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rosa_acicularis) wrote2010-10-19 10:00 pm
Trek Ficlet: Interlude, With Rain
Title: Interlude, With Rain
Characters: Uhura, Spock, Gaila.
Rating: All Ages.
Warnings: None.
Notes: A brief, autumn-inspired scene from my otherwise languishing Star Trek Reboot fic, Component Parts. For ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
harpinred, who is, as we say in Portland, like totally rad, man.
++
Gaila is not an early riser. Over the years she’s gone to ridiculous lengths to avoid scheduling morning classes, much preferring to linger in bed until noon, curtains drawn. Uhura wakes with the sun just as she always has, and she’s grown used to dressing quietly while Gaila lies curled up in the center of the bed, blankets pulled over her face. It’s their routine, and it works well for them.
But rainy Sunday mornings are another matter entirely.
“Cultural differences, my ass,” Uhura mutters under her breath, mud and freshly clipped grass squishing between her toes. “Steal all her lingerie and see how she likes it, the kleptomaniac Orion tart.”
It begins to rain harder, and Uhura grimaces. The air smells of damp leaves and the soft morning chill of late autumn, and her bare feet have already gone a little numb from cold. She shoves her hands in the pockets of her oversized coat and squelches off across the quad toward the nearest copse of trees.
A moment later, Spock falls into step beside her. He’s carrying a large black umbrella and a thermos of hot tea. “This is the second time this month,” he says. “Given the meteorological patterns of past years, precipitation in the coming months is likely to increase.” He hands her the thermos. She takes it gratefully, but doesn’t join him under the umbrella. A raindrop falls inside her collar, and she squirms.
“She’s done this ever since our first year. I’m pretty used to it by now.” Uhura stops walking and bends down to roll up the hems of her pants. The mud gets worse the farther they get from the campus paths, and her pajamas are going to be hard enough to clean as it is. Spock pauses beside her, the rain soft against the canopy of his umbrella.
“I must admit,” he says, “that I still do not understand the significance of this ritual.”
Uhura wipes her dirty fingers on her coat. “When it rains Gaila likes to wake up early, steal all my shoes, and hide them in a tree somewhere on campus.”
Spock’s expression is almost pained. “I am aware. What continues to elude me is the rationale behind this behavior, and your easy compliance with it.”
Uhura can’t help it; she smiles. “Gaila is insane.” They begin to walk again, her feet sticking a little in the muddy lawn. “It’s a pleasant sort of insanity, of course.”
“So you claim.” She looks up into his face, his unsmiling profile pale against the darkness of the umbrella. The first time he’d found her wandering the quad in pajamas and her father’s ratty old raincoat he’d tried to escort her to the campus medical center; now she thinks it must be habit, an amusing detour before he retires to his office and the early morning silence of an empty building. He still looks at her as if she’s a bit unhinged -- he brings tea anyway.
She twists off the lid of the thermos and takes a sip. “Gaila thinks I’m boring.”
Spock considers this for a moment. “She spends a great deal of time with you socially. I doubt she would do so if she did not find your company sufficiently engaging.”
“We’re friends. She can enjoy my company and still want to change everything about me.” She folds her arms, hugging the thermos to her chest, and the too-long sleeves of her coat swallow her hands. “It’s hard to explain.”
They walk in silence, and the trees in the distance grow larger against the grey sky and the gleaming city below. “I have found,” Spock says, “that you possess a unique ability to explain that which would otherwise be considered inexplicable.”
“Flatterer,” Uhura says.
He gives her a severe look, which she doesn’t take at all seriously. “Vulcans do not flatter.”
“So you claim,” she says, and quirks an eyebrow at him. He doesn’t seem impressed.
Uhura currently owns four pairs of shoes – her uniform boots, her running shoes, a pair of practical civilian shoes, and one pair of utterly impractical civilian stiletto heels. As they walk beneath the first tree she cranes her head, searching the yellowed leaves above for the telltale white plastic bag. Gaila may be eccentric, but she’s not crazy – she would never expose a perfectly good pair of Antonio Azria slingbacks to the elements.
Spock also looks up, the umbrella resting on his shoulder.
“It doesn’t rain on Orion,” Uhura says, breaking the silence. “Gaila never talks about it, of course, and I would never ask, but the look on her face the first time she walked out of our dorm and it started to drizzle – I could tell she’d never seen anything like it. She was entranced.” She tugs at the collar of her coat, pulling it higher to cover her throat. “And I sighed and groaned and whined about my hair getting wet and she looked at me like I was the most insipid, ungrateful moron ever to get rained on.”
The tree is empty; her shoes are not here. They continue walking.
“She is very dear to you,” Spock says.
“Yeah,” Uhura says. “She is.”
He stops suddenly, gracefully, and her heels sink into the ground as she stumbles to a halt. She turns around and finds him staring up at the sky, his eyes slightly narrowed.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
“No,” he says, and reaches up to close his umbrella with a snap. “I am well.” He tucks the umbrella under his arm. “Shall we continue?”
She grins. “You’re going to get wet.”
His hair is already slicked to his forehead; a raindrop clings to the end of his nose. “That, I believe, is the point of the exercise.” He wrinkles his nose, and the raindrop quivers. “It is not an entirely unpleasant sensation.”
