Fic: Breaking The Girl (1/1)
Title: Breaking The Girl
Rating: R
Pairings: Gaila/Uhura, mild/side Spock/Uhura
Word Count: 7,238
Summary: It’s a brave new world for both of them. For yetanothermask, who requested Uhura/Gaila: a little college(academy) experimentation for my help_chile Auction. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009). Episode spoilers for Star Trek: Enterprise 4.17 - Bound.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title is credit to Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Author’s Notes: To yetanothermask: first and foremost, I am so sorry this took so long for me to complete for you. Secondly: I am equally sorry if it’s absolutely nothing close to what you wanted. It turned out very vignette-y, a little bit fragmented and disparate, and farther from the “usual” characterizations of these two than I’d ever intended when I started out. And a little bit tongue-in-cheek, admittedly, at certain points, because when you said “college” and then “(academy)” I felt the distinct need to be a little cliched with the college elements in certain places. And I also ran with this idea a little bit more than I probably should have, under the Enterprise canon parameters. But yes, I hope you like it :)
Breaking The Girl
The first thing Nyota remembers from her childhood is that she’d wanted to be a singer.
When she closes her eyes and thinks, she can feel rough skin and smooth threads and the way her nana always sang Beyond Antares like it had the answers, the meaning of the universe tangled insides its notes, its chords; every word. She remembers feeling safe in the crook of Nana’s arm, balanced carefully on her lap; remembers the way her grandmother’s hold would tighten around her if she teetered, if she moved to fall -- kept her steady, like the cadence of the song.
She liked the steady, and the safe; she wanted to be a singer.
Later, she remembers wanting to be a veterinarian, someone who worked with animals in some capacity, however great or small. She remembers trips with her mother, outside comm range, far on the plains; remembers studying the smooth, terrifying power of coiled muscles as she watched predators stalk their prey, witnessed common meals of flesh and bone; her little heart thrumming all the while, just beneath her collarbone, her eyes wide and fever-bright in the glint of the moon, the rising sun.
She remembers taking the hurt ones, the sick ones back to the reserve, keeping them sleepy but making them comfortable, making them well; she’d sing to them, sometimes, and for a few of them it’d help; her mama, though, she spoke her mother tongue in low, mournful tones that rumbled in her chest as she’d lean in and stoke fur, hard skin, and they almost understood it, for the way that they’d calm, for the way that she’d croon. Nyota learned Swahili for the animals, so that when her hands lilted over a lion’s mane-when she’d spent enough summers, enough late afternoons past dinnertime at her mother’s side that she could hypo the pregnant Ba'ku gnu herself, so that the caretakers could properly dress its wounds-it could be her voice that soothed them, that put them at ease.
Later still, she’d wanted to be a doctor, for humans, but she thinks that’s probably more because her mom got sick the year she turned fifteen, rather than any actual interest; more just helplessness, and fear, and the realization that singing in Swahili and stroking Mama’s hair wasn’t going to help this, wasn’t going to fix anything.
That same year, she gets a comm from Starfleet, one of those generic ones they send out to all young Federation citizens between ages X and Y with a certain level of academic skill. Her father looks excited when he tells her about it, and she knows why-Starfleet will pay for everything, and will make sure she gets a successful posting once she’s served her necessary tour. A future in Starfleet will make sure she’s taken care of, secure.
She deletes it, and her father doesn’t mention it again.
She spends her time on the reserve more and more often as her mother’s health continues its steady decline over one year, and then another; it makes her feel like she’s needed, makes her feel closer to the times when her mother didn’t look so frail, so weak. The doctors tell her father, her nana that they don’t know what’s wrong, don’t know how to help, and Nyota stops wanting to be a doctor because what she wants-really wants, in that soul-deep, fated way that rings with a timbre in her chest, pitch perfect without even trying-is to help, to fix, to keep and hold and to stop all of the bad things, all of the things that hurt. She wants that, and she knows that doctors, try as they might, aren’t any better off in the struggle.
Her class is small, and she graduates at the top of it with a wide smile and the promise of family dinner-Nana had been making sure that her mama slept extra all week so she’d be able to make it through an hour at the table without drifting off, even if she couldn’t stomach solid food anymore. Nyota fights to swallow the meal her grandma had slaved over for the better part of the morning, struggles to eat around the tightness in her throat when she catches her mother’s blank stare. She bites down tears as she sips wine and smiles at her extended family, gathered around the table with bright eyes, filled up with well-wishes and brittle sympathy; tries to savor the presence, the simple feeling of being in time, just there, with everyone. Tries to soak up the love that underscores all of the heartache.
