prompted trek ficlet #1
If you're so inclined, I continue to crave new prompts.
For dafnap, who so eloquently suggested: All I want is Spock/Uhura. TOS/AOS, where Spock ends up in TOS and is like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE DON'T BONE, I DON'T UNDERSTAND. THIS GREATLY CONCERNS ME. AND BY ME I MEAN--" But with Vulcan reserve, or something. I dunno. I also made her check my spelling. <3
Contrariwise
fandom: AOS/TOS
rating: pg
summary: You could have, like, a world without shrimp. Or with, you know, nothing but shrimp. (This story is not about shrimp.)
Two years and seven months into the Enterprise's five-year mission, Mr. Spock has ascertained that, on any given day, there is a 4.78% chance that one or more members of the crew will be relocated to an alternate timeline/universe/plane of reality. There is a somewhat correlated probability of 3.99% that a crew member will be bodily transformed into a different species, either sentient or non-sentient. An intersection of these two possibilities cannot be accurately calculated due to the pact of silence maintained by the five officers who found themselves temporarily in a universe populated only by decapod crustaceans.
Anecdotal evidence is strong, however, since the captain spent several days after the incident running his hands through his hair in the manner of an obsessive compulsive. Doctor McCoy confided to overhearing an admission that Jim "kept feeling those freaking antenna itching through my scalp."
So when, on Stardate 4513.32, at approximately 0400 hours, Spock finds himself alone in a bed that is unmistakably his, in quarters that are somewhat familiar and also distinctly alien, he is not particularly shocked. Whereas he'd fallen asleep unclothed and in the company of Lt. Uhura, he wakes alone and wearing a soft sleeping shirt and pants.
In many similar situations it has been observed that crew physically near each other at the time of a transference may be similarly affected. With this in mind, he changes swiftly into one of the uniforms neatly hung in the closet, and proceeds through the dimmed corridors to Uhura's quarters. The hour is early, but she is historically an early riser, and under the circumstances she's likely to accept the intrusion.
He places his palm on the access pad and narrows his eyes as it flashes briefly red in response. Perhaps on this Enterprise, her quarters are elsewhere. At the end of the hall is a console where he proceeds to look up the deck layout, and confirms that he was in fact at the correct door. Returning, he raps lightly on the entrance. Having received no response within 20 seconds, he repeats the action more forcefully. Still no reply.
Aware of the possibility that he may be not entirely safe in this place, he checks quickly up and down the corridor. No crew, either recognizable or otherwise. No robotic doppelgangers of familiar friends. No Klingons, no crustaceans. Placing a hand on the bulkhead near Uhura's door, and leaning his mind inward, he senses the slight and peaceful working of a familiar mind asleep.
By all evidence, he is in no immediate danger, and neither is she. He could very well return to his quarters, or maybe make his way to the bridge in order to better understand the situation. The ship, while altered in some ways, is mainly the same and none of the observed differences pose a threat. The slightly muted blue of his uniform, for example, or the odd addition of a raised heel to his boots. That in particular strikes him as both unnecessary and illogical, as he already is tall enough to duck slightly when entering a room, and the doors here seem just as low as in his own Enterprise. Perhaps there is some cultural aesthetic meaning to the heel, though he cannot see himself electing it if simpler options were available. Perhaps every shoe in this particular universe came so heeled. Perhaps the Spock who usually inhabited this ship is significantly smaller in stature than he himself, and employs the heels for that reason. Perhaps Nyota likes them.
All this he considers while removing the access panel from the wall and manually releasing the door lock to Uhura's quarters.
He steps into the darkness of the room and lets the door slide softly shut behind him. Adjusting to the dimness, he can see that the layout is slightly altered with the addition of a partition wall to his left, and there is a bowl of fragrant fruit on the side table that would be impossible on his Enterprise. The ship's replicators can replicate fruit of many kinds, but only in small squarish pieces, and never with the lively scent of true produce. He can make out the shape of a Vulcan lute leaning against a chair, the sight of which provides some obscure comfort. Around the partition comes the soft sound of Uhura’s deep, relaxed breathing.
Turning the corner and sitting lightly at the foot of the bed, his eyes adjust well enough to make her out clearly, and she is unmistakably herself. Her relaxed expression, her long hair falling every which way on the pillow, the curve of her neck and the dip of her upper lip. The slope of her shoulders, the cadence of her breath, the soft hum she vocalizes with every third exhale.
The way she wakes fully in less than a second when his hand brushes her ankle, the way she sits upright with the sheet clutched to her, expression on guard and her free hand immediately in a defensive position.
