Fafhrd
As soon as the lift doors closed, Selina turned and faced Fafhrd. He was standing with his hands behind his back, looking up at the ceiling. His lips were pressed together and he seemed to be trying to force the corners of his mouth downward to prevent them from turning too far up.
She put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. "Tie me down?" It was more rebuke than question.
He continued to study the ceiling. "Well, I could have asked the doctor to sedate you, but we both know that wouldn't have worked even if you didn't have him wrapped around your little finger."
She frowned slightly. "Len is a gentleman, unlike some people I could name."
"Would any of those people be named 'Bambi'?" he asked dryly, finally looking down at her.
"Possibly," she said, eyes narrowing. "Particularly if he and Spock were somehow conspiring to make everyone believe that I have some sort of weakness for physicians."
He bit his lip in a way that she knew meant that he was weighing a response. "Do not say 'Spock would never do that'," she warned him.
His lips compressed against a grin and he nodded. "Fine. But can you blame either of us for being surprised to see you flirting with a Starfleet doctor?"
"I was not flirting. Len is just very a sweet man."
Fafhrd looked down at the floor. "Shame about him being stone deaf then."
She shook her head and compressed her own lips against an encroaching smile. "Merely honest."
"No," he replied, giving in to the smile trying to crease his beard. "Now the Captain, he seems like an honest man, and one I'm pretty sure would be glad to invest in a set of earplugs. Probably that fencing master too, providing someone warns him."
She tilted her head and looked him up and down. "I wonder if they make Bambi costumes large enough for you?"
"Doesn't matter," he grinned, bouncing slightly on his toes. "I have this year off, eh?"
"I have not decided on anything yet," she replied. "And even if I took them, it would only mean that I would have to find someone to dress as Thumper for you."
"Avoiding that is only reason I keep agreeing to go with you, you know," he said wryly. "And even so you keep trying to fix me up with someone there, like that Isis last year."
"I did not 'fix you up' with her," Selina protested. "I simply overheard her friends teasing her about her interest in redheads and saw that you came into proximity."
He scoffed. "Herded us together like some big grey-clad sheepdog, you mean?"
"You did not complain at the time," she observed. "In fact, you very nearly got into character for a change."
"Granted," he chuckled. "But her interest in redheads proved to be fairly indiscriminant. And you decided you didn't like her after all."
"I did not realize how short she was until I saw you standing together. You slouch enough as it is."
He stood a little straighter and looked carefully up at the ceiling. "If you really wanted me to get into character, you'd agree to come as Frix."
"Not in this life or the next," she said firmly.
"Well, maybe your hearing-impaired doctor will have better luck." He smiled mischievously, looking back down. "You'd make a good Scarlett O'Hara."
She stepped forward, looking up into his face and cocking an eyebrow. "Have I told you lately that you are insufferable?"
He grinned down at her. "It's been about 3 months. I'm probably overdue."
The lift doors opened and she took his arm for the short walk to the shuttle bay. "You could stay," she said. "I am unlikely to sleep in any case. You could use my quarters."
"Do you remember the look on Spock's face the last time I took you up on something like that?" he said, a note of laughter in his voice. "Until that moment, I didn't know it was possible for a Vulcan to have mixed emotions. Besides, I fully intend to sneak away to the station without you following. Sleeping in your bed would complicate that plan immeasurably."
"Do you honestly think that I will not be there at 03:00?"
"I honestly hope that you won't be." He turned at the door to the shuttle, suddenly serious. "Probably everything will go fine. But we both know there has to be more than some local smuggling ring involved here, and I am not ready to see you try to join that ghost in your head again."
"You do not have to be there either," she challenged.
He shook his head. "You know that I do."
"No. I do not." She placed a hand against his jaw, forcing him to look at her. "You saved the colony. The Musashi was not your fault."
He closed his eyes and her hand reached almost involuntarily toward his temple. He caught it for a moment before pulling away. "We have an agreement, remember?" he said softly, and then switched to a teasing smile, nodding toward the bay door. "Go back before your new fan club misses you."
She sighed, raising an eyebrow. "Perhaps I could come to the Aldrin with you?"
"Climb aboard this shuttle and I swear that I will sing Henry the 8th I Am the whole way, and unless you've gotten that helmsman to teach you to fly, there won't be a thing you can do about it." He walked into the shuttle, waving her off. "Now, go and get some sleep for a change."
She retreated down the shuttle ramp, waiting for the doors to close, before saying "I will see you at 03:00."
.
"Seriously Kirk," Nyota said glaring at Jim, "how do you jump from a good-natured joke to some sort of bondage fantasy?"
"Believe me," Bones said sarcastically. "You don't want to know."
"Hey, I was just joking," Jim said, holding his hands up innocently. "Why did Sorenson say that anyway?"
"Because he's her friend," Uhura snapped. "And he's worried about her, idiot."
"Well, yeah, I got that," Jim snarked. He looked at Spock. "I take it you're actually planning to try to keep her out of things tonight?"
"That has already been arranged," Spock said. "I have issued orders that Ms. Chandri is not to be beamed to the station tonight without my or Cmdr. Sorenson's express permission."