It’s futile, but her pulse thrums with it; strong.
Her mother passes away five days later; in the back of her mind, Nyota wonders if she hadn’t pushed herself so hard to sit at that damn table for the whole hour, eyes vacant and muscles slack, if they’d still have found her, stiff and cold in her bed that black dawn, frigid even as the day broke with the heat of Hades on its back.
She spends three weeks without speaking, barely moving-sleepless, staring at the bright sky and the cloudless night with unblinking eyes, and she hears the chatter around her: family and friends and people that she doesn’t know, who don’t matter, all wondering over the way she gazes, the way she looks up almost longingly; questions bearing down with the beat of her heart, and it’s not longing, never could be -- it’s something different.
She cries herself to sleep, begging the cosmos for an answer, a sign; pleading for some way to know, some way to remember what it feels like to be happy, to belong -- to breathe without a burn in her lungs and a tear in her chest, because there’s an empty room in her house, in her soul, where her mother used to be, and home just doesn’t feel safe anymore.
The first words she speaks, when she speaks again, aren’t to anyone she’s ever met, but to a pale-faced recruiter on the commscreen in the living room, when her father’s gone to work and her nana’s still asleep. She tells the woman that she’s reconsidered, and she’s interested in enlisting.
Seven days later, she’s on a shuttle headed west. She leans her head on the viewport in the hull and never looks down, only up, but there’s not wonder there, not for her; when a genial man, resembling her grandfather just before he died, smiles heartily in her direction and tosses a ‘Can’t wait to get up there, hmm?’ at her in passing before he takes a seat, she fights a grimace, forces a smile. It’s not like that, though; not at all.
Nyota stares at the stars, sometimes, and people, they think that they understand what it means.
They don’t.
_________________________________
Gaila, daughter of Marsa, has always known what she’d grow up to be, what she’d become.
Her mother was a legend, an icon -- a goddess among women. She wore her sales like a badge of honor, conducted her “owners” with a stern hand and a careful eye beneath a veneer of endless, varied pleasure from the seventy-three males she’d managed to ensnare. Gaila was her seventeenth child, the third female: an omen of good fortune in her father’s culture, and Marsa prized her ginger hair as particularly alluring -- a curiosity, something exotic. Marketable.
Her first lure goes well; the second, even better. The males practically throw themselves at her, and the confidence her conquests brings only strengthens the appeal, the pull of lust and the scent of attraction. The pride in Marsa’s eyes when she catches Gaila’s eyes, though; that’s what burns the best, what means the most: she’s only ever been one among many, only ever had potential, versus skill -- she’s something now, she’s making her mark.
It’s well into that first year -- amidst the whispers and the snide suggestions of prominence and prestige, alongside the bitter sneers of her sisters, barely concealed plots to encourage her undoing -- that everything falls apart.
In retrospect, perhaps she should have suspected, should have seen. So many beautiful men -- mostly human men -- all circling, fondling, aching with need for her as she danced, swayed, wrapped in chains that couldn’t hold her, couldn’t tie her down; cage her in. She should have noticed the hesitance, the gentle touch of their hands against her skin, pale peach on her verdant green; should have known in the careful gleam behind their eyes, the distraction -- there is no distraction except for her.
When the sedative hits her system, she feels herself fall, and nothing else.
She wakes on a vessel, a ship she’s only known from stories -- stories about stories, the ones she’d known were true only in theory, not in practice. The men tell her that they mean her no harm; she believes them, but it brings no comfort. She’s cold, she’s lonely, and when they tell her they’re taking her into Federation space, that she’s safe now, that she’ll be cared for and protected -- when they speak, she doesn’t correct them. Doesn’t let them know that she needs no protecting.
And so Gaila stares at the ground, avoids the compassionate eyes that think they know what it is that they’ve done; think they understand.
They don’t.
_________________________________
From the very first moment -- stepping off the shuttle in an old, well-loved skirt her grandmother had stitched by hand, bare shoulders broad against a sun that feels different here, that feels foreign and cold -- Nyota knows that this was a terrible idea.
