fault with Gaila's application and frowning at her own reflection when she can't.
"You two are practically made for each other with how boring you both are." Gaila runs her fingers through Nyota's hair where she's pulled it up, twisting her ponytail around green fingers and giving her a smile in the mirror. "Except for tonight apparently."
"It's nothing."
"It is so not nothing. It is the opposite of nothing. It is Saturday night and you are going somewhere that I am guessing is not the library." Gaila's hands fall to her shoulders, straightening the collar of the shirt Nyota picked out. "Any ambassadors going to be around?"
"You know the answer to that," Nyota says, turning her head this way and that to examine whether Gaila messed up her hair.
"So it's just you two?"
"Some of his…" she starts, waving a hand towards her reflection. "Colleagues. Coworkers. Friends."
"I thought he didn't have friends."
"I thought so too, but I think he's just… I don't know. Stubborn."
"Sounds like a real catch."
"Don't you have somewhere else to be right now? Anywhere?" Nyota asks but instead of waiting to see if Gaila nods or is even going to answer, she hears her comm ring and grabs for it before Gaila can.
"Hi," she says, then mouths 'stop' at Gaila who's craning to see the ID on the small screen, her tongue caught between her teeth as she smiles.
"Nyota," Spock says and Gaila's smile grows only wider.
"It's at 1930, right?" she asks turning away from Gaila and sinking onto the edge of her bed, trying and failing to ignore the dip of the mattress as Gaila sits right beside her, still smiling and now bouncing a little. "Do you want to walk over together?"
"The central variance drive of the radiation resonance modulator needs to be rerouted to starboard electromagnetic degeneration coil."
"What?" Nyota asks
"Did you use a secondary photonic inducer to check the phase circuit?" Gaila asks.
"Cadet?" Spock asks and Nyota elbows her, though not hard enough to get her to actually leave.
"That's, sorry-"
"-Sorry-" Gaila adds, looking anything but. "Hi, I'm here too."
There's a pause that feels longer than it should be before Spock finally says, "Hello."
"In class, Professor Ekoor told us to use the inducer to reconfigure the modulator," Gaila continues, undaunted by Spock's tone or maybe just ignoring it. "Though she said it takes forever and someone has to stay there the entire time to monitor the calibration of the flux compensator so that - oh."
"Nyota," Spock says again and she tries to imagine the look he'd be giving Gaila right then, tries to picture him there instead of what sounds like up on the ship, on his comm and very likely standing near what she is increasingly willing to guess is a project that is going to last a lot longer than the time from now until 1930.
"Don't worry about it," she says before she can begin to think too hard about any of it, not with Gaila next to her, all too close and the smile gone from her face in a way that is making it hard for Nyota to look at her.
"I apologize."
"Not your fault," she tells him because it's not. It's really, really not. It's a game that she didn't even know was happening until last night and which she can certainly live without attending, and she can find something else to do with her evening. A free Saturday is rare enough, so she can definitely make the most of it.
She picks at the bedspread next to her thigh, stares down at how her hand is moving against it, the tiny hole in the blanket that she's only making worse by working her finger into it.
"I am certain that you would be welcome to accompany the others."
"No, no, that's not… Thank you. Them, I mean, but-" She shakes her head even though he can't see it, because he's up on the ship and not with her right then, and not about to meet her. "It's completely fine. Good luck with the repairs."
He's quiet and she doesn't look up from her hand and Gaila doesn't move, her stillness nearly too much for Nyota to deal with right then, when a moment ago she was making the mattress shake and before that was nearly messing up the ponytail Nyota had spent so much time on.
"Perhaps it is an opportunity for you to spend on your work," he says and she thinks she's supposed to smile at that. Instead, she stands up because she can't sit still any longer, and paces over to her dresser and then her closet and then back again, her arm wrapped over her stomach, tight around herself.
"I finished it all, actually," she says. She tries to laugh about that, tries to make light of it so as to loosen the hardness that has lodged deep in her chest. "But I'll go find that piano, or go sightseeing or something. I hear Alcatraz is beautiful on a wet, crappy, Saturday."
"With the bridge, I imagine that it would be." Yes, probably. Lit up against the fog and the rain that has yet to cease since last night when she sat in Spock's car with him, dry and warm and talking, time stretching in front of them unhurried, what with the promise of tonight.
She thinks she hears him sigh, if that was at all something he would do.
"I would prefer the circumstances to be different."
"No, no, it's good," she says, shifting her comm in her hand because she's holding it too tightly and it's making her fingers hurt. "Because now you can never say anything about me working all the time."
"Never?"
"Never ever," she says, leaning her head down into her hand and closing her eyes.
"That is a very long time."
"Get used to it."
"I will endeavor to do so."
