Chapter 13: Meet the Parents
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Leaning forward slightly over Cadet Lee's keyboard, Nyota taps out a series of numbers and stands up, waiting. For a few moments nothing happens, and then the screen clears.
"There!" Nyota says triumphantly. "That should reset the program where you want it."
Cadet Lee, a second year student studying xenoarchaeology, runs her fingers through her short black hair and sighs. "Thanks, Uhura. I was about to give up. I've wasted almost an hour trying to do that."
"Next time ask for help sooner." Nyota grins to soften her quip and several other students in the language lab snicker out loud.
Suddenly the curls on the back of her neck prickle—as if the air is charged with electricity. Looking up, she sees Spock standing at the doorway watching her. Lifting her hand in a wave, she makes her way across the room toward him.
"I knew you were here," she says softly, and something—disbelief, amusement—flickers through Spock's expression.
"Highly unlikely," he says. He takes two steps out into the hall and Nyota follows him.
"I can feel you," Nyota says. "Whether you believe me or not."
"Belief does not make something true," Spocks says swiftly. Before he can continue, Nyota says, "And not believing it doesn't make it untrue!"
This time his expression is unmistakable: The ghost of a smile curls up the corner of his mouth.
"You know I'm right," Nyota says. "Logical, even."
"I do not disagree."
"Good. I'm glad you're here. I want to ask you something, but first you need to look at your mail. A packet came for you earlier from Vulcan. It looked important."
The bemusement in Spock's face disappears immediately. Stepping around her and entering the lab, he crosses the space to the instructor's computer console and calls up his mail queue. Nyota stands a few feet apart, eyeing him closely.
Spocks taps the screen once and then straightens.
"Bad news?" Nyota asks hesitantly.
"A family obligation," Spock says. "Or to be more precise, a request for my attendance at a family ceremony."
"On Vulcan?"
"Indeed. A distant relative is hosting her baby's naming day at the family compound outside Shi'Kahr. My mother has asked me to accompany her as my father's health is still uncertain."
Nyota's heart gives a little flutter. "I thought your father was doing better. The medicine—"
"Apparently is of limited benefit. The healers are considering surgery to correct the underlying heart defect."
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Nyota has a mental image of Spock's mother—a woman she has spoken to only once—and his father, the Ambassador she helped briefly at a recent Federation assembly. Neither one knows she is anything other than Spock's student aide, a fiction by omission that troubles her more than she likes to admit.
Nor has she told her own parents about her relationship with Spock—an omission she deals with primarily by limiting how much she talks to them and by how often she goes home. An officer on a Starfleet research vessel, her father is rarely at home anyway—but her mother expects her to call every week, even if their conversations are brief.
"When are you leaving?" she asks. Spock's head bobs a fraction, as if he is taken aback.
"I am not going," he says. "My duties here preclude taking leave now."
"But someone could cover your classes," Nyota protests. "Professor Artura, in fact. He's only teaching one section this semester."
"My participation in the ceremony is not essential. My presence in class is."
"Your mother asked you to come," Nyota says. "You said she needs you to go with her."
"My mother is fully capable of getting herself to the ceremony without my help."
"Maybe she just wants you there," Nyota says. "You know, for company."
Spock twitches so slightly that if Nyota had not been looking at him carefully, she would have missed it. He's annoyed? Well, she doesn't care. His mother deserves better.
"I am already scheduled to visit Vulcan," Spock says with a hint of impatience in his voice, "at the end of February during spring break. If my mother desires my company, she will have it then."
But she wants to see you now—she wants you to go to the naming ceremony—you need to check on your father's surgery….
Nyota bites her tongue and says none of these things. Not here, anyway, and not now. After all, she doesn't want to provoke an argument in the hall, not with her students working within earshot.
"Okay," she says, her tone communicating her disapproval. Spock narrows his eyes and says, "You wanted to ask me something."
Nyota's heart gives another skip. "I wasn't sure you'd be interested," she parries. A human would have urged her to continue. Spock stands still, unblinking.
Taking a breath, Nyota hurries on. "My family is in town. I mean, they will be in town. I didn't know until a few minutes ago when my mother sent me a note. My dad's ship docks at 1500 and my mother is flying here to meet him. They want me to join them to dinner at 1800 at Bernardin's." She pauses and tries to gauge Spock's reaction. "If you want, you could come, too."
At last he moves, shifting his weight from his right foot to his left.
"Your parents."
"My parents."
"Dinner tonight."
"That's what I said."
Despite trying to keep the irritation out of her voice, Nyota clips her words. Spock blinks once and says, "That would probably be unwise."
