Chapter Five: Tete-a-tea
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Nyota sets a small bag on Commander Spock's desk.
"I brought you a gift," she says. "Open it."
For a fraction of a second she thinks he will refuse and she nods encouragement, adding, "I got a care package from my mother this morning. She always sends me more than I can use. I still have the ugali she sent me last time, so here. Try it. I think you'll like it."
She's not making idle speculation. In the past month she and the Commander have fallen into the habit of eating a mid-day meal together several times a week when their schedules allow—nothing fancier than brown bagging it in the language building workroom, but it's given her some insight into what he eats.
Not much, if lunch is typical; usually fruits or vegetables or simple grains. Ugali is the ubiquitous starch eaten through much of Africa, cooked like polenta or grits and fashioned into an accompaniment for stews and meat dishes. Nyota isn't completely sure Vulcans can digest it, though she's seen him eat rice and corn, which are similar in biocomplexity.
The Commander 's expression is unreadable and he makes no move to open the bag. Is giving a gift to a Vulcan a cultural faux pas?
"You seem…unsure, or something," Nyota says, hoping he will explain his hesitation. He blinks, leans forward slightly, and peers inside the bag. When he looks up, Nyota says, "I'll write out the cooking directions for you. That is, if you want to try it."
"Thank you," Spock says simply, and Nyota hazards a small smile. As she starts toward her work station in the corner, she hears him say, "Care packages from mothers must be a constant in the universe."
At that Nyota laughs—and she's about to ask him what Vulcan mothers send their distant sons when his computer beeps, a notice that he has an audio message in the mail queue.
Stepping to the door, she says, "I'll just go get some tea," hoping he understands that she is granting him his privacy.
Professor Artura's TA, Neil, is the only other person in the workroom, and he jumps slightly when Nyota comes in. Short, freckled, shy, Neil has a crush on Nyota—or she assumes he does. Whenever she tries to talk to him he flushes hard, his face turning as red as his hair.
"Hey," she says, and sure enough, he blushes and knocks over the cup at his elbow.
"Oops!" Nyota says handing him a dish towel from the counter to clean up the mess. "Is that tea? I'll make you another cup. I was going to make some for myself."
"Uh, you can't," Neil says, pointing to the empty clear glass container on the sink counter. "I used the last tea bag."
"Commander Spock has some," Nyota says, opening the cabinet door over the sink. To her astonishment, Neil hops up and leaves without a word.
She's so flabbergasted that her hand is around Commander Spock's tea canister before she feels the slick paper stuck to the side. It's an address label, a rectangle of sticky-backed paper used to route physical documents between Academy departments. The canister is a piece of Vulcan hand-thrown pottery, small and rough to her fingers, the size and heft of a large grapefruit. Lifting it up, she reads Commander Spock's calligraphic-like handwriting, neat and small.
Do not remove.
Well! That's new! She flushes as hard as Neil had, her cheeks burning. Is this note directed at her? She's brewed herself multiple cups of Vulcan tea—even commenting on its pleasant smoky quality to the Commander. If he hadn't wanted her to help herself to it, he should have said something.
Perhaps his Vulcan tea is rare and hard to get, part of his occasional care packages from home, and he's concerned with how rapidly it's disappearing now that she's drinking it, too. But if that were the case, he could have told her not to drink it. She circles around this conundrum again, still baffled.
No use getting her feelings hurt. It's his tea; he can do whatever he wants to with it. As she starts to replace the canister in the cabinet, she looks at the label again.
Do not remove.
Something about the label is wrong—suggesting a selfishness or possessiveness she hasn't sensed before in the Commander. Surely he doesn't mean what the label implies.
Looking around the workroom, she sees ink styluses in a cup on a table. With a quick glance to make sure no one is coming, she grabs one, angling the tea canister in her left hand while she writes on the label with her right.
Please be more precise. To what does this refer?
Before she shuts the door of the cabinet, she turns the canister to make sure the label is face out.
Stepping out into the hall a few minutes later, she hears silence. Commander Spock's finished listening to his audio message then. As she walks back to the office she struggles to contain a grin. It fades as soon she sees him.
He's clearly nonplussed about something. So much for that vaunted Vulcan stoicism. In the short time she's worked in close quarters with him she's seen him bemused, annoyed, anxious, pleased—not in such an obvious way that a casual observer would note, but she's not a casual observer.
An uncomfortable admission, but there it is.
Before she can decide how to ask him about the message, he excuses himself and says he might not return before her shift ends in the afternoon.
He leaves in such a hurry that his computer screen is up, an email address visible. She's careful not to look too closely but she can't help but notice that it's from Vulcan. Bad news about his father? The Commander hasn't mentioned his father since telling her that he was being treated for a heart condition.
Feeling like an interloper, she finishes up her work and runs the lab for two hours after lunch. She even waits around the office an extra fifteen minutes but Commander Spock doesn't return.
The next morning she beats him to work. Nyota can count on one hand the number of times she's done so. Almost always when she mounts the last stair of her three story climb, she looks down the hall and spies the light on in his office. She's halfway convinced that he works through the night and is still there in the morning, though she can't tell from his appearance—he's clean-shaven and unrumpled no matter when she sees him.
Today, however, when she steps on the top landing she notices that his office is dark. Although she has a key, she detours to the workroom instead to stow her lunch in the stasis unit and make herself a cup of tea.
With a sigh, she spots the empty glass container on the counter. She'll have to remember to cadge some tea bags from the cafeteria at lunch to restock it. For now, though—
Tugging open the cabinet door, she sees Commander Spock's tea canister, a new label replacing the old one.
Do not remove this canister or its contents from this room.