The click of her comm folding closed is too loud in the quiet of the room and Nyota spends a long time listening for another noise until Gaila finally shifts slightly, and must cross the room, her fingers coming to rest lightly on Nyota's shoulder.
"It's fine," she says firmly, putting her comm back on her dresser .
"Want me to go?" Gaila asks.
"No, it's not… You don't like parrises squares, you always complain about it."
"I'll give it another try."
"You hate it," Nyota reminds her, taking out her earrings, the ones she had finally decided on after what was really too long thinking about it.
"I wasn't going out anyway."
"Gaila…"
Nyota pauses in putting her earrings on her dresser to gesture to the clothes strewn across her roommate's bed, a rumpled mess of skirts and strappy dresses and a tank top Nyota's reasonably sure belonged to her at one point.
"I was doing laundry," Gaila says.
Nyota feels all the things she would normally say to that sitting in the back of her throat, caught there as she imagines voicing them. Instead, she pulls off her shirt, watches her hands fold it and slip it back into the drawer, and shimmies out of her skirt too, hanging it up next to the other ones she had thought about wearing, rejecting each of them in turn for not being the perfect choice for the evening.
"Nice bra," Gaila finally offers.
"Please stop."
When Nyota turns back around, Gaila's sitting on her bed, her hands tucked under her thighs and her shoulders drawn up slightly.
She tugs on a pair of shorts as Gaila begins to clean up her clothes so neatly that it would make Nyota feel worse if she was thinking about reasons she might be feeling bad to begin with.
"Let's do something," Nyota says, her voice coming out slightly too loud.
"Jim downloaded that holovid that came out? During finals last semester that none of us saw?"
"I," Nyota says, opening the drawer that has her t-shirts in it, the soft faded ones that she's always loved. "Do not want to see him right now."
"He said you two are friends now. I thought you were."
"Of course he did," Nyota says and shuts the drawer too hard, the sound it makes as it thumps against the dresser only slightly dulling the memory of getting ready last night.
She pulls her ponytail out from under the collar of her shirt and then just stands there, her fingers touching the top of her dresser lightly as she stares down at her comm, the bracelet she had picked out, the two necklaces she had been thinking about wearing, one of which is all too reminiscent of Spock's hands at the back of her neck, the warm air of summer and a different evening with what now feels like a different him.
When her comm rings, she has to fumble to get it open, one earring skittering across the top of her dresser in her hurry.
"Uhura," Puri says and she closes her eyes, forces herself to let out the breath that she was holding.
"Hi," she says brightly.
"You should still come."
"You should," she hears Stoyer say in the background and imagines them in their kitchen or their living room, somewhere in their beautiful house with its blonde wood and cheerful lighting, it's quiet street and that hill that she and Spock walked down, Puri jogging after them with a smile on his face.
"Thank you, but-"
"I bet Arlene five credits I could get you to come," Puri says, cutting her off.
"He did not, he's just saying that," Stoyer corrects.
"I would have if I didn't think that Spock would tell me that gambling is illogical."
"Eighty three percent of cadets play poker every week," Nyota says, listening to how easy her voice sounds.
"We're trying to keep you in the seventeen percent," Stoyer says, suddenly much louder, like she must have taken the comm from Puri and Nyota think about how Puri is probably grinning, thinks about their call to her, how Spock had to have commed Puri.
"Thank you," she repeats. "I really appreciate it."
"If you change your mind, just call," Stoyer says over Puri's continued encouragement for her to come.
"We can go get drinks," Gaila says when Nyota folds her comm closed and puts it neatly on her dresser, lined up with the edge of it.
"Sure," Nyota says but doesn't move, just keeps standing there, one finger pushing at her comm until it's askew and then righting it again.
"Shopping? It's early, I bet a lot of places are still open."
"I don't know," she says, trying and failing to summon the excitement for something like that.
"Poker?" Gaila asks which draws a shrug out of Nyota and is apparently acquiescence enough because Gaila drops the skirt she was folding. "We don't have to tell your dean."
"She's not my dean."
"Or your Commander."
"Gaila."
"Lips are sealed," Gaila promises and she just seems so happy at the prospect that Nyota finally nods.
"I'm not really dressed," Nyota says, looking down at herself.
"You're fine, let's go get McCoy."
Getting McCoy means getting Kirk as well and Nyota lingers in the door of their room, her arms crossed over her chest and her weight on her shoulder against the doorjamb as Kirk searches for the cards.
"How was it last night?" he asks, sifting through the homework he has on his desk, texts and notes and a stylus that rolls onto the floor and McCoy bends down to pick up.
"Fine," she says, crossing her arms tighter.
"I just had them," he promises, shutting the last drawer in his desk and starting in on McCoy's, leaving filmplasts and padds slightly scattered in his wake.