She lifts her foot and wriggles her toes at him. “Even better with your shoes off.”
He takes the thermos from her hands. “Next time, perhaps.” Her grin grows, and he holds up a chastening finger. “I make no promises on the matter.”
Uhura snatches the thermos back. “You have a raindrop on your nose.”
“You,” he says, leaning in, “have a leaf in your hair.”
She takes a step closer and opens her mouth to speak.
“I am going to grow old and die,” Gaila shouts from a distant tree. “I am going to be old and dying and still inexplicably sexually attractive before you ever get your stubborn ass over here and find your stubborn ass shoes.” The branches of the tree shake. “Uhura! Waffles!”
Uhura turns to Spock. “She recently discovered maple syrup. It’s been a trying time for all involved.”
“Less flirting, more walking!” Gaila calls out in Standard Orion.
Beside her, Spock’s posture stiffens. Uhura closes her eyes and presses her lips together, and for a moment she is speechless with horror.
“Let me guess,” she says, her voice flat. “You speak Orion.”
“Fluently,” Spock says.
She hands him the thermos without looking at his face. “Excuse me, sir. I’m going to have a brief word with my fellow cadet.”
“Of course,” he says, and if he were anyone else she’d say he sounded as if he were smiling, but he’s not anyone else and she’s already taken off at a run, tearing across the distance between Spock and the tree with shuddering branches. The rain streams down her face and into her eyes and when she skids to a stop in the yellow-green darkness beneath the tree she looks up, blinking through rainwater, and says, “If I get hypothermia and die, I’m going to return from beyond the grave and fill all your shampoo bottles with ectoplasm.”
Gaila looks down from her perch in the tree, her legs swinging. “Please. It’s like sixty-five degrees out here.”
“Ectoplasm,” Uhura says. “On your waffles.”
“Don’t be such a wuss,” Gaila says, and drops out of the tree, arms spread wide. She lands on Uhura, and Uhura lands in the mud. A number of elbows and knees poke into soft places elbows and knees absolutely do not belong, and Uhura’s breathless glare threatens violence and crawling, squirmy things hidden in bed sheets late at night. Gaila grins down at her. “Good morning, sweetheart. Have a nice walk?”
“Gaila,” Uhura says, “where are my shoes?”
“Hidden under my bed. Couldn’t find a plastic bag to carry them in.” Gaila bats her eyelashes. “Why? Were you looking for them?”
++
From a distance, Spock watches with interest as Cadet Uhura performs an ungainly but nevertheless successful maneuver and rolls Cadet Gaila beneath her, reversing their positions. The cadets struggle briefly, shouting and pulling hair, and he considers intervening until he hears their laughter. A few minutes later he is rejoined by a limping Uhura, whose clothing and person are now almost entirely saturated with rainwater and mud. She wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand and smears a long line of dirt across her cheek.
“Well, at least it’s supposed to be good for your skin,” she says, her face radiant. The thin fabric of her pajamas clings to her legs, to the curve of her calves where they meet her knees, and he quickly returns his gaze to her face.
“Yes,” he says.
She purses her lips slightly, as she does when attempting to conceal a smile. “We’re going to the commissary for waffles, I think. And coffee.” There must be some small change in his expression, because she adds, “After we clean up a little, obviously.”
“That would be wise.” The thermos is still warm in his hand; he holds it tightly. “I will continue to my office. There is much to be done.”
“I’ll see you there later. I have some questions about your notes for tomorrow’s lecture.” She does smile at him then, looking young and careless and contented in her too-large raincoat and muddy nightwear. She takes a small step forward, toward him. “Chess this afternoon? You owe me a rematch.”
He pauses, pretending to consider the request. “Very well,” he says. “As you seem determined to defeat me.”
She laughs. “I don’t expect to win, Mr. Spock. I just want you to stop handicapping yourself so I can lose fair and square.” She slides her hands into the pockets of her raincoat. “Later, then,” she says, still smiling, and walks away.
The sky is heavy and grey above her, above the yellow-green of the trees and the silver glow of the city. Still she fills the horizon, her dark hair swinging to the rhythm of her footsteps.
“Yes,” Spock says, turning away. “Later.”
He walks back across the quad to his office. The rain falls steadily, cool against his face, and he does not open his umbrella.
++
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I loved in this one how comfortable Spock and Uhura are with each other. When she said "Flatterer" I laughed in surprised delight to find they were already there in their relationship!
And oh, the way Spock feels about her and I can't tell if she knows for sure, and then Gaila's totally inappropriate Orion comment. I felt horrified myself. (But we've all had friends like that, I think.)
Anyway...fantastic job.
*I read lots of your things all the time. I even reread some chapters of your Merlin fic and I don't watch Merlin, just because I like your writing so much.
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<3
The first time he’d found her wandering the quad in pajamas and her father’s ratty old raincoat he’d tried to escort her to the campus medical center
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But one does make allowances for ones BFF that one loves very dearly.
And for waffles.
Lovely!
here via rinsbane
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Aww...
(Anonymous) 2010-10-28 05:39 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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