She follows the line as it snakes along, curling around stations where stone-faced Starfleet personnel dot the influx of new recruits in straight-spined pinpoints of red and black. She keeps her expression neutral, doesn’t smile when people meet her eyes like she would at home, clasps her hands behind her back, or buries them in the fabric of her clothes as she thins her lips and trains her eyes straight ahead. She takes her room assignment, her materials, her uniforms: dress reds and a few unflattering-looking ensembles in a drab grey-blue, cuffed inconspicuously in science blue, the promise of a future where she might serve on some remote outpost in a system, on a planet she can’t even fathom just yet, studying the indigenous fauna beneath an alien sun.
Just like her mother. Like she’d always hoped.
Nyota wonders, idly, how different the sky might look from wherever she ends up, wherever she goes -- if, from that unnamable place, wherever it may be, she’d have read a different destiny among the stars.
_________________________________
From the very first -- well, fine, perhaps not the very first -- moment, Gaila’s pretty sure she’s made a mistake. So maybe from the very... third moment, or something.
Stepping off the shuttle catches the breath in her throat; the sun beats, harder than her heart, and she shudders, flinches against the breeze and the sound and the reality of being here.
But once that very third moment lingers, stings, and sinks in deep, it passes, and she thinks it’s going to be alright.
Check-in’s fairly basic; she gets a schedule of her first two weeks, packed with placement exams and psychiatric evaluations and other nonsense that she doesn’t pay all that much mind to, and she looks forward to trying on the cute red dress uniform with the skirt that goes all-the-way-up-to-there: she thinks it’ll complement her skin tone and bring out the color of her hair just gorgeously.
If there’s one thing her family -- her life -- has taught her, above all else, it’s adaptability. Learn how to make the best of the things you can’t control.
She can do this, she thinks. This could be okay.
Because the second thing her family, her people had taught her, was that the integrity, the promise and the security of their culture was to be preserved -- the secret kept -- at all costs.
For the sake of their race, their way of life: once you left, you could never return.
She swallows hard and steels herself against the glare, the shadows and the shade; checks the room assignment on her PADD and straightens -- walks.
Keeps walking.
_________________________________
Saying that living with a roommate is a lot easier than Nyota’d expected isn’t actually saying all that much, seeing as she was anticipating something akin to trial by fire in that department. But, given the givens, Gaila’s not really so bad. She’s nice enough; smiles more than Nyota knows what to do with, really. She doesn’t leave her clothes on the floor. She shares her stash of sweets when Nyota’s got a craving. She’s a little bit loud, true, and Nyota’s had to very pointedly clear her throat more than once when she’s bedding some random stranger with a little too much gusto for Nyota to concentrate on studying, but it’s a small thing in the grander scheme.
It’s not long, though, before she realizes that she misses Gaila when the other woman’s not around; worries a little when she disappears for too many nights in a row; reflects more happily on the afternoons when the Orion girl leaves little squares of her favorite espresso-dark-chocolate for her on the small table between their beds.
And then there’s the one evening -- when Gaila’s brushing out her hair and Nyota’s untying her ponytail, and she starts humming; doesn’t even know she’s doing it, or what song’s in her head, until Gaila’s voice breaks through, strong and pitched just right on the notes, the words: “I'll be back though it takes forever,” and Nyota lets her hair fall free; “Forever is just a day,” and Nyota’s not humming any longer, but Gaila keeps singing, pulling her curls out into waves.
“And let the years go fading, where my heart is,” Gaila sings, growing soft, almost introspective as she studies her reflection, and Nyota glances at her, and by the time Gaila’s hummed her own way to the final bars, Nyota’s matched her grin, and joins in the last few lines:
“Somewhere, beyond the stars: Beyond Antares.”
They smile, warm and full at one another from across the room, swallow giggles like girls half their age, and they’re going to be good; Nyota can tell.
_________________________________
It’s practically common knowledge that Gaila loves sex. There are just certain obvious traits about her, things she doesn’t try to hide or temper: Gaila has green skin. Gaila can hack the academy personnel database in less than thirty seconds and change that pissy Grazerite tactics professor’s contact information to indicate that he’s a female, which she thinks would be an improvement, really, except that it infuriates him to no end, and that’s just as gratifying. Gaila can recite the original Federation charter from memory. Gaila loves to copulate more than she likes just about anything.
So yeah: she likes a good tumble in the sheets, and everyone knows it (most of them have joined in, after all, and nothing teaches quite like personal experience). Not many people know why she’s so keen on dancing the horizontal mambo, though.
