Guys, you leave the best reviews. Seriously. I'm sorry I haven't written back to everyone yet, but I swear I'm on it. You're actually all writing such nice things that I'm somewhere between just happy and feeling loved and being anxious that the rest of the story is up to par. I'm a bit sad this story isn't 'The 20 times' or something, since I'm really enjoying writing it, but then again, it's already a long enough wait, right?
...
They begin to have lunch together, which he says is logical with that small, half smile. It is probably quite logical, she thinks, pushing a padd across the table towards him as they eat, showing him an article she found on trimoraic syllables in Bjoran. They spend too much time talking about Trill, Risian, Andorian tenses and gerunds to not have their discussions overlap with meals, and when they start eating in the cafeteria instead of just in the small break room of the xenolinguistics department, and then start eating at off campus restaurants instead of just at the cafeteria, it feels normal and natural, and she forgets what it was like to scarf down a piece of fruit at a study carrel in the library. She pays for her own food and he doesn't question it and doesn't offer to pick up the whole tab. That feels normal and natural too, and makes lunch with him easier than with most other people, no less for the fact that he doesn't try to pay than that she finds it nearly impossible to run out of things to talk about once they start.
She sometimes thinks she tells him everything, things she can't imagine saying to anyone, let alone him, and finds she can't keep herself from doing so. She tells him about the heat of the desert of her home, and he nods and looks almost lonely for a moment, before he begins to ask questions in that way that he has, where they are thoughtful and don't feel intrusive, and all of a sudden she's recounting being with her brother in the sand, the heat baking into them from a full day's sun as night falls and her first, clear image of the stars away from the city lights, her pigtails brushing her shoulders as she stared. She could hear her parents calling and couldn't care, even as her brother tugged on her arm. She tells him about how that image is burned in her mind and she still thinks about it often, her small hand reaching out towards the stars as if she could touch them. She thinks of everyone she could tell that to, Spock understands it best.
…
The day he returns a project she was working on with a comment that says perhaps you should take another look at this next to a paragraph he highlighted, she thinks back to the terse, curt notations he used to make, and smiles as she rewrites the section and hands it to him again.
The day he tries her coffee she wants to laugh out loud at the look on his face and doesn't, and then thinks he comes as close to laughing as he ever has when she tries the variety of Vulcan tea he drinks and never brings her.
The day he tries peanut butter is almost as good, watching him eat almost the whole jar, and the day he makes her barkaya is better, she thinks, finishing her bowl of the soup at the small table in his apartment.
…
She tells him about her grandmother's failing health, tells him about her sister's new boyfriend, and tells him about the way her father used to try to learn languages with her until he admitted defeat and instead looks up random words and phrases and texts them to her, trying to stump her. She doesn't tell him about her mother since it's always been complicated, then tells him anyway, even though she doesn't like to remember the long hours her mother worked that kept her away, watching from the front window and wondering if she'd be home for dinner that night, any night, as her father called to her that the food was ready and she needed to come sit down and eat.
She makes for him what her father made for her and laughs at the fact she can't leave a dirty bowl or utensil on his counter for even a minute while she cooks, and grabs the spoon back from him since she's still using it and he really doesn't need to wash it yet.
She must gain some sort of efficiency through osmosis, since the time she spends with him does not seem to effect her coursework or the hours of material she needs to complete for him, or maybe it's just so easy to focus on Sunday afternoons in his apartment that she speeds through her assignments. It is one of many easy things about being near him, listening to the soft sounds of him working on the couch next to her.
…
She recounts the whole bar fight debacle in Iowa, which was sort of mortifying, and sort of hilarious, and the conversation is sort of confusing when she realizes she can, and does, capture both of his bishops while she talks.
"Spock, it's your turn," she says.
"Of course."
He blinks and his eyes slide away from hers. He reaches for his rook, composed as he ever is, even if he glances at her more often than normal as they play that night.
…
They speak in a variety of languages, but most often Vulcan, and she realizes when he answers his comm one day, stepping to the side of the deli where they're ordering sandwiches, that they have never once used the formal method of addressing each other that he is currently speaking in.
She thinks about asking if that was his father's call, and then doesn't, and thinks about touching his sleeve or arm when he tells her anyway, recounting their stilted conversations and their attempts to reconcile, staring at his food while he talks. She doesn't touch him, and she doesn't ask what brought this about, and swallows the knot in her throat when she hears the pain that slightly colors his voice, darkens his face, before both are smooth and blank again.
