Pike kept her back after the briefing. It wasn't entirely unexpected, even captain 'beam down and see' was going to want a security overhaul after having his ship unceremoniously taken by a bunch of pirates embarrassingly under-resourced in the brain department.

What was unexpected was that he didn't start with that.

"How is nurse Chapel?"

"Perfectly capable of speech."

"La'an…" he sighed, taking the chair next to her. "I'm sure it was rough. I'm just trying to find out how she is."

He was close, but for once she didn't want to back away. "Then you need to ask her."

"Okay…" He steepled his hands on the table, each finger perfectly aligned. "How about I ask you something." He raised his eyebrows at her expectantly.

She nodded. How bad could it be?

"Are we going to have a problem on the bridge?"

She frowned at him. "A security problem?"

"No." He gestured up at the screen behind them. "A problem with what we just saw."

They'd reviewed a lot of footage. Most of it was problematic, from a security standpoint. But that wasn't what he meant.

"I want to know if there's going to be a problem between you and Spock. Working together. I know we're all professionals, but I can't have that kind of tension in my command team. So if there's going to be…"

"It's fine."

He seemed roundly unconvinced. "Fine?"

"Yes."

"La'an, I understand compartmentalising, but we just watched your girlfriend either giving the performance of her life or… well…"

She tried to blank her face. To pull her mind away. A is for Apple, sweet as can be. B is for Butter, on crumpets with tea. It wasn't working. It wasn't drowning him out. If he would just stop talking…

"… we've all seen how they are together, and…"

She pressed her hand over her mouth, but sound escaped anyway, bubbling up through her nose. Pike ground to a halt, looking up at her, concerned. She raised a finger at him as she stumbled up out of her chair. Wait.

She made it over to the comm. panel and closed her eyes, taking a few deep, steadying breaths while she waited for it to connect.

"Chapel."

"Come up to the briefing room."

"What? Why? I'm up to my elbows in…"

"It can wait."

"It can't. What are you…?"

"Just get up here Chapel."

She waited by the door, tight lipped, concentrating on her breathing, the rise and fall, cool air flowing in through her nose, pressure as she blew it out through her mouth, don't look at Pike, whatever you do, don't look at Pike.

It only took Chapel a minute. She stood in the doorway, bemused and vaguely apprehensive, looking between them with a nervous frown. La'an made herself face the captain.

"Say it again. Just like that."

Pike seemed hesitant, but unwilling to argue. "Are you going to have a problem with the fact that your girlfriend kissed…"

It was so much worse the second time. Chapel's face shuttered, her jaw clenching, deliberately avoiding La'an's eyes. It didn't make any difference. The set of her shoulders was all it took.

La'an dropped her head, hands clenching behind her back, coking on the last of her control as behind her Chapel cracked too, ending up bending forward, gripping onto the back of a chair, laughing so hard she literally cried.

It wasn't just the assumption, ludicrous though it was. It wasn't even the infantile label it came with. It was that he was so serious about it. It was the funniest thing La'an had heard in years.

Eventually, by tiny, helpless increments, they managed to sober enough to struggle upright. La'an wrestled her face back towards some semblance of formality, watching Chapel wipe haphazardly at her cheeks, breathless and giggling and positively glowing with hilarity.

"Thank you. Man I needed that."

La'an gestured towards Pike, trying for dignity but entirely unable to smother the resurgence of a grin she knew must be hopelessly ridiculous. "The honour's all yours, sir."

"I…" Pike looked nonplussed, shaking his head in good natured bewilderment. "You're welcome?"

La'an coughed ineffectively over another burst of undignified giggles.

"I think the security review can wait until tomorrow, lieutenant."

"Thank you, sir."

She wiped carefully at her eyes as the door slid shut behind them. "What did I tear you away from?"

"You don't want to know."

"Can it wait?"

"Absolutely."

They went and had lunch in a crowded mess hall. It was the only sensible thing to do.

o o o

"Lieutenant."

Soup again. How could someone so tall subsist on soup? La'an suspected it was some form of deliberate self-denial, a subconscious performance of indifference. She'd seen plenty of Vulcans enjoy food. The theatre was overkill.

"May I join you?"

People didn't ask that now. Chapel had taught them otherwise. They sat or they didn't. Mostly they didn't. She nodded at the seat opposite and watched him as he took it. He was meticulous, unfolding his napkin, aligning the tray. Too meticulous.

"Did Pike send you?"

"That is not…" He finally looked up into her glare. The denial stalled, but he didn't look away. It was always reassuring, somehow, when people didn't flinch. "The captain did mention there may be some difficulty."