Nyota watches it all with without moving from the doorway, Gaila sitting crosslegged on his bed with lots of ideas of where to look and no actual help, McCoy straightening up his work after Kirk rifles through it, and Kirk standing there in the middle of the room with his hand raised to the back of his head as he looks around, his fingers scratching through his hair.
"Huh," he finally says.
"We have some," she says, pushing away from the door just so that she doesn't have to stand there any longer and think about how she'll very likely be working for him someday, up on some ship somewhere since she's all too certain that he'll make good on his promise of getting one of his own, very likely sooner than anyone else expects him to.
She tries to imagine it as she walks back to her room, all of them up there like Hill and Moneaux are, the promise of stars and new planets, the likes of which Spock has seen so many times already.
Now, though, it's the reality of the padds she's moving aside to see where Gaila squirreled away their playing cards, the texts waiting for her, and a long list of homework to complete over the coming week, no matter how much she already got done today.
The thought makes her hands still and she forces herself to keep searching because it would be all too easy to reach for her Cardassian notes which are sitting right there, or to just sit down on her bed and not grab anything, not her work and not the cards, to just be still for a few moments that she's sure would edge into a handful more, and then even longer until she could maybe just fall asleep, no matter how early it is, make this day that started with ticking work tasks off of her list finally end, if the only other option for the evening is a night spent playing a game she has no real interest in.
She looks at her bed, still neatly made from when she woke up. She had checked her messages not long after, finding one from Spock with details about tonight sent at 0436 and she had seriously considered calling him to let him know that he could probably stand to sleep in once in a while.
Unless that was sleeping in for him. She has no real idea what time it is that he does get up, only that it's consistently earlier than she does.
Not that she ever really had planned to know that. But she does, now. And it makes a time stamp of before 0500 bring up memories of the darkness of his apartment, the way the streetlights play over the wall and ceiling, not that he was in his apartment because he was up on the ship, where he still is, dealing with the modulator after calling her. And calling Puri. Who called her and danced with her last night, and last week bought her an entire night's worth of drinks and sought her out with her friends among the crowd in the bar, and had her over for dinner at the end of the summer.
She should just go, she tells herself as she starts searching through the piles of mess on the top of Gaila's dresser, pushing a handful of socks to the side and finding no cards under them. She likes McCoy fine, finds Kirk somewhat tolerable and as good of a time as she'd have with Gaila, she's not entirely sure that after a long week and being out drinking last night, and then hours of work today that she's necessarily energetic enough for the type of conversation Gaila typically keeps up. Watching a parrises squares match is probably simpler to sit through, and if Puri's there he's always easy to talk to and she wouldn't necessarily have to try to make conversation with anyone else.
Or, really, she should go for the very reason that the others will be there, she knows. Who knows how many officers, captains and commanders will be going, any of them leading to what might be an assignment someday. She'd be lucky to catch their eye and attention and tonight could be very, very much worth it to just push herself out the door.
Or she could sleep.
Or watch that movie, or steel herself for poker, not that she can find the cards and she finally just dumps the rest of the socks on the floor, raises one hand to her forehead and rubs at it, letting out a hard breath.
No. She's going. She's going to go because that was the point of this, back at the beginning of the summer, that she would deal with the Ambassador and everything that brought because in exchange she was going to get to meet officers like Captain Hill and Captain Pike and Admiral Barnett and that is invaluable and she would be absolutely crazy to squander it. It'd be illogical, she tells herself, and thinks that maybe she should smile at the thought, but she can't seem to bring herself to do so.
She makes herself drop her hand and reach for her comm where it's sitting on her dresser, thinking to call Puri back and let them know that she'll meet them there, if it isn't too late.
When her comm lights up in her hand, she at first thinks she pushed the wrong button and called Spock by accident, but the indicator light is wrong for that, lit up instead as an incoming call.
"Hello?" she asks as she accepts it.
"I spoke with Captain Pike."
"Spock?"
"Are you currently occupied?" he asks and she looks back at her door, the slice of the hallways she can see outside of it that leads back towards Kirk and McCoy's room.
"Kind of," she says when he doesn't respond right away, she wraps her ponytail around her hand, gives the hall another glance and says, "No, not really."
"As the Spacedock construction crew has finalized the passive tachyon frequency inducer and the schematics for the negative multiphasic degeneration buffer have yet to arrive on the ship so that the initial stages of installation have not yet began, the vulnerability of Starfleet's proprietary designs of universal antimatter variance drive would not then be able to be compromised."
"What?"
"The captain is willing to allow a dispensation to typical security requirements onboard the ship."