…
She is not surprised when he tells her that Pike asked him to serve as Chief Science Officer on the Enterprise, since she can't think of anyone better qualified or deserving of the position. She is also not surprised that Pike asked him if he'd be interested in submitting his resume and references for First Officer, but finds it odd that he doesn't mention it again for three weeks. When he does, he brings it up in a flood of nervous energy that he immediately checks, his face blank and his body still until he can speak about it with greater composure, if not greater equanimity.
She has never seen him anxious and if she didn't know him so well she wouldn't assign words like uneasy and apprehensive and agitated to the way he focuses on slicing carrots for their dinner, far more measured and careful than normal. If he were human, she would probably hug him, the aching rigidity of his movements twisting something in her stomach, but he's not.
She misses the calm, serene manner he normally has around her and reaches for a carrot slice as she watches his studied cool. It apparently throws off whatever perfectly calculated ratio of vegetables he's preparing, because he raises his head to meet her gaze.
She takes another piece from his cutting board, telling him that it would be difficult for anyone to learn to manage such a large, diverse crew.
"I do not understand the complexities and nuances of human interactions," he says, quietly, after a long pause.
Ah, she thinks, eating another slice as she considers the overwhelming proportion of humans at Starfleet.
"What don't you understand?"
"I do not understand the variable ways in which humans relate to each other," he says, his dark eyes catching hers.
"It's not that complicated," she says and finds herself looking away from him.
"I am not confident I am always capable of behaving in a way that-" he pauses, something so rare that she meets his eyes again. "-Is accurately understood."
His apartment is always warm, but tonight it feels hot and, and she shifts slightly under the weight of his gaze. "It takes time. You'll learn."
He's still looking at her.
"Um, on the Enterprise."
He is silent, but cuts her a carrot of her own, putting it on a plate in front of her, and she smiles when he takes two slices back, and smiles again the next day when she sees him talking to Pike outside the Officers Lounge as she walks to class.
…
She tells him her grandmother used to make them dinner when her father had to pick up her brother or sister or her from soccer, school, dance, music lessons, and that the memory of her in the kitchen is one of her dearest from her childhood. She tells him how her grandmother taught her to sing, taught her the first languages she ever spoke other than Swahili, and taught her the name of every star they could identify together, sitting in the cold night air of the desert with a padd between them, Nyota's fingers flicking over it, and her grandmother's hand stilling her, reminding her to never forget to just look up and pause under the weight of the sky.
She does not tell him that she is getting sicker, and does not tell him that her father called and he couldn't speak so her sister did instead, and then her mother called and Nyota couldn't speak, and that both calls woke Gaila so that's why she's sitting in his office past midnight on a Saturday, on the small couch in the corner, staring at the wall, waiting to hear what happens, and waiting for the transporter station to open in the morning.
She does not tell him that she feels like she can breathe again only when he enters the room, and she does not tell him she is somewhere beyond grateful when he doesn't ask any questions other than what kind of tea she would like.
He works for a long time and she closes her eyes and listens to him shuffling filmplasts and stacking padds, but she can't sleep and alternates watching him and watching the dark city beyond the window.
He eventually rises and carries some of the padds down the hall to his classroom, and when he returns she wonders if he'll leave, and wonders if she could bring herself to ask him to stay, and then doesn't have to when he pulls a chair over and sits in front of her, handing her the padd they once shared in a police station.
When she loses her knight after two turns she almost laughs because it feels so familiar and normal, and watching him collect her pieces is the only part of the night she can make sense of. He wins, of course, something she stopped caring about so long ago she can't remember ever caring about it, and closes her eyes against the dull ache in her chest that returns as soon as they stop playing.
When he asks if she would perhaps like to rest and she shakes her head, he resets the board and they play again, and then again. When her mug is empty, he brings her another one, and when the first glint of dawn appears on the horizon, brings her a container of yogurt from the break room and gives her a steady look until she eats it.
When she gets her father's call and starts to cry after she hangs up, he sits next to her on the couch. His hand is steady and warm, his fingers touching hers gently, and she can feel a deep, rich calm that helps her catch her breath. They are silent as the sun rises through the windows in his office, glinting off the padd beside them, and at 0645 he rises and walks with her to the transporter station, her hand tight on his.