She likes sex for it’s own sake -- it’s fun, it makes her feel good, it’s good exercise, helps her keep her figure. She likes the feel of skin on skin, likes a hard chest pressed against her nipples, or an unfamiliar breast caught in between her cleavage. She likes the closeness, the heat. Likes the way that it can wash the day away, sweat and stars behind her eyes in the dark, likes when it’s quick and when it’s slow, when she sets the tone, the pitch, or when the pace is something she’s keeping up with, holding back for. It’s exciting -- always changing, always a little bit new -- and the novelty never wears off, not for her.
Well, it helps that she makes her way through three-fourths of the student population within her first month on campus, but that’s mostly irrelevant.
The fact that she’s already gotten with a good half of her professors is far more impressive, anyway.
But she also likes it because it reminds her of home -- the stark scent of salt and musk and visceral lust that clings and cloys and doesn’t waver, dissipate; that’s her mother’s smell, and if she closes her eyes when she goes to sleep, whether she’s pressed against someone else’s spine, or curled tight in sheets still friction-warm from a body that’s been and gone -- if she closes her eyes, she can feel, can see: family, solidarity, power, love. Unorthodox though she knows it has to seem -- has to be to anyone who isn’t like her, who doesn’t know; it is what it is.
But no one ever asks about that.
_________________________________
Considering they live just about on top of one another -- side by side, in each other’s space and each other’s things and sometimes, Gaila doesn’t even notice she’s got Nyota’s skirt on until she’s stripping it off on someone else’s floor, and the waist gets caught around the fuller swell of her hips -- it’s a little bit surprising that it didn’t happen before now. It’s a little bit too odd for coincidence, a little bit of a stretch for even the far reaches of improbable probabilities, even if Gaila has late sessions in the Observatory four days a week, and Nyota’s already found herself wooed into volunteering with the Starfleet branch of the FSPCA. Their schedules don’t exactly coincide.
And it’s not like Gaila’s blind -- she knows her roommate’s an attractive woman, knows there’s power in those subtle, feminine curves of hers, just as much as there’s allure. She’s not stupid.
But the first time Nyota takes off her shirt; outside of the bathroom, back turned and arms folded loose across around the soft cups of her bra, shielding the little glimpse of a swell that escapes the fabric from view not deliberately, just by chance -- the line of her spine sharp beneath that mocha skin, the curl of her ribs a shadow, a tease, like the low sling of her skirt across her hips -- that first time, Gaila takes note.
_________________________________
It’s not that she’s trying to pry -- honestly; she comes in from a late dinner to find the lights off and the tousled mound of sheets and blankets curled atop Nyota’s bed in such a way that it’s obvious she’s burrowed beneath the covers, and Gaila frowns as she realizes it, ponders moving closer to see if Nyota’s really sleeping, to make sure she’s okay, but she catches the flash of their comm unit blinking in the corner, and instead slips on her earpiece to take down the message without disturbing her suite-mate.
She’s about to disconnect just after deleting a message from that Sulu boy about hooking up again sometime when the last accessed message pops back up unbidden -- left unsecured in a hurry, it looks like, and that’s enough to pique Gaila’s interest.
She leans in, and watches the screen, stares at the red-eyed man with the wrinkles of stress and grief along his cheeks -- the same cheeks Nyota has, high and proud and smooth. As he speaks, she feels her stomach clench and her chest tighten as she realizes, puts together that Nyota’s beloved grandmother -- the beautiful matriarch that smiles open and wise from all of the holos Nyota’s ever shown her, that had looked down at her from the top of their wardrobe from the frame that now sits turned upon its face, hidden and dismissed, salt in a wound left gaping; Nyota’s grandma had died that afternoon.
She feels something harsh spark in her when she picks up the sound of a sniffle, a wet sort of gasp that’s muffled by weight, by thread and cotton, coming from the center of Nyota’s bed, and Gaila doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t think. She peels back the covers and crawls in behind her roommate, her friend -- fits her body along Nyota’s delicate frame and presses in, her breasts splayed just beneath Nyota’s shoulder blades as she tucks the other woman’s head beneath her chin, holds her close until she’s all cried out, until the shaking stops and Gaila’s skin is slick, shiny with her tears.
Until she sleeps, and Gaila can, too.
