Title: Animal and Vegetable
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Characters: Spock/Uhura, mentions of Gaila
Rating/Warnings: PG
Word Count: 324
Summary: Spock and Nyota have a discussion of food preferences.
It wasn’t often that Nyota and Spock could eat together in the communal mess without drawing some sort of suspicion upon themselves, so it was a treat today to be able to do so. Oh, some other professors had their protégés and such, but alas, as always happened when a pretty student met with a relatively young teacher, people tended to gossip and say unsavory things.
It was nice, Nyota thought with only marginal wistfulness. She could pretend they weren’t keeping their relationship secret for awhile at least, even as they talked over xenolinguistics and other school-related topics.
He ate his vegetarian meal and she ate her mix of vegetables and meat. She could see him occasionally look askance at her meal, as he sometimes did when she didn’t choose something equally as vegetarian as he.
“So you never eat meat?” she asked after a few moments, a complete non sequitur from their previous conversation on the pronunciation difficulties of the Andorian language. She knew, of course, that most Vulcans refused to eat meat, but she wanted to get to know this man better, and he wasn’t fully Vulcan, after all.
He shook his head. “No. Like most of my people, I choose to abstain from eating meat even of non-sentient creatures.” Spock looked once again at the meat on her plate. She didn’t think it was judging, precisely, but it wasn’t entirely innocent either. “I thought I once heard that you too were a vegetarian.”
Nyota sighed slightly and stabbed a piece of meat with her fork. “I was, until this last year,” she admitted.
“May I ask what changed your mind about your choice?” Spock inquired.
“I started rooming with Gaila,” Nyota said, lips twisting into a wry expression. “When your roommate photosynthesizes for a portion of her energy, it kind of alters your perspective about what you eat.”
Spock looked down at the vegetable on the end of his fork. “Indeed.”
A/N: I had this in my head for awhile. I just had to write it. Oh, and Ree, you know what word is for you, I think ;) Thanks for the fab beta job.