For a split second Nyota doesn't breathe, and then she leans forward and bursts out laughing. More precise, yet not answering the real question about whether or not he minds sharing his tea. The Commander really needs to work on his communication skills.
X X
Spock finds the noise almost intolerable. The squeak of Cadet Uhura's chair when she leans back, the susurration of her hair sliding over her shoulder when she leans forward, the sudden intake of breath when she reads something amusing or surprising or upsetting. These sounds unmoor him, as if she is a magnet for his attention, regardless of what she is doing.
The scents are almost as disturbing—soap with an undertone of citrus, the crisp smell of her clean linen uniform, a hint of maple or oranges or chocolate on her thumb, an echo of her breakfast croissant.
Spock keeps his chair angled away from hers, yet his peripheral vision betrays him, seeking out the line of her jaw, the curve of her knee.
The last day he worked completely undisturbed was 57 days ago, the day before she became his teaching aide. His sleep has been disturbed as well, the sounds and smells and vision of Cadet Uhura troubling him when he closes his eyes, when he tries to meditate.
He blames himself for his lack of focus, his human biology tripping him up with an unwanted undercurrent of sexual arousal. But he blames T'Pring, too—the touch of her mind so light, her presence so distant, that he has nothing to steady him when he needs it most.
They'd parted in anger when he left for the Academy—T'Pring staying on Vulcan to study architecture, her disapproval of his choice of Starfleet rivaling his father's in intensity. Since then they've hardly spoken; he's seen her even less, and only when he's made infrequent trips home.
Recently he's contacted her on subspace—or tried to—only to be told by her housekeeper that she is unavailable. His letters have gone unanswered.
When he mentioned her silence to his mother, she was shocked—not just that T'Pring hasn't returned his messages, but that his sense of her through their bond is so tenuous.
"Do you want your father to contact the K'Loh'r T'Mirs?" his mother asked. To Spock's surprise, he didn't reject that idea out of hand.
"Perhaps," he said slowly, "after I have attempted to contact T'Pring again. She may be off-planet or without access to communication devices."
His mother didn't try to hide her skepticism, one eyebrow hiked up, her lips pressed into a grimace.
But that had been ten days ago, and his attempts to contact T'Pring since have been equally fruitless.
Meanwhile his attempt to find some equilibrium within himself has been just as wasted. He's increased the rigor of his regular suus mahna workouts; lengthened his work hours; deepened his meditative trances. Still he's uncharacteristically irritated by small things—a student asking to turn in a late assignment, an unproductive department meeting. His tea canister going missing for a day earlier in the week—until he spotted it on Professor Artura's desk.
"I hope you don't mind," Professor Artura said, his blue antennae bobbing in apology—or in shame at being caught, "but today is an Andorian remembrance day for absent friends, and I need something from Vulcan to honor a friend who lives there. I intend to return this later, after I finish my ritual supplications."
An implausible story, but not impossible. Spock knows that the professor has not lived on Andoria since his wife and daughter were murdered in a blood feud. His travels could have taken him to Vulcan before he settled on Earth.
True to his word, Professor Artura did return the canister—but not that day or the next. Placing a do not remove label on the canister seemed like a reasonable precaution against further poaching.
Of course, Cadet Uhura pointed out the need for specification—and he changed the label to make clear that the canister and its contents were for the workroom and not for Professor Artura's ceremonial use.
For the past 56 days—since Cadet Uhura has started working for him—Spock has worked at his office every weekend, grateful for the relative quiet and the lack of distractions. This Saturday he's so immersed in reviewing the results of a joint research project between the computer science and biochemistry labs that when he sits back in his chair at last, he realizes with a start that hours have passed, that he is both famished and thirsty. Tea, then, and another hour or so of writing up his comments before heading to his apartment for a meal.
As soon as he opens the cabinet in the workroom he sees that Cadet Uhura has edited his new label on the canister.
Do not remove this canister or its contents from this room. Unless you replace the contents with tea of superior quality, such as Kenyan single origin whole-leaf Pekoe.
For a moment he stares at it, uncomprehending. And then he understands. She thought the label was for her, a caution against using his tea.
He's horrified, and embarrassed to be horrified, in equal measure. This is the danger of working so closely with her—this sort of wrong-footing each other without meaning to.
Suddenly the office is too close, the language building too confining. Even as he gathers his things and locks his office, he knows he's not thinking clearly, that this little misunderstanding over the tea is just that, a misunderstanding and nothing more.
Yet a misunderstanding that implies something unpleasant about his character—an unwillingness to share, a materialistic attitude that is anathema to Vulcan ideals.
That Cadet Uhura sees him this way makes him feel almost physically unwell.
His apartment is just outside the east gate of the Academy grounds, a transport station across the street. The duty officer on charge at the gate nods as he exits but Spock is too busy noticing the arriving hoverbus. Sprinting across the street and stepping into the waiting queue of passengers, he checks to make sure that the hoverbus is heading to Sausalito, across the Bay. It is.
As he slides into the first empty seat, Spock takes a deep breath, frankly shocked to find himself there. Closing his eyes, he considers the reason he's acting impulsively. He's almost lightheaded, obviously the result of going without food or drink all day.
There's a teashop in Sausalito he's visited before, one that imports multiple varieties of Terran and off-world teas. He can break his fast there and buy some loose Vulcan tea to replenish his supply.
And although he's never thought to ask before, perhaps buy some Kenyan single origin whole-leaf Pekoe.
A/N: Professor Artura and Spock have more than their fair share of misunderstandings…and this chapter alludes to the good professor's backstory that's told in more detail elsewhere. His time on Vulcan is mentioned in Chapter Six of "People Will Say."
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