Chapter 14: Where the Heart Is
Disclaimer: These characters are like coloring book pages. Someone else drew the outlines, but I have the crayons now.
"May I have a word?" Spock asks the young cadet hunkered over the computer keyboard in the language lab, his voice pitched soft and low the way Nyota had warned him against.
"It makes you sound ominous," she had cautioned him when she called him earlier. "Chekov's scared enough already. He doesn't need another fright."
"I never intentionally frighten anyone," Spock said, and on the other end of the comm line, Nyota had stifled what sounded suspiciously like a snort.
Cadet Chekov looks up, casts a glance over his shoulder, and visibly jumps.
"Commander Spock!" he says, flushing. "I didn't hear you come in!"
"Indeed," Spock says, careful to keep his expression neutral. "Cadet Uhura has asked me to speak to you."
Chekov's face falls at once.
"She did?" he asks, and Spock says, "She says your performance on the tutorials she designed for you is unacceptable."
Pushing back his chair and standing up, Chekov nods once, twice, his eyes darting to Spock's face and down to the floor.
"You have missed four of the past twelve scheduled sessions," Spock says, and again Chekov nods and looks up and then down quickly.
Perhaps his tone of voice is too imperious after all. Chekov's manner is so abashed that Spock feels a wave of annoyance.
"She also tells me," he says, consciously softening his tone, "that you are considering leaving the Academy. Please explain."
He motions to the chair and Chekov sits back down, this time stiffly upright, like someone waiting to be called to his execution. Spock pulls out the chair beside him, turns it, and sits.
For a moment no one says anything. Then Spock prompts, "Cadet?"
With a sigh, Chekov says, "Commander, is too hard to say everyzing."
Again Spock deliberately sets aside a wave of irritation with the young man. And annoyance, too, that he has to have this conversation alone, without Nyota's guidance or insight. Even here in a place as public as the language lab, they are careful not to be seen together too often.
"Your discomfort is irrelevant," Spock says. "I require an explanation."
He watches as Chekov's face contorts, the young man clearly struggling to summon his words.
"Commander," Chekov says, "ze lab is waste of time. My Standard still not good."
"You admit to missing a third of the scheduled sessions," Spock says, and when Chekov shrugs and nods, he adds, "Your judgment of the tutorial's effectiveness is, therefore, based on incomplete data. Had you gone to all the sessions—"
"Still no good!"
Spock is so rarely interrupted by anyone that Chekov's outburst catches him off guard. Tilting his head slightly, he examines the young cadet sitting before him.
Sweaty, his hair a tousled mop, dark smudges under his eyes—is he ill? Certainly he is distressed. Spock asks him.
"Not ill," Chekov says miserably. "Just…hard work."
Something about Chekov's confession doesn't ring true. When Spock met him in London at the Federation Worlds Chess Tournament, Chekov had been so exuberant that the judge had to wave him down several times during the first match. When he walked off the stage, he bounced on the balls of his feet like an acrobat. Only when Spock told him that he had been denied admission to the Academy because of his poor language scores had Chekov's mood darkened.
"I speak four languages," Chekov said in flawless Russian later when Spock and Nyota took him for lunch at a local pub, "but Standard is making me crazy. The sounds are all alike!"
"I know what you mean," Nyota had reassured him. "It's not my first language either—or the Commander's—but we learned it. You can, too."
"Not okay," he said so sadly that Nyota commented on it that night after she and Spock retired to the boutique hotel in Chelsea where they had a room.
"He might be a math genius and a chess grandmaster," she told Spock, "but if he's not willing to learn the language, he's wasting his time reapplying for admission."
Privately Spock had shared her reservations, though he hadn't voiced them at the time. Instead, he had offered Chekov the chance to sit the exams again and take accelerated coursework in the summer to help him catch up with his class.
The language tutorials with Nyota were also part of the agreement—an unfair burden on her, of course, though she had insisted that she didn't mind—and Spock was hopeful that Chekov's ambition to get into space would be sufficient motivation to invest in the extra work.
Apparently not.
"If the work is too difficult," Spock says, leaning forward, "then withdrawing before the end of the term is the logical option."
Already pale, Chekov blanches and blinks rapidly.
"I know."
As one of the initial graders of Chekov's entrance exams, Spock had seen something in the unusual, almost whimsical, answers that had spurred him to ask the dean to give the young man another chance. The cadet's inability to rise to the linguistic demands is as much a surprise as a disappointment.
Spock looks closely at him and considers what to say next.