"The captain is an idiot."

Spock's deadpan twitched, just enough to tell her he was amused. "On that I believe we must disagree." He didn't start eating though. Instead he carefully adjusted the position of his spoon. Vulcans weren't supposed to fidget.

"My interactions with nurse Chapel have been… strained, since our mission concluded."

Never. "Then go and talk to her."

"I attempted to do so, after the fact. It was clearly unwelcome."

So that was what had sent her spinning out, slamming into La'an's quarters saying things she never would have otherwise, briefly and painfully out of control. "I'm not going to sit here and discuss her with you. Go ask her or don't. This isn't my business."

"You are… close."

"Which is none of yours."

"Indeed. However, I find myself in need of advice. I believe you are the most appropriate source. Nurse Chapel is a good friend. My actions last week appear to have jeopardised that friendship. I wish to repair the damage."

His actions last week. How about six months? How about consistently flirting with someone so clearly receptive with no intention of ever following through? It would have helped if she could hate him for it, but he clearly didn't understand. Raised on Vulcan, trying to be Vulcan. No human friends. No human minds.

"Humans lie. All the time."

"Please, clarify."

"They don't see reality. It would send them insane. So they live somewhere nicer. Somewhere safer, with right and wrong. Meant to be. Happily ever after."

"Christine is not a romantic."

"She's human. Whether you want her to be or not."

Spock considered that for a second, face still as he thought. "You are suggesting that I am allowing my desires to colour my perception."

"Well?"

"I have no desires."

Liar. She curled her fingers towards her plate, shifting forward in her chair, ready to stand. "Do you want my advice, or not?"

He did. He leant back in his seat fractionally. "I wish to maintain a friendship I have come to value."

"Then learn to speak girl." It was a ridiculous phrase, reductive and lurid, straight out of the worst kind of fiction. La'an appreciated how it made his brow furrow.

"Speak 'girl'?"

"Humans lie. Learn how. Then have a conversation."

"I see." He studied his soup for a long moment while La'an drained her coffee. "I am unsure how to proceed."

"Have you heard of chick lit?"

"I assume it is a genre of literature?"

"Go read it. Read about it." It wouldn't teach him how people thought, but it would teach him how they thought they thought. How society had told them they should. It was the best she could do. "Una can probably recommend some." It was absurd, really; the two of them, of all people, showing Spock how to human. Still, what else was there?

"Thank you." Spock hesitated, spoon hovering over his bowl. "T'Pring in fact pursued a similar line of inquiry. I believe she found it… enlightening."

"Great." She didn't need to know what he was hiding in the pause. She pushed to her feet, locating Uhura a few tables away, pretending not to watch. "I have things to do."

o o o

Updating protocols was drudge work. Showing someone else how to do it was somehow worse. La'an rubbed at a twinge in her shoulder, straightening away from the screen in the silent security bay.

"Any questions?"

There was a brief silence. Uhura's nails tapped against the console beside her, a clear sign that while her eyes were on the data, her mind had gone elsewhere. "You know she's in love with him, right?"

Of course she'd been listening earlier. When didn't she? La'an was beginning to suspect the kid could lipread. "I know she likes apples. I know she's afraid of amoebas."

"Those aren't the same."

No, they weren't. None of them were choices, but the thing with Spock… Even if he did learn 'girl', he would never be able to feel it back, and he would never be able to make her believe it.

Uhura was watching her with a strange, lopsided focus. "So you do care."

"Of course I care, I…" The thought derailed, because Uhura's face had changed, anticipating something La'an couldn't quite grasp, that made her want to pull away, tightening upright to lock the console. "We're done here. Go do something else."

Uhura didn't move, studying her curiously. "Do you know what people thought you were going to say, at the party?"

Of course she did. It was always the same, as if all you could want from Chapel was to re-enact one of Una's creepy bondage-with-a-plot monstrosities. As if claiming someone could ever have anything to do with… "People are idiots." She avoided Uhura's eyes as she gathered her PADDs together. There was work to do still, but she just… She wanted to go home. The schedule could wait.

o o o

The room was empty. There was a stillness to it that suggested no one had been here since this morning. A silence to the air. A sheen over the clutter. Which was nonsense, rooms didn't change in a day, but it just… it was too quiet. La'an found the cloak buried under Chapel's pillow and sat to run her fingers over it, bringing up the lights, the warmth. Soap and honeysuckle. Infinite safety. She watched the fabric glow, blue and green, oil over water, shimmering rainbows. The world felt empty.

She still had work to do. It was well past dinnertime.

She went and did it.