“Oh!” she says at a shout before her face goes all to confusion. “Mr. Spock.”
It is immediately apparent that he’s made a small mistake.
"Lieutenant Uhura, my apologies. I." He stumbles between truth and fiction. She reaches over to switch on a light.
"Mr. Spock, is something wrong? The ship... How did you get in here." None too subtly, she removes his hand from her leg. Admittedly, he feels more grief than contrition at the loss of contact.
"To the best of my knowledge, the ship is fine. I gather there is no precedent for my presence in your quarters at this hour?"
"You gather right," she says, though softens it with a quirk oh her lips. "Quarters, maybe. Bed, no. Pretty sure I'd remember that." She secures the sheet around herself, and he does not allow his eyes to wander as she does it. "Are you going to tell me how you got in here, or are we going to call it 'sleep walking' and never speak of it again?"
Fascinating. Unmistakably herself, and yet if he understands her correctly, then either their association had ended, or had never begun. He's intruded. And, perhaps, is alone on an alien Enterprise. He stands, and averts his eyes to a spot nearby her bare shoulder.
"I hope you'll allow me to put aside that question for a moment, and help to clear up a matter which troubles me."
She doesn't answer for a beat too long. And then, "Uh huh. How you entered my quarters in the dead of gamma shift troubles me. Clear it up, Mr. Spock, and we'll proceed from there."
He meets her eyes again, which betray more concern than anger, more annoyance than amusement. She does not reach for his hand. She looks in his eyes, and not at the set of his shoulders. She is not unkind. She shares nothing.
"A fair request," he says. "I removed the access panel and executed a manual override of the lock."
"And what perfectly logical reason did you have for doing that?"
"I believed you to be somebody else. May I inquire as to the present stardate?" He begins to pace.
"It's 4513.31. Or, 32 by now. Who did you believe me to be?"
"Someone with whom I am better acquainted. And what is our current mission?"
"We're en route to Babel, transporting dignitaries. Why don't you know that?"
"I have been elsewhere for some time. Are you familiar with the Earth creature called the shrimp?"
"What do shrimp have to do with anything?"
"Your reaction proves them insignificant." He stops, looks up to find her out of bed and in full uniform, excepting her unshod feet. The sight of her small brown toes is an intimacy he appreciates, although on her part it is naturally accidental. "You are dressed," he says.
"I'm taking you to Sickbay." She puts a foot up on the bed to zip it into her boot which, he notes, has a heel of some greater significance than his own. "You're suffering from memory loss and irrational thinking."
"I assure you, Nyota, my rationality if hardly impaired. Please forgive the intrusion, I will return to my own quarters."
"Mr. Spock, you have forced your way into my private sleeping quarters, you admit that you've forgotten what our current orders are, and you resorted to a statement of the obvious for a conversational tactic just a moment ago." At his half-raised eyebrow, she shakes her head chidingly. "Don't think you can slip anything past me."
He can only favor her with the thin edge of a smile, "I would not dare."
"Damn right you wouldn't." She takes him by the elbow and leads him around to the door. Before the exit, he pauses.
"Although I understand and am grateful for your concern, I do not require a medic. I'm simply not myself." He speaks softly, and as he does her hand finds its way up to rest against his bicep warmly. "I hope you can forgive that, when you see me again."
"Let me forgive you when you've told me what's the matter."
He considers her while formulating an answer. He considers her altered uniform, wrapped and belted, asymmetrical and somehow more playful than he's used to. Considers the feel of these private quarters, a place he has never slept in, never kept a spare uniform tunic within, never rushed through the sonic shower to be on time for alpha shift after a ship's morning spent indulgent and indolent in her bed. Considers the touch of her hand on his arm, sure now this is the closest he has been to this woman, sure that he leans into her more than she to him. He considers the bed he fell to sleep in, its heat, and the acceptable discomfort caused by a stymieing of circulation because Nyota prefers to sleep with her head pillowed on his shoulder. The jasmine-scented hair tonic that he cannot detect in these rooms.
She is concerned. Her brows crease, her fingers tighten, her eyes travel his face for a sign. He inclines his head and brings a hand to her shoulder.
"The matter is that I do not know you." He applies pressure where necessary, and she slumps to the ground. "Nor you me."
By 1100 hours he has a techno-organic displacement field jury-rigged in jeffries tube D9. The particular passage is part of the ventilation between conference and rec rooms, and he endeavors to meditate himself into silence while he waits for the device to gain a full charge and activate. Dimly, as the process whines to its apex and the space fills with white, he imagines he hears his mother's voice, singsong and conspiratorial.
"Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
For dafnap, who so eloquently suggested: All I want is Spock/Uhura. TOS/AOS, where Spock ends up in TOS and is like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE DON'T BONE, I DON'T UNDERSTAND. THIS GREATLY CONCERNS ME. AND BY ME I MEAN--" But with Vulcan reserve, or something. I dunno. I also made her check my spelling. <3
Contrariwise
fandom: AOS/TOS
rating: pg
summary: You could have, like, a world without shrimp. Or with, you know, nothing but shrimp. (This story is not about shrimp.)
Two years and seven months into the Enterprise's five-year mission, Mr. Spock has ascertained that, on any given day, there is a 4.78% chance that one or more members of the crew will be relocated to an alternate timeline/universe/plane of reality. There is a somewhat correlated probability of 3.99% that a crew member will be bodily transformed into a different species, either sentient or non-sentient. An intersection of these two possibilities cannot be accurately calculated due to the pact of silence maintained by the five officers who found themselves temporarily in a universe populated only by decapod crustaceans.
Anecdotal evidence is strong, however, since the captain spent several days after the incident running his hands through his hair in the manner of an obsessive compulsive. Doctor McCoy confided to overhearing an admission that Jim "kept feeling those freaking antenna itching through my scalp."
So when, on Stardate 4513.32, at approximately 0400 hours, Spock finds himself alone in a bed that is unmistakably his, in quarters that are somewhat familiar and also distinctly alien, he is not particularly shocked. Whereas he'd fallen asleep unclothed and in the company of Lt. Uhura, he wakes alone and wearing a soft sleeping shirt and pants.
In many similar situations it has been observed that crew physically near each other at the time of a transference may be similarly affected. With this in mind, he changes swiftly into one of the uniforms neatly hung in the closet, and proceeds through the dimmed corridors to Uhura's quarters. The hour is early, but she is historically an early riser, and under the circumstances she's likely to accept the intrusion.
He places his palm on the access pad and narrows his eyes as it flashes briefly red in response. Perhaps on this Enterprise, her quarters are elsewhere. At the end of the hall is a console where he proceeds to look up the deck layout, and confirms that he was in fact at the correct door. Returning, he raps lightly on the entrance. Having received no response within 20 seconds, he repeats the action more forcefully. Still no reply.
Aware of the possibility that he may be not entirely safe in this place, he checks quickly up and down the corridor. No crew, either recognizable or otherwise. No robotic doppelgangers of familiar friends. No Klingons, no crustaceans. Placing a hand on the bulkhead near Uhura's door, and leaning his mind inward, he senses the slight and peaceful working of a familiar mind asleep.
By all evidence, he is in no immediate danger, and neither is she. He could very well return to his quarters, or maybe make his way to the bridge in order to better understand the situation. The ship, while altered in some ways, is mainly the same and none of the observed differences pose a threat. The slightly muted blue of his uniform, for example, or the odd addition of a raised heel to his boots. That in particular strikes him as both unnecessary and illogical, as he already is tall enough to duck slightly when entering a room, and the doors here seem just as low as in his own Enterprise. Perhaps there is some cultural aesthetic meaning to the heel, though he cannot see himself electing it if simpler options were available. Perhaps every shoe in this particular universe came so heeled. Perhaps the Spock who usually inhabited this ship is significantly smaller in stature than he himself, and employs the heels for that reason. Perhaps Nyota likes them.
All this he considers while removing the access panel from the wall and manually releasing the door lock to Uhura's quarters.
He steps into the darkness of the room and lets the door slide softly shut behind him. Adjusting to the dimness, he can see that the layout is slightly altered with the addition of a partition wall to his left, and there is a bowl of fragrant fruit on the side table that would be impossible on his Enterprise. The ship's replicators can replicate fruit of many kinds, but only in small squarish pieces, and never with the lively scent of true produce. He can make out the shape of a Vulcan lute leaning against a chair, the sight of which provides some obscure comfort. Around the partition comes the soft sound of Uhura’s deep, relaxed breathing.
Turning the corner and sitting lightly at the foot of the bed, his eyes adjust well enough to make her out clearly, and she is unmistakably herself. Her relaxed expression, her long hair falling every which way on the pillow, the curve of her neck and the dip of her upper lip. The slope of her shoulders, the cadence of her breath, the soft hum she vocalizes with every third exhale.
The way she wakes fully in less than a second when his hand brushes her ankle, the way she sits upright with the sheet clutched to her, expression on guard and her free hand immediately in a defensive position.