McCoy whistled. "I don't think I'd like to be in your shoes when she finds out."
"I have endured her wrath before," Spock answered calmly, "As has Cmdr. Sorenson."
"He said it that way deliberately, didn't he?" Nyota asked. "So she'd be more angry at him than at you."
"It is possible," Spock replied, nodding almost imperceptibly. "However, their relationship is ...unique. It is not always clear to me why he decides to provoke her."
"What I don't understand," Nyota said, turning to look at Spock. "Is how in all the time I've known you, you've never even mentioned him."
"I have mentioned him," Spock said, his brows furrowing slightly. "When we lost contact with the away team on Cyngali V, I explained the method he had postulated during our accident for boosting a ship's reception in order to locate a weak communicator signal."
"What you said," Nyota replied, "was that it was an untested idea from an old associate from the Academy."
"Just so," Spock agreed.
"Wait," Jim jumped in. "You mean Sorenson's the reason I didn't end up as snack food for those monster kangaroo/tarantula things?"
"It was Lt. Uhura who successfully implemented the idea," Spock corrected. "But, in essence, yes."
"Spock, if he came up with that years ago, why hadn't he tested it?"
"I doubt that he actually recalls having had the idea. At the time, he was slipping in and out of lucidity. Since the procedure could only have been used by a ship searching for us, rather than on our end, and was articulated following an extended chorus from a parody of Wagner involving a rabbit," one eyebrow rose at the memory, "I confess that I dismissed it at the time and did not consider it again until the incident on Cyngali V."
"He came up with that with his brain half fried on toxins?" McCoy asked.
Spock nodded. "Cmdr. Sorenson is a very creative individual, if occasionally eccentric."
"We have got to get him to stay and talk to Scotty tomorrow," Kirk said with a slightly manic grin. "If I could lock those two in a room together with a case of scotch - just imagine what they might come up with!"
Spock looked down at his boots. The thought 'an expanded repertoire of drinking songs' came immediately to mind, but he did not voice it. "I believe that Mr. Sorenson and Mr. Scott would enjoy the opportunity to collaborate, but I am certain they would be more productive in the absence of alcohol."
"Spock, why didn't I ever see him with you on campus?" Nyota asked, returning to the subject.
"He has never taught at the Academy," Spock explained. "And his division is based in Langley, not San Francisco."
"But that story about the training accident. You never told me any of that," she said.
"As you have seen, Cmdr. Sorenson does not care to have it related. He told it tonight only because Ms. Chandri would not permit him to do otherwise." Spock's head tilted slightly to one side. "Surely you would not want me to disclose a story that a friend would find embarrassing?"
"No," Nyota said with a sigh. "I know that you wouldn't do that. And I understand why you didn't want to tell anyone about the bar. I even understand that you wanted to wait to tell me about Selina until I could meet her in person. But when I asked if you had had a friend in the Academy when you were a cadet, you said 'no'."
"I have never lied to you," Spock answered sincerely. "You asked if I had had a friend 'like Gaila' when I was a cadet. I did not."
Nyota put a palm to her face and shook her head. "I should really know better," she said, almost to herself. "Fafhrd said that the day you provided personal information without need-to-know, I should take you directly to sickbay, and he's right. I just don't understand why even Selina never said anything about him."
"Now I do not understand," Spock said, his brows drawing together in confusion. "I was certain that she had."
.
When Selina left the shuttle bay, she found Nyota waiting outside the door, a knowing smile on her face.
"So," Nyota said. "I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to figure it out, but I'm guessing he didn't go by Erik when you first met."
"He still doesn't," Selina replied with a sly smile. "He is only called Erik within a rather select community. He once told me that the first rule was never to hack under your own name. How no one has ever associated him with Erik the Red is beyond me ...except of course that many hackers use names from fantasy and I have made very certain that everyone thinks that he is one of the Fafhrds, or at least a denizen of Lankhmar."
"So I'm right then?"
Selina raised an amused eyebrow. "How many friends do you think Spock has who look like Fafhrd?"
AN: Lankhmar is the city where most of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser's adventures take place. Queen Frix of Arilia, slim and dark-haired, unlike Fafhrd's usual type, comes from the stories that should probably be rated M (and was in a sort of bondage when he first met her) - hence Selina's assertion that Frix is a role she'll never play.
Spock's reticence when it comes to personal information is legendary. In the TOS episode Journey to Babel he and Kirk have been serving together for years and Kirk names Spock as his best friend. But after Sarek and Amanda come on board, he asks Spock if he wants to go visit his parents before the ship leaves Vulcan and learns only then that Sarek and Amanda are Spock's parents! I'm never even tried to count the number of times he didn't bother to share information about Vulcan physiology until well past the point when knowing it would have been useful (no wonder he drives doctors insane).
Since Spock can also be impossibly literal-minded, Nyota has her work cut out for her if she wants him to know about his past. She has Selina to help with that, but as Spock is trained to formality, calling even Selina 'Ms. Chandri' in public, while Selina generally uses first or nicknames, correlation may not always be immediate.
I'm sure most people have figured out who Sorenson is now. For anyone who hasn't yet, I promise you'll know after the next chapter.