"Very well," he says, placing his palms on his knees as if he is about to rise, "the Academy has a waiting list of potential candidates who are willing to meet the expected performance measures. Since you are not—"
For the second time, Chekov interrupts him with an outburst.
"Not finish? Go home?"
"That is what you are proposing. Or did I misunderstand you?"
To Spock's horror, Chekov puts his hands to his face and groans.
"No, Commander!" Chekov says, lowering his hands and looking squarely at Spock. "I mean, yes, I tell Cadet Uhura that I leave, but now I think on it I don't know. What if I try more harder? Go to lab more…all ze time. I just…I be…been—"
And then his fractured Standard dissolves into Russian epithets. From his chair, Spock raises an eyebrow.
"I'm sorry, sir," Chekov says, not bothering to try to speak anything other than his native tongue, "but I've been under so much pressure. I thought I would be doing better by now, would have more control by now, but I feel like I'm not smart enough to learn this!"
"That seems unlikely," Spock says slowly. "In every other academic measure, you have excelled, at least in the past."
"But if I can't become fluent in this stupid language, it won't matter!" Chekov exclaims, his hands punctuating his words. "I have top marks in stellar cartography, but Professor Thompson won't let me present my paper on singularities to the symposium because no one would understand me! It's hopeless."
"You exaggerate," Spock says evenly. "Your language skills may be less than optimal, but with sufficient practice you could improve."
"Not just speaking," Chekov says, returning to his juddery Standard, "but other…things…has…have slowed my studies this term."
"Adjusting to life at the Academy is a challenge for many people," Spock says quietly. He looks up briefly as two cadets walk in, their undisguised curiosity making them dawdle a beat until Spock catches their eye.
Chekov shakes his head.
"Is just," he says, lowering his voice, "Academy is where I want to be. Where I always want to be. But, is not—"
He falls silent, obviously casting about for a word. When one doesn't seem forthcoming, Spock supplies one.
"Manageable."
"No, to manage is not ze problem," Chekov says, blinking rapidly. "Academy is lonely. Is not fun."
This is such an unexpected assessment that at first Spock is sure the cadet has misspoken.
"Fun? As in amusing? Enjoyable?"
"Yes!" Chekov says, nodding vigorously. "Only thing fun is nothing."
"You mean that you find nothing enjoyable at the Academy."
Chekov's face scrunches up and he waves one hand in the air.
"Yes," he says. "I mean, no, I like classes. Stellar cartography is…fun. Transporter theory is fun. But is lonely here."
At that Spock sits back and crosses his arms and thinks back to his earlier conversation with Nyota.
"You need to talk to him," she had said when she called. "He's pretty miserable. He's homesick, and I think his girlfriend just dumped him."
"As I recall," Spock said, "Chekov turned 17 two months ago. Homesickness is not unexpected in someone his age. And a romantic liaison is an unnecessary distraction."
"Is that what you call it? A distraction?" Nyota said with what he recognized as mock indignation. Then her tone grew serious. "Really, I think he's going to bolt if we don't do something soon."
"I fail to see how either you or I can influence his decision to stay to leave."
Another sigh, and then she said, "I don't either. But you thought he was worth giving a chance to. You saw some promise in him in London."
That's so, Spock thinks now as he watches Chekov shift in his seat.
"Cadet Uhura tells me that you may have an unreasonable attachment to your place of origin," Spock says, "and that the contrast with your present circumstances is contributing to your dissatisfaction."
"Sir?"
"You miss your home," Spock says. If Chekov looked sad before, his expression darkens to mournful.
"Is nice here," he says, darting a glance at Spock, "but not like home."
Standing, Spock says, "In my experience, Cadet Chekov, no place is exactly like home."
He takes a step toward the door of the lab before turning back and motioning to Chekov to follow him. Scrambling to his feet, Chekov says, "Now? Come with you?"
Instead of answering, Spock heads down the corridor to the stairwell, taking the three flights down so swiftly that he is waiting by the outside door by the time Chekov catches up.
"Where we going?" Chekov says breathlessly, and Spock points to the hover bus shelter in the distance.
"To wait for the 1815 off-campus transport," he says, walking across the commons towards the shelter. "No place is exactly like home, but I believe I may have a solution to your perceived lack of fun."
At his elbow, he can sense Chekov's confusion. Looking down, he confirms it—the young man is frowning as he jogs to keep up.
Almost as soon as they arrive at the bus shelter, the hover bus itself comes into view, and when it pulls up, Spock enters it and sits on the aisle. Still looking puzzled, Chekov follows and sits across from him.