_________________________________
In the morning, Gaila wakes up when the warmth next to her starts to fade, to cool; she hears the sonic shower running and feels a little bit empty, a little bit full of something light and weightless, and she’s so preoccupied with it -- whatever it is -- that she doesn’t notice, doesn’t see Nyota standing between the washroom and the bed until she speaks, cuts through the gravity where it’s floating away.
“Gaila,” Nyota says, a little breathless, flushed, and if Gaila watches -- and of course she’s watching, because there’s a beautiful woman glowing with sadness and heat in front of her, dressed in nothing but a tee-shirt that barely reaches mid-thigh -- she can see the jump of her quicksilver pulse at the neck, at the delicate curve of her skin over bone, the band of her muscle taut and graceful -- sweet.
“Look, I,” she stammers, and Nyota doesn’t normally stammer, isn’t flustered; it’s a little bit adorable, and a little bit unsettling, stirs something in Gaila’s stomach that she’s not sure she likes, not sure she’d stop if she could as Nyota sighs, exhales deep and slow. “I want to thank you, for, well-”
Gaila simply smiles, cuts her off with a sweet press of her lips -- chaste, almost whisper-soft -- and leads the way for morning coffee at the corner cafe just off campus.
Nyota follows, and the world, ever-so-slightly, shifts with the pace of their steps, the weight of their breath; the way that Gaila feels her fingers entangled with long digits, her palm pressed to a warm hand that trembles a little as it folds against her own, holds it close.
Gaila’s heart beats double time as she walks, surging on a high she can’t come off of, won’t come down from -- not just yet -- and when she sneaks a glance at Nyota just before they order, she can’t help but notice how her face just sparkles, just beams with the flash of her teeth, the strength of her smile.
And Nyota, well, she never smiles.
Not like that.
_________________________________
As a general rule, Gaila doesn’t do steady; doesn’t want always or only or forever. Those promises are beyond her, too rich for her blood, her birthright. She understands what they mean, but not why they matter.
For her part, Gaila prefers the now, because in the now, Nyota smiles at her, soft and simple, just a quirk of her lips like a secret. In the now, Nyota falls asleep in Gaila’s bed, curled tight against her, closer every night, less space between them. Now, Nyota lets Gaila drag the line of her nose careful against the curve of her neck, shivers hard into Gaila’s chest without restraint. Now, Nyota lets Gaila kiss her careful; and soon, Nyota’s gonna start kissing back.
For her part, Gaila prefers a now that doesn’t end.
_________________________________
Nyota’s tired -- bone tired and dragging; part of her just wants to fall atop her bed and never wake up again. A big part of her wants that.
A bigger part wants Gaila there to hold her while she sleeps.
She sighs, thinks about how they’ve got a holiday coming, how all she wants is to go somewhere far, far away and forget all about her courses, her obligations and her portfolios, her practicums and projects; it can’t come soon enough, this breather, this respite. It’s not going to be enough, she knows -- not going to be enough to temper the way she feels half-wired all the time, frayed and cracking and teetering on the edge, just shy of tumbling -- but it’ll be something.
She shivers, even though it isn’t cold, and tries to put her finger on why the room feels off-balance, off-center; why her steps feel shaky as she strips off her uniform and drops atop her duvet.
She knows what’s missing, of course -- she’s never just wanted someone to be there; to be there.
When Gaila gets in that evening, Nyota meets her just inside their room, the sliding door barely closed behind them before she pulls Gaila into a quick, firm, bursting sort of kiss -- her mouth tight but sure, lips closed but no longer hesitant, no longer scared -- and Nyota grins wide against Gaila’s mouth; doesn’t ignore the flutter that bursts in her stomach, soars through her chest and comes out a shudder, but savors it instead.
They don’t bother to preface it, don’t waste time with questions of foreplay; just breathe each other in and strip each other down, and when Gaila’s hand shifts low at the edge of Nyota’s panties, when Gaila’s tongue dips soft against her navel, Nyota thinks she knows why she’s never just wanted someone to be there before, just to be there.
Because she’s never known someone like Gaila.
_________________________________
When midterm reports are distributed, Nyota spends the better part of an hour staring at her PADD, refreshing her performance evaluation and waiting, impatiently, for her marks to propagate. She gets an incoming transmission from her xenolinguistics professor -- asking if she’d please come by his office at her earliest possible convenience -- before the scores come in, and spends a good five minutes estimating how long it might take her to get from the library to the Commander’s academic office and back, debating whether her grades will arrive in the interim.