Of course it would be unwise, Nyota thinks. A miserable experience, eating dinner with two people from whom she has to keep such a momentous secret—riding herd on her impulses all evening, scrutinizing everything she says, worried that a casual look or gesture might give her away. It will be hard enough to share a meal with her parents alone. If Spock comes with her, the dinner will be torture. He's exactly right to turn her down.
She knows all this, but she's instantly as angry as she is disappointed. Her face flushes and she feels herself bouncing up on the balls of her feet, something she does when emotions run high.
"You're busy tonight?" Her words come out a challenge. Spock snaps his head up and says, "As you are aware, Cadet Kirk has asked for a third attempt at the Kobayashi Maru. I have been tasked with reprogramming the simulation, something I wish to complete as soon as possible."
"And tonight is when you need to do that."
Instead of answering, Spock gives her such an intense look that Nyota begins to squirm. Taking a step closer toward her, he angles his head to the side and says so quietly that she has to strain to hear, "If you require my attendance, please say so."
Instead of angry, now she's abashed at being difficult. Or demanding. Or too much like his mother, making his presence a requirement.
"No, no," she stammers. "I just thought it would be…nice…but it's not necessary. Another time, perhaps, when things are more…settled."
With a determined—and utterly false—smile, she turns to go back into the lab.
She hopes he hears what she's saying—that she knows he's right, that meeting her parents is unwise right now. She wouldn't even know how to introduce Spock. Later—if and when she has words to describe what this is they have, when she knows where this relationship is going—then she'll find time to invite everyone around a shared table.
X X X
"You aren't going to wear that, are you?" Gaila screws her face into a pucker and holds her hand up with her thumb turned down, a human gesture she's recently learned and has practiced with glee—to Nyota's annoyance. Thumbs down to waking up when the alarm goes off, thumbs down to picking up her clothes off the floor when asked, thumbs down when Nyota tells her—repeatedly—that she isn't going out dancing with her roommie at midnight.
Glancing at her image in the mirror, Nyota twirls around and adjusts the collar of her blouse. "What's wrong with it?"
"It's so…so…boring!" Gaila rolls off her bed and lands on her feet as lightly as a cat.
"Here," she says, skipping to the closet door and pulling it open. "Try this."
"I'm just going for dinner with my parents," Nyota protests. "It's not a date!"
"No reason to look dowdy," Gaila says, apprising her. She has a point. The straight black pants and simple white blouse aren't her most interesting outfit. Still, Nyota's already running late, thanks to two students who had trouble saving their programs in the lab. She'd sent a quick text to her mother telling her she was running behind and to go ahead and order for her.
We're fine, her mother wrote back. No need to hurry. We are being well entertained.
Bernardin's isn't the best known or most expensive restaurant in San Francisco, but a creative chef, fresh seafood, and live music make it popular with the locals. Not a super fancy place, but fancy enough to call for something more formal than her planned outfit.
"Too short," Nyota says, holding up the simple black silk sheath Gaila offers her. Gaila frowns and reaches back into the closet. "This!" she says, holding up an even shorter dress. Grabbing the first one, Nyota rolls her eyes and quickly changes into it.
It is short, but not uncomfortably so. A quick glance in the mirror shows her that it is flattering.
"You win," she says to Gaila as she slips on her sandals. "Now I'm seriously late."
"You're welcome!" Gaila yells as Nyota dashes out the door.
The cool air is such a relief after rushing around that if she weren't already late, Nyota would walk to the restaurant instead of heading to the hoverbus stop near the computer science building. As she passes by, Nyota keeps an eye out for Spock. He'd left his office early, saying only that he needed to work on the Kobayashi Maru simulation in the programming lab.
"No!" she calls out as she gets to the stop just as a hoverbus pulls away into traffic. Well, there's no help for it. Taking out her comm, she checks the bus schedule and sees that there's another one due in seven minutes.
Time enough to call Spock and ask him to change his mind. If he left the programming lab now, he could be here before the bus arrives.
For a moment her finger hovers over her comm. If she insists, she knows he will come. But when she'd mentioned the meal earlier he'd looked distinctly uncomfortable, even anxious. Spock's a private person, an introvert, and more than once he's told her that casual human conversation with strangers is a challenge for him. Does she really want to put him through that tonight?
With a sigh, she slips her comm into her purse.
The bus ride to the Embarcadero is uneventful, though Nyota spends it giving herself a pep talk. Not that she doesn't want to see her parents, but the secret of her relationship with Spock is like a toothache or a rock in her shoe—a private misery she can't ignore. As glad as she is to be with her parents, she'll be gladder when she's heading back to the Academy, the evening safely over.
Entering the restaurant, she sees her parents immediately at a table near the back. They are sitting side-by-side facing her, their heads bent to each other like giggly teenagers. They've always been this way, openly affectionate and comfortable in each other's company. Without wanting to, she contrasts the careful public distance she has to maintain when she's with Spock.