"What does that mean?" she asks, feeling a flutter start up in her stomach, trying to not believe he's saying what it is that she thinks he's saying, and trying to tell herself that she's just hearing what she wants to, that he didn't just call her back again, having called Pike in the meantime because if that's not what he's telling her she doesn't want to even begin to imagine it, the black of the stars and the white, white halls of the ship, and him up there waiting for her.
"If you wish, you are welcome to join me tonight."
"Really?" she asks, her hand tightening on her hair and her entire focus trained on her comm, her knuckles nearly hurting with how hard she's suddenly holding it, her entire body strung taut with how badly she needs to hear him repeat himself, to listen to him say what she absolutely desperately wants him to be saying.
"You are otherwise occupied," he says and she's shaking her head so fast she has to let go of her hair.
"No, no," she says, and then again for good measure. "No, I'm not, I was just - I can come."
"You are certain?"
"Yes," she says.
"Entirely so?"
"God, yes. Now? I can come now."
"It is not entirely pleasant," he says carefully. "The ship remains under construction."
"I don't care."
"As Olson said yesterday, the replicators are currently inoperable, though the reconfiguration process will likely be completed by morning."
"I can grab dinner," she says, tucking her hair back behind her shoulder and starting towards her dresser before stopping again, standing there in the middle of her room with her heart racing and her hand still too tight on her comm. "If that's what- I don't know if you've eaten, but if not."
"I have not."
"Any preferences?" she asks, then shakes her head and grabs for the earrings she was just wearing. "No, wait, no votes from you. I'm going to bring something that you have to try."
"Pardon?"
"Something new," she tells him, opening her dresser and tossing clothes on her bed before starting towards her closet and then the bathroom, stepping over a pile of Gaila's padds that are in the way of the shortest route around their room. "And anything else while I'm at it?"
She nearly stops at the sight of her bag when she's dropped it on her bed, at the toothbrush that's in her hand while he thinks over his answer and she nearly asks him to clarify if tonight means overnight, except that she's not entirely certain of how best to phrase that, not when it's already evening and dinner is dinner and afterwards she's very much intending on staying and can presume with a fair degree of certainty that it's what he implied. Except if it's not.
She puts her toothbrush down on her dresser, then picks it up again. He would have specified, had it been necessary. Probably.
"There is the matter of…" he starts but doesn't finish his thought so she's left there examining her toothbrush and trying to guess at what he means.
"That you only want to eat soup?" she prompts, sticking her toothbrush into her bag and piling socks and underwear on top of it before she can decide otherwise. It's what he meant, she's sure. Or nearly sure. Sure enough to not talk herself out of it, and sure enough not to bother to ask, and sure enough to decide to not think about it too hard in case that slight nudge of uncertainty resolves itself into any louder of a voice. "I promise I'll get something you'll like."
"I do not only eat soup."
"Your diet is ninety percent soup. Maybe ninety four."
"That is grossly inaccurate."
"I'm still going to lower that percentage," she tells him, closing her bag, the same one she took to Pike's all those weeks ago now. "You're not deathly allergic to other food, right?"
"As you have seen me consume a wide variety of-"
"-Just checking."
She's sorting through hair ties in the bathroom when Gaila comes to find her, her ears still full of Spock saying not goodbye and not goodnight, but that he would see her soon.
"Did you find them?" Gaila asks as Nyota grabs a handful of hairpins from the sink and calls back, "No."
"What are you doing?" Gaila asks, her hands on her hips as Nyota slips them into her bag.
"Is that place still open?" she asks as she strips off her shirt and shorts, groping through the drawers she just finished going through for her active duty uniform, the one that she leaves in the back since she only wears it every so often. "On Baker street?"
"What place?"
"By that bookstore we went to that one time."
"No. Yes. I don't have any idea. Where are you going?"
"I'll see you tomorrow," she says, jamming her feet into her boots.
"You're leaving?" Gaila asks and doesn't move from where she's standing in the doorway. "Now?"
"Have a great evening," Nyota says as she slings her bag over her shoulder. She starts towards the door before stopping herself and going back to wrap Gaila into a hug. "I love you, you know."
"I can't believe you're abandoning me," Gaila says with no real ire, hugging Nyota back much harder than is really necessary.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she says as she steps back. "And please don't bet any of my belongings this time, it took forever to get my pillow back from Kirk."
"If your alarm clock goes off at 0530 I'm finding Commander Spock's comm ID and leaving him a very long, very drawn out and very illogical message," Gaila yells after her, but Nyota's already in the hallway.
"Night!" Nyota calls back, letting the door slide shut behind her and starting towards the turbo lift, then changing her mind and pushing the door open to the stairs since she can jog down them much quicker than the wait for the lift would be, each step still taking what feels like too long when the entirety of her thoughts are focused on where it is that she's headed.