She’s worried a good dent into her bottom lip -- bruised and thin -- by the time she slides her PADD back into her shoulder bag and takes off at a jog to see what, exactly, Professor Spock might want.
It’s almost automatic, almost unintentional when she bats her eyelashes in the face of that stoic Vulcan stare -- it’s something that all of the women have learned in dealing with him; at the least, it’s a distraction for themselves from the discomfort that comes from the strength, the unwavering focus of that gaze.
Her gut clenches when she spots the little glaucous flush where it blossoms high on his cheekbones -- only visible when he turns, bows his head and catches the light just so; it might just be her imagination, she thinks -- something bigger, something more sane inside her, thinks -- but it doesn’t matter.
He’s talking, telling her she has potential, and she doesn’t flutter her lashes in anything but confusion when he inquires after her interest in linguistics, in communications and phonetics, whether she’d be inclined to pursue further instruction, explore the opportunity, see if perhaps it’s a better fit for her talents.
She has no idea what he’s talking about. She’s already saying yes.
That little green blush wasn’t just her imagination.
She forgets to check her grades until the next morning, with Gaila curled up at her back, her forehead propped right at the base of Nyota’s neck, breath raising the hairs like silk on her skin.
Top marks, naturally.
_________________________________
Change is change is change alike -- affects everything and everyone -- and Gaila never notices it until she can’t recognize whatever it is that’s been altered, until it’s something new altogether.
Gaila doesn’t much care for change, really.
It happens slowly, Gaila’s sure; it probably happens in parts, in steps, careful and gradual like most things do, but Gaila doesn’t see it, doesn’t notice the slow slip away until it’s gone and things are already different -- after the changing is already through. She’s sure there were small decisions, little concessions and shifts in routine, but they’re both busy, they’re both preoccupied; but through it, Gaila had come back to their room to find Nyota on her pillow, more often than not, and that was enough.
But Nyota has standing appointments with Spock for private linguistics lessons now, during the time that she and Gaila used to set aside for dinner twice a week; all before Gaila can even ask, before Nyota herself can figure out why -- beyond the fact that it makes sense, that she’s good at this, that it’s more useful, and if she can speak the languages she can go places, interact with cultures, see things she’s never dreamt of, do things she’d never have imagined, that don’t smack of home; and maybe she’ll see some exotic fauna along the way, and if not, maybe it just won’t matter as much as she thought it might.
Before Nyota has the chance to talk herself out of it, she’s changing her track to Communications.
Soon enough, Nyota doesn’t fall asleep in Gaila’s bed much anymore, because Nyota’s rarely home at all.
It takes Gaila a good few hours to notice when Nyota’s scent finally fades from their quarters -- long after her books look too tidy and her bed too untouched.
It takes Gaila a few days to register that, however she feels about this turn of events, exactly, it isn’t anything good.
_________________________________
When Gaila’s assigned to the Kobayashi Maru simulation for maintenance, the conundrum -- the confusion -- only deepens.
She watches him -- as her fingers slide across the displays, as she uses her nails to get under the crevices when the release functions don’t respond on the control panels, when she can’t quite get down to the wires, expose the mechanisms that underly the whole -- she watches the notorious Commander Spock; watches his reflection in the glass that lines the balcony set above, overlooking the exam room.
He’s all hard lines and stiff angles; he doesn’t really speak, not much, but when he does, it’s all clipped and stoic -- monotone, with just enough inflection to tell he’s an asshole. She doesn’t see the appeal.
In the windows, his eyes look a little bit hollow; a little bit faint -- like a blade she can’t quite see, can’t quite know whether or not it’s real; just that it’ll cut, and cut hard. Fast. Draw blood, long and clean.
He doesn’t blink when he addresses her, and Gaila hates him, for no other reason than that he lives and breathes.
She’s never felt like this before.
_________________________________
When Spock asks her to dinner, Nyota doesn’t think much of it. She isn’t oblivious enough that she doesn’t see the implications, but somehow, it doesn’t register as anything serious -- doesn’t even resonate on the level of ‘date’.
They have a small spread at a sushi bar she remembers mentioning that she’d wanted to try -- one afternoon or another, while Spock had tried to describe the precise slant of her lips, the correct curl of her tongue to produce just the right pitch for the trickier bits of the Andorian alphabet. He looks uncomfortable for most of the evening, lets her carry the trickling conversation; he orders soup for himself while she indulges in a plate of sashimi, watching her intently with every lift of his spoon -- she can’t tell if the olive in his complexion is anything more telling than the ambient lighting.