“Oh!” she says at a shout before her face goes all to confusion. “Mr. Spock.”
It is immediately apparent that he’s made a small mistake.
"Lieutenant Uhura, my apologies. I." He stumbles between truth and fiction. She reaches over to switch on a light.
"Mr. Spock, is something wrong? The ship... How did you get in here." None too subtly, she removes his hand from her leg. Admittedly, he feels more grief than contrition at the loss of contact.
"To the best of my knowledge, the ship is fine. I gather there is no precedent for my presence in your quarters at this hour?"
"You gather right," she says, though softens it with a quirk oh her lips. "Quarters, maybe. Bed, no. Pretty sure I'd remember that." She secures the sheet around herself, and he does not allow his eyes to wander as she does it. "Are you going to tell me how you got in here, or are we going to call it 'sleep walking' and never speak of it again?"
Fascinating. Unmistakably herself, and yet if he understands her correctly, then either their association had ended, or had never begun. He's intruded. And, perhaps, is alone on an alien Enterprise. He stands, and averts his eyes to a spot nearby her bare shoulder.
"I hope you'll allow me to put aside that question for a moment, and help to clear up a matter which troubles me."
She doesn't answer for a beat too long. And then, "Uh huh. How you entered my quarters in the dead of gamma shift troubles me. Clear it up, Mr. Spock, and we'll proceed from there."
He meets her eyes again, which betray more concern than anger, more annoyance than amusement. She does not reach for his hand. She looks in his eyes, and not at the set of his shoulders. She is not unkind. She shares nothing.
"A fair request," he says. "I removed the access panel and executed a manual override of the lock."
"And what perfectly logical reason did you have for doing that?"
"I believed you to be somebody else. May I inquire as to the present stardate?" He begins to pace.
"It's 4513.31. Or, 32 by now. Who did you believe me to be?"
"Someone with whom I am better acquainted. And what is our current mission?"
"We're en route to Babel, transporting dignitaries. Why don't you know that?"
"I have been elsewhere for some time. Are you familiar with the Earth creature called the shrimp?"
"What do shrimp have to do with anything?"
"Your reaction proves them insignificant." He stops, looks up to find her out of bed and in full uniform, excepting her unshod feet. The sight of her small brown toes is an intimacy he appreciates, although on her part it is naturally accidental. "You are dressed," he says.
"I'm taking you to Sickbay." She puts a foot up on the bed to zip it into her boot which, he notes, has a heel of some greater significance than his own. "You're suffering from memory loss and irrational thinking."
"I assure you, Nyota, my rationality if hardly impaired. Please forgive the intrusion, I will return to my own quarters."
"Mr. Spock, you have forced your way into my private sleeping quarters, you admit that you've forgotten what our current orders are, and you resorted to a statement of the obvious for a conversational tactic just a moment ago." At his half-raised eyebrow, she shakes her head chidingly. "Don't think you can slip anything past me."
He can only favor her with the thin edge of a smile, "I would not dare."
"Damn right you wouldn't." She takes him by the elbow and leads him around to the door. Before the exit, he pauses.
"Although I understand and am grateful for your concern, I do not require a medic. I'm simply not myself." He speaks softly, and as he does her hand finds its way up to rest against his bicep warmly. "I hope you can forgive that, when you see me again."
"Let me forgive you when you've told me what's the matter."
He considers her while formulating an answer. He considers her altered uniform, wrapped and belted, asymmetrical and somehow more playful than he's used to. Considers the feel of these private quarters, a place he has never slept in, never kept a spare uniform tunic within, never rushed through the sonic shower to be on time for alpha shift after a ship's morning spent indulgent and indolent in her bed. Considers the touch of her hand on his arm, sure now this is the closest he has been to this woman, sure that he leans into her more than she to him. He considers the bed he fell to sleep in, its heat, and the acceptable discomfort caused by a stymieing of circulation because Nyota prefers to sleep with her head pillowed on his shoulder. The jasmine-scented hair tonic that he cannot detect in these rooms.
She is concerned. Her brows crease, her fingers tighten, her eyes travel his face for a sign. He inclines his head and brings a hand to her shoulder.
"The matter is that I do not know you." He applies pressure where necessary, and she slumps to the ground. "Nor you me."
By 1100 hours he has a techno-organic displacement field jury-rigged in jeffries tube D9. The particular passage is part of the ventilation between conference and rec rooms, and he endeavors to meditate himself into silence while he waits for the device to gain a full charge and activate. Dimly, as the process whines to its apex and the space fills with white, he imagines he hears his mother's voice, singsong and conspiratorial.
"Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."