Just then her mother catches her eye and raises her hand to wave her over. Her father lifts his head and his face lights up. He starts to stand as Nyota threads her way around the other diners.
"You look beautiful!" she hears him say, but the words are a buzz. In the corner of her eye she sees that someone else is at the table, also getting to his feet.
Spock, dressed in his formal grays.
Nyota is so astonished that she stumbles. With practiced ease, Spock reaches out and takes her arm, shepherding her to her chair.
"Commander, what are you doing here?"
"If memory serves," Spock says evenly as Nyota sits, "I was invited."
"Commander Spock was telling us that he submitted your lab program to the Feinman Conference," Nyota's mother says with obvious pride. Nyota flushes hard, swallows, and darts a glance at Spock sitting at her left.
"It's not my program," she says quickly. "Commander Spock created it. I'm just the lab monkey."
"Your daughter is being modest," Spock says. He sounds so polished, so at ease that Nyota finds herself staring at him. She's never heard him like this. "Her modifications have increased the measurable end scores of the language students by 14.5%. Not an inconsiderable achievement."
Turning to her, he adds, "For a lab monkey."
Nyota's jaw drops. Her mother breaks into peals of laughter. Her father grins from ear to ear.
"When do you leave?" her father says, and Nyota blinks in confusion for a moment.
"Uh, for the Feinman Conference? We haven't gotten a definite confirmation yet, uh, have we? Commander?"
"Not formally, though I am certain we shall. None of the other proposals for language acquisition programs were as detailed and well-researched as the one Cadet Uhura submitted."
"I didn't really—"
"It's in Amsterdam this year, isn't it?" Nyota's mother says, and Spock corrects her smoothly.
"Close by, in Leiden. Are you familiar with the university there?"
And just like that Nyota loses any imagined control she had over the course of the evening. Vaguely she's aware that waiters come and go, taking their orders, bringing their meals, refilling their water glasses, clearing their plates. But mostly she's aware that her parents and Spock are talking, talking, talking—about the Academy, about her mother's work at a university in Kenya, about her father's recent assignment in the Omega sector. Her own contributions to the conversation are paltry, as if she's too shell-shocked to speak.
Before she knows it her parents are standing up and following her and Spock out into the chilly night air, hugging her and saying their goodbyes before flagging down a taxi for the ride to their hotel. Unbuttoning his jacket, Spock drapes it over her shoulders as they walk to the hoverbus stop. Only after they are seated on the bus does Nyota stop shivering—and not just from the cold.
"What just happened here?" she says, letting her fingers drift into Spock's palm.
"I believe it is called meeting the parents," Spock says, his voice mock solemn.
Nyota laughs. This humorous side of Spock is one most people don't see—and which she values all the more for its rarity.
"I thought you said you had to work on the Kobayashi Maru," Nyota says.
Spock lifts one eyebrow. "I am."
"You know what I mean," Nyota says, leaning into his shoulder. "I thought you were going to spend the evening in the programming lab."
"I am," Spock says, "in a manner of speaking. My assistant is there now."
Gaila. Of course. Spock hired her a month ago to help with the Kobayashi Maru upgrades, and she's been complaining ever since that he's working her to death.
And then all the pieces fall into place. Spock would have told Gaila why he was not going to be in the programming lab that evening, that he was going to have dinner with—
"This dress!"
"Very appealing," Spock says, eyeing her so intently that Nyota feels a shiver of arousal.
Something new to worry about—what Gaila knows, or suspects. Why else would she suggest this dress unless she has an idea about what they are up to? Nyota frowns, weighing her options. Should she say something to her? Or to Spock?
Reaching out, Spock draws his fingertip across the crease of her brow, a gesture so tender, so unlike him that she closes her eyes.
The image of her parents is still there when she does—their easy way of touching each other, the almost physical need they have to be together. Because her father is so often away for months at a time? The rarity making them unwilling to be apart when they are in the same room? She's never thought about it before like this.
Perhaps this is what every couple knows—that no relationship is without sacrifice, that every relationship is a compromise.
Opening her eyes, she sees that Spock is still looking at her with his otherworldly attention, his eyes dark and hooded in the gloom of the bus.
"Thank you," she says, letting it encompass more than she can express. Dinner. The conversation with her parents. His fingers curled around hers, warm and tingling with electricity. The promise of intimacy when they are finally alone in his apartment, a hush coming over them both as they move into an embrace—moments of grace and love so rare that they take her breath away, and all the more valuable for that.
A/N: Thanks so much to everyone for reading. Thanks even more to everyone who takes the time to leave a review! Triple thanks to everyone who recommends this fic to other readers!