She’s not sure if she wants it to be anything more.
She catches red out of the corner of her eye -- it’s gone before she can identify its source, can figure where it’s from -- and the sheen of green takes on a different meaning, flushes hot on her skin and plummets low in her gut.
_________________________________
Gaila knows, before she slides in behind Nyota for the first times in weeks, maybe longer -- probably longer, given the way Gaila’s skin itches for it, given the way her pulse thumps for just a touch, something other hands can’t satisfy, other lips can’t quite reach; settles in and tastes the skin below Nyota’s ear where she’s sprawled, open on the bed with a book in her hand, innocent; Gaila knows she’s pushing herself past a line that she never should have drawn, let alone dared to try and cross.
But Gaila, well -- she doesn’t fear consequences quite as much as she probably should.
As soon as Nyota stiffens, stills beneath the swipe of Gaila’s tongue at the soft jut of her cheek, Gaila pulls away with a huff; knows what it is, what’s not said, and keeps it that way. There are certain things she’d rather never hear, and she knows -- knows from the way Nyota’s eyes get hazy and swell hot with remorse and regret -- that those are the very things that are poised on those lips that Gaila likes so much, loves to taste so deep.
“It’s not like you’re brushing fingers with the bastard beneath the fucking katric ark,” Gaila spits; half because she believes it, half because she can’t, and there’s nothing else, really -- that’s the crux of it, more or less; less or more.
Nyota, though: her jaw hinges open, just a little -- just enough, so that the luscious swell of her lower lip glistens with the moisture of her breath -- and there’s a pause, a stutter; a shudder in her eyes that betrays everything she doesn’t understand, everything she thinks she feels and knows, but isn’t sure of, can’t be certain about.
“He-”
It’s all Gaila needs to know, in one breathy, whispered little pronoun that means nothing, everything; that should mean her and oh, and nothing else.
“No, it’s fine,” Gaila cuts Nyota off sharp, stark and cold as she stands and moves to leave, shimmies into a pair of jeans that cling to her curves to the point of obscenity; ones she knows she’s seen Nyota herself stare at before, study at her hips and lower without shame, and all’s fair in love and war and lust and hate and life, she thinks, and this fits the bill more times over than she’s willing to own. “We’ll stop.”
Because it’s not like there were any promises, here; this was never going to be always, or only -- it wasn’t meant to be forever.
But Gaila, well; somewhere deep down, she’d kind of hoped.
_________________________________
When Gaila hooks up with a first-year, all wide-eyed and bowed lips at the hollow of Gaila’s throat, panting as Gaila finger-fucks her quick and dirty, it’s only because the girl smells sweet and clean, wears Nyota’s perfume.
_________________________________
When Gaila comes back, Nyota’s wrapping up a conversation with Spock; Gaila says nothing, just slips beneath the covers of her bed, still half-dressed, but Nyota recognizes the look of her, the scent -- knows where she’s been.
Knows; and in spite of herself, Nyota finds it a little bit hard to breathe.
_________________________________
Gaila’s no stranger to awkward interactions with one’s ex. She has enough of them, in the broadest sense -- most of her interactions with living, breathing, sentient beings could, in fact, fall in that category. She’s an old pro.
This, though; this is different.
They live together, for one; can’t get out of it, and don’t want to, not really -- it’s hard enough to find a suitable roommate through the random draw at the beginning, but by this point, something’s got to be up with a person who just happens to have a vacancy. Much as the tension is stifling, sometimes, it’s not worth the risk of getting some mouth-breather to live with.
They learn to coexist without actually communicating with one another for the better part of a semester and a half; Gaila takes extra hours on shift, and Nyota joins half of the campus organizations she can even fathom being involved in. It’s a stilted back-and-forth; Nyota pulls longer hours, and Gaila pulls more one night stands to stay away, to stay sane.
Things change when Gaila gets sick -- some strain of some virus that she can’t pronounce, but that makes Nyota’s eyes widen with real fear when she finally asks, grudgingly stopping for more than a moment to consider her roommate, curled and sweating in her bed. Gaila’s not sure she could have, would have managed the same courtesy.