"Our journey will not take long," Spock says as the bus moves forward. "In the meantime, my own experiences when I first arrived at the Academy might prove instructive."
X X X X X
How to explain?
Spock looked down at the flimplast he had just been handed and set his duffel on the floor of the crowded wardroom. Behind him a line of cadets snaked around the room toward the door. Ahead of him was a midshipman in charge of dorm operations standing at a computer monitor. Glancing up at Spock, the tall blonde man frowned.
"Is there a problem?"
"There is another student assigned to my room."
"Yeah, so? That's your roommate."
The midshipman craned his neck and looked past Spock, a dismissal. Spock took one step forward.
"I specified a private room."
Flicking his eyes back to Spock, the blonde midshipman said, "Doesn't matter what you specified. This is what you got. Now, there are other people waiting."
For a moment Spock debated whether or not to continue the conversation. Although the midshipman was handing out the assignments, the odds were high that someone else had actually made them.
"I need to speak to the officer who made this assignment," Spock said. From behind him he heard the level of ambient noise in the wardroom drop by a factor of two.
"Oh, you do, do you?" the midshipman behind the computer console said.
"I believe I said that."
The noise level in the room fell to zero.
The midshipman placed his hands flat on the desk and leaned forward.
"Maybe you are confused," he said, his voice several decibels louder than before, "but this isn't a hotel. This is Starfleet Academy. If you don't want to be a member of the corps, then turn around and walk back out."
How to explain?
How to explain the importance of privacy to a Vulcan—not out of some desire for personal comfort, but a very real need for quiet and meditation? Not to mention the difficulty the differences in his sleep requirements might pose for a typical human roommate?
Further discussion with the midshipman in charge of assignments was clearly illogical. Spock picked up his duffel and made his way through the wardroom to the stairwell and the dorm rooms beyond.
Perhaps, he thought as he climbed the five flights, a solution was possible. Not all humans were particular about their circadian rhythms. His cousin Chris, for example, away at the Mars Institute, kept an unusual sleep cycle since he left home—an artifact of university life? Although Spock's mother protested when she didn't get enough sleep, younger humans didn't seem to mind staying up for long increments and then balancing the equation with equally long sleep sessions.
Or if his human roommate objected, perhaps another roommate who shared his schedule could be found? After all, a sizable minority of cadets were off-worlders, though Spock knew that no other Vulcans were enrolled.
His resolve to make the best of the situation fled when he saw his room. His roommate wasn't there but his stuff was—strewn all over the floor and on both bunks. Clothes, PADDS, old-fashioned bound books, wadded up sheets and towels—Spock took one look around the room and turned on his heel.
The wardroom was still crowded with cadets waiting in line for room assignments. If the midshipman manning the computer console noticed him making his way out, he didn't give any indication.
The office of the brigade commander was in the main administration building near the south gate of the campus. Like many of the civilian workers Spock had seen on campus, the receptionist was human—a woman close to his mother's age. She blinked twice when Spock told her he needed to see someone about his room, but she didn't argue with him, and in a few minutes she motioned to him and led him down a short hallway to a small office.
Inside was a gray-haired man wearing a Starfleet uniform.
"Sit down, Cadet," he said, looking up from the PADD on his desk, and Spock shifted his duffel to the floor.
"State your concern," the brigade commander said. Finally, someone who was unemotional and to the point. Spock felt his shoulders relax.
"I require a private room," he said, "but I have been assigned a roommate."
The brigade commander looked at him, silent and unblinking. For a moment, Spock was nonplussed. Had the commander misunderstood him? Unlikely. What then?
At times like this when he had trouble with human interactions, Spock had learned that silence was often the best option. Certainly that was true when dealing with his mother. More than once she had scolded him for speaking too soon, for rushing to judgment and assuming to know what she would prefer without asking her first.
His habit of disappearing for several days to go hiking in the mountains without alerting her to his plans, for instance…her ire at not being forewarned, of not knowing the particulars.
"I did not tell you because I did not want to you worry," he told her the last time he had returned after three days of camping in the The Forge.
"I was worried!" she said hotly. "Not just about your safety, but wondering where you were! You doubled my worry!"
Now he waited for the brigade commander to reply.
Tapping the PADD with his stylus, the commander looked up and said, "Yes, I see that you did request a room to yourself. Obviously that had to be denied."
"Explain please," Spock said at once.
The commander's eyes widened and he said, "Cadet, when you accepted your position at the Academy, you also accepted a position in your company, in your battalion, in your regiment, in the corps. Starfleet isn't a bunch of individuals going their own way but a group of people dedicated to a common purpose. That includes learning to work together…and that starts with learning to live with your roommate."
Fighting back a flash of irritation, Spock said, "Sir, I understand how the Academy is organized. I would not have applied for admission if I didn't accept the goals as my own. But I do not make my request lightly. I believe I can be a part without sharing a room—"
"Cadet," the commander said, crossing his arms and tilting his head. "I must not be making myself clear. Starfleet doesn't need you if you aren't able to function as a member of the team. What do you think the crew of a starship is if it isn't a team?"
"But I require—"
"You are dismissed," the commander said, and Spock took a breath and picked his duffel from the floor.
By the end of that first week the commander's words seemed prophetic and leaving the Academy a very real possibility. His roommate was, in fact, a pleasant enough young man who was more surprised than dismayed to have a Vulcan roommate. Apparently able to sleep through Spock's wakefulness, he was equally unaffected by Spock's requests that he tidy up his side of the room.
Neither the physical training nor the academic classes were especially taxing, but when Spock called his mother after that first week, she noticed his exhaustion immediately.
"Meditation is impossible," he explained, secretly gratified that she was as annoyed as he was about his lack of privacy.
"Your father could call someone," she said, and Spock raised his hand to the subspace screen and said, "Mother, that would be unacceptable. This is my problem and I will deal with it."
She had frowned at him but promised not to mention anything to Sarek.
Spock had never gone an entire week without meditating. His thoughts were less focused, his reaction times slower. In desperation, he lit a candle—a poor substitute for his asenoi—and sat cross-legged on his bed the next time his roommate was out.
It was hopeless. Two cadets were using the hallway to test a new frictionless compound that they sprayed on their socks, running and sliding past Spock's door to the cheers of onlookers. Each time someone bumped the door handle, he jumped, expecting his roommate to return. And as usual, the temperature of the room was chilly and the moisture level excessive.
By the end of the second week, even he could hear how abrupt he sounded when he spoke, how unvarnished his annoyance was. His mother commented on it right away.
"You don't sound like yourself," she said, a worried look crossing her brow. "Has something else happened?"
"Mother," he said, and then he fell silent. Amanda continued to peer at him intently.
"Have you asked—"
"I have," he said curtly, and shortly afterward he made an excuse to go.
The next day he was heading to the morning meal—an almost useless exercise, he thought with real anger, given the paltry number of meatless options—when his comm chimed. A message from the brigade commander's office—a notice that he was being reassigned to a different room effective immediately.
Had his roommate lodged a protest and requested a change? That was unlikely. The midshipman on duty in the wardroom couldn't answer any questions either, just saying that he had been told to issue him a key.
The relief he felt when he swiped the key card and opened the door to his new room was immense—and startling. Until he shut the door behind him and sat down heavily on the empty bunk, he hadn't realized how miserable, how needy, he had been. Instead of going to breakfast, he lit his candle and sat on the floor beside it, his back straight, his hands folded in front of him. He felt himself sinking into the first level of meditation almost immediately.
He was about to enter the second level when he opened his eyes with a start.
Sarek. His father must have intervened. As the Ambassador from Vulcan, he knew some of the Starfleet authorities, would have known who to talk to.
For a moment Spock struggled with competing desires. On one hand, the privacy of the room was…if not bliss, then his approximation of it.
On the other hand, he was determined to chart his own course without his father's interference.
He stood up and walked to the subspace console mounted on the desk in the corner.
"You asked me not to say anything to your father," Amanda protested when he called her. "You said you could handle things on your own."
"As I shall," Spock said, reaching forward to end the transmission, but his mother added, "Now maybe you can gain back that weight you've lost. You look too thin. And too pale."
"The meditation will help," Spock agreed, and again he reached forward to toggle off the transmission but was stopped by his mother's voice.
"Are you eating enough?" she asked, but instead of answering, he tilted his head and said, "Mother, I have to go."
Two days later the first package arrived, his mother's handwriting on the outside giving him an unexpected spasm of longing to see her. Homesickness, she had called it—moments when nostalgia for family overrode any other desire.
Inside the small package was an assortment of dried fruits and vegetables—kasa and fori and marak and even some sliced plomeek. Seeing them conjured up an indescribable feeling, an unnamed emotion that was a paradox of pleasure and sorrow.
"Just a little something to tide you over," she said when he called to thank her, though later he realized that she hadn't explained what the package was supposed to tide him over to.
To the next package, apparently. Three days later he received another package from home, this time filled with seasonal nuts and berries.
"They were on sale at the market," his mother explained. "The last time I spoke to Chris, he asked me to send him some. I thought I might as well send some to you."
"It isn't necessary, Mother," Spock told her. "The cafeteria provides adequate nutrition."
It was true. Just yesterday Spock had noted an increase in the vegetarian selections—and not just that, but an increase in off-world specialties. The Andorian cadet ahead of him in line at lunch had seemed excited to find a native stew on the menu.
Now that he was able to meditate regularly, Spock's focus returned, and with it, his appetite improved and he was better able to tolerate the change from Vulcan's dry heat to San Francisco's cool wet climate, something his mother had warned him about.
"I was always cold when we lived there," she said the next time they spoke by subspace, "and your father complained all the time."
"Vulcans do not complain," Spock said drily, and Amanda laughed.
"Oh, no," she said. "They never complain. But they comment on things they dislike—and comment, and comment, and comment, until you want to pull your hair out!"
His mother's words were in jest but Spock admitted to himself that she wasn't wrong. Each week he had submitted a request for a temperature control override for his room—and each week it was denied. Because of the cost? The difficulty of reconfiguring the gauge for a single room in a large dorm? No explanation was ever given.
And then one day when he returned from his modular physics seminar he saw two maintenance men exiting his room, one carrying a large tool box, the other a ladder. Catching a glimpse of him in the corridor, one of the workmen called out, "We're all done here."
"Explain the nature of the repairs to my room," Spock said, and the workman gave him an odd look. Perhaps he should have introduced himself first? Yet another occasion when interacting with unfamiliar humans was problematic.
"The new thermostat," the workman said. "Enjoy your sauna!"
Entering the room, Spock saw the new temperature control mounted near the door, and underneath it, a boxlike dehumidifier. For a moment he stood transfixed—and then with a flick of his wrist, he turned the switch and stretched out on his bunk. Within minutes he was warm and dry—the first time since he had arrived a few weeks ago.
The rest of that first semester flew by—not without some of what his mother called bumps in the road—but tolerable. By the time the corps hosted their first family visitation day, Spock felt he could face his parents with a measure of equanimity.
The large meeting hall where cadets and their families could mingle was tricked out in Starfleet regalia. Tables were pushed to wall and burdened with finger foods and beverages. Professors and officers stood around chatting with students and their parents.
From the corner of his eye, Spock saw the brigade commander walking in his direction. Since their meeting in his office the first day, Spock had not spoken to him personally, though he had once overheard the commander mention him in passing. As the only Vulcan cadet, Spock was used to being recognized. No matter where he was, he thought ruefully, he was always going to be the oddity in the crowd.
"Cadet Spock," the brigade commander said, sidling up to him, "are your parents here?"
"Not yet, Commander," he said, "though they both indicated that they would attend."
"I'm looking forward to meeting the Ambassador in person," the commander said. "After all those conversations we had."
"Sir?"
"At the beginning of the semester. Very helpful, actually."
"I apologize, sir," Spock said, "but I am unaware—"
"Like I said," the commander went on, "it was a helpful reminder of what Starfleet is all about. It's easy to get so caught up in following rules and regulations that you forget why you have them in the first place."
Spock struggled to keep the confusion off his face. Was it possible that the beverage the commander was holding in a small, clear cup in his hand was intoxicating him? Making him speak nonsense? Spock had witnessed that sort of intoxication before, most recently at an off-campus social event he had been required to attend.
"Sir, I—"
"Look around you," the commander said, and Spock turned his gaze slowly in the direction the commander was pointing. "What do you see? People from all over. Humans, of course, but Andorians, and Tellarites, and Denobulans and Orions. People from all over the Federation, working for a common goal. Unified, yes, but diverse, too. We can't lose sight of that. If we do, we forget what the Federation is."
Spock nodded, not sure how to respond. The commander evidently took that as a sign to continue.
"That's what the Ambassador reminded me," he said. "Oh, I think I gave you a hard time right there at the start—you remember, about the room."
"Yes, sir," Spock said, baffled.
"I'm embarrassed that I had lost sight of our diversity," the commander said, "and the need to balance our corporate and individual lives. The issues of housing, and food, and the environmental controls—conformity isn't always a virtue, not when it creates barriers that keep us from working together. That's what the Ambassador kept pointing out. We had several long conversations about it earlier in the year."
As the commander spoke, Spock felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle. He recalled with perfect clarity his mother's words when he had questioned her: You asked me not to tell your father.
He had missed it then, the way she had misdirected him, not answering his query. Not I didn't tell your father. Just a restatement of the facts, the way a Vulcan would lie: You asked me not to tell your father. No reassurance that she hadn't spoken to his father after all.
"Sarek contacted you about the room and the food selections? About the temperature controls?"
The commander took a sip of his drink and said, "Sarek? I don't know anyone named Sarek. I'm talking about your mother, the Ambassador."
X X X X
"That's the first time he's looked happy in weeks," Nyota says, swaying back and darting a glance across the large gym where Chekov sits at a long table, elbows propped, his chin in his hands. On the other side of the table is a small boy, 9 or 10 years old, his hand hovering over a chessboard.
As he watches, Spock realizes that Nyota's assessment of Chekov's improved mood appears accurate. The cadet is smiling broadly and keeping up a running patter of advice.
"Watch it!" Spock hears him tell the boy getting ready to pick up a knight. "Is trick. Think again what you should do."
All around the gym are other players, most of them school children, but also older adolescents and adults serving as coaches and chess instructors. For the past two years Spock has tutored several high school students here every other Wednesday evening, a community outreach project that he had taken on reluctantly and only at the insistence of the Academy Dean, but which, when he is honest with himself, he has found pleasure in doing.
More than pleasure. A sense of fulfillment and purpose, teaching young people how to think strategically, logically.
For the last two months since the disciplinary hearing Nyota has joined him here, occasionally playing a match with one of the students, but mostly sitting on the sidelines watching him coach someone else—and feeling her presence has been a pleasure, too.
The large high school gym across town is one place they feel free to be in public together—away from the scrutiny of the campus. Bent over their games, the other players rarely pay them much attention, and in the crowded, echoing room, they are sometimes able to sit side-by-side on the bleachers along one wall and talk with relative privacy, the way they do now.
"Whatever you told him," Nyota says, "seems to be working."
"I told him very little," Spock says. At the table, Chekov lifts his palm and slaps it against the palm of the little boy. A congratulatory motion?
Obviously so. The boy grins and rises, and a little girl sits in his place. Chekov stands and bows with exaggerated grace, eliciting a laugh.
"You must have told him something," Nyota says, and Spock replies, "I shared some of my own difficulties adjusting to life at the Academy. That is all."
"Hmm," Nyota says. "Now what could those be, I wonder? You had already studied all the advanced math and computer classes they had to offer?"
"As a school child on Vulcan."
"The physical training wasn't rigorous enough for you? You wanted to run a marathon every morning before breakfast?"
"And another in the evening."
She laughs then, fluttering his heart in his side.
"Well," she says, leaning close, "you seem to have adjusted."
"With my mother's help," he says. Nyota raises an eyebrow in surprise and he adds, "She knew what I needed to feel at home."
He doesn't elaborate. There is Chekov, happy for now, making himself useful, practicing his Standard, feeling more at home for all that. A simple solution to bring him here, to connect him with people who make him feel capable, wanted.
And for himself? Now?
Suddenly he's weary of the noisy gym, of being so physically close and yet unable to touch Nyota.
Soon enough she'll take a transport back to the campus, and he will collect Chekov and take a different transport later. He and Nyota may go days without another glimpse of each other—their only contact by a comm registered to his cousin Chris.
That vision of the future rises up before him like something damp and dark and unwanted, and almost impulsively he says, "At this time of the year, Eridani is visible after 2300. If you care to join me, I will be at the waterfront—if the cloud cover isn't excessive."
"At the waterfront?" Nyota says, eyeing him carefully. "Near the Anchor Hotel?"
"Eridani is easiest to see from that end of the walkway."
"If the cloud cover isn't excessive."
"Precisely," he says, and she quirks her lip and says, "And if it is? What would we do then?"
She phrases it as a question—and a teasing one at that—but she's really telling him that she understands what he is saying.
That he wants to see his home star tonight—that he's feeling, for lack of a better word, as homesick as Chekov.
That he wants her company—not just for stargazing, but later, at the hotel where they've dared to stay once before, when being apart had become almost physically painful.
A risk, but a calculated one.
And to his mind worth it. A few hours cobbled together to feel what it means to be at home—not because he is warm and dry or sated or even happy in the way humans use the word—but because he will be with her, not needing anything else.
A/N: Thanks to everyone for staying the course! Your reviews keep me going!