Nyota, though -- she gets soup from the mess and warms water for tea, wets cloths to wipe across Gaila’s brow when she tosses, tries and fails to sleep; even calls in a favor of her one doctor friend -- that attractive McCoy character who flat out refused Gaila’s advances from day one -- to stop by and see to her on his evening off, because Gaila couldn’t manage to get out of bed, but desperately didn’t want Medical called in to take her away and treat her on site in the clinic.
When Gaila finally gets through the worst of it, she realizes that she can’t remember much of the ordeal -- a whole two weeks of chills and sweats and daydreams like nightmares in the waking hours, counterpoint to sleepless nights -- but what she does remember is never waking up without Nyota close by.
Things change, after that.
It’s not exactly comfortable, but neither is it what it was; they chat idly, catch up about the goings-on of their day-to-day routines. Gaila even quizzes Nyota on her dialects one night over takeout, and it’s nearly nice, or somewhere close enough to count.
That’s not to say, though, that Gaila’s over the whole ordeal, though; she’s never been the bigger person, really, doesn’t see the point.
She’s been known to sabotage inessential bits of the Kobayashi Maru sim, for instance, if she knows it’ll delay Commander Spock from his plans with his woman that evening. She’ll accidentally grab Nyota’s favorite outfit and toss it in with the soiled linens the day before she’s slated to go with Spock for dinner, so it’s off at laundry services when she’s looking for it.
She likes Jim Kirk, but it’s not just for his benefit that she brings him back to hers, hoping to start a trend that Nyota might just walk in on; that might just piss her off.
And she hates it -- just a bit, because it really is a little cruel -- but when they’re called to report, to stand and fight just as they’ve been trained to do; when Nyota forces a grin beneath the strain of her brow, her fury obvious when Gaila turns and beams at her once they’ve heard their assignments-Gaila to the Enterprise (which had taken a bit of creative hacking, true, but had proven fairly elementary in the end) and Nyota to the Farragut-well, Gaila can’t, won’t fight down the thrill of satisfaction that swells, escapes in a little gratified cackle at the back of her throat as a result.
Honestly, she’s almost disappointed that Nyota won’t ever know it was Gaila who did it, who swapped their ships and put herself inside Nyota’s dream, the only way she knew how.
Hell hath no fury, and all that.
_________________________________
When she watches half of the people she knows in this world, this life, fall from airlock and smolder in flames; when she watches life disintegrate as she holds on for her own, palms bleeding as she grits her teeth, clutches with desperation now, instead of resolve-Gaila fights the sudden flare of real illness, of aching regret that pierces her chest and almost convinces her, almost persuades her to just let go when she realizes that she’s the reason Nyota’s heart’s no longer beating, her lungs no longer breathing, the reason her body’s torn to bits where it floats among the wreckage, the massacre of the Farragut and everyone, everything else as it drifts along in space.
She’s the reason, and if someone-she doesn’t look, can’t see who-hadn’t come just then and pulled her, hefted her back onto the catwalk and away from her dangling fate, she’d have likely let go with a breath on the wild, impossible chance that she could have traded their places, could have turned the tables back the way they were.
_________________________________
Before all is said and done: before they’ve figured how, exactly, they mean to return home, before damage has been assessed and casualties reported, Nyota slips away to what’s left, what’s become of their makeshift sickbay, over-full and understaffed, the acrid scent of injury and death still pungent, still stinging in her eyes.
She’s only looking for one person.
It’s not hard to find her -- not just because there are so few Orions on board, but more because there’s something there, something they have that never went away, not entirely; couldn’t have, for the way that Nyota’s chest had seized and ached from the very moment she’d glanced over the damage reports, had known that Gaila’d been on one of the decks that had been hit -- and for a moment, she just stands there, watches from a distance as Gaila winces, twitches and tries not to flinches away as one of the nurses pulls at the corner of her dressings, lifts a dermal regenerator to the side of her face that’s all torn, all dark emerald and mottled brown, and Nyota doesn’t know what she feels, doesn’t know what it means or what might come of any of it.
But when Gaila’s eyes meet hers -- widen and constrict within a heart-stopping second before tears run down the battered flesh of her cheeks and she crumples in, shoulders hunched in and her bandaged fingers clutching tight to her chest as she starts to shake; when Nyota starts to move, threads her way through the chaos, the melee until she’s there, and she the tightness between her lungs doesn’t feel any better, like it should -- almost feels worse; when she hovers over Gaila -- her Gaila -- close enough to brush her skin should she shudder just a little harder, should Nyota breathe a little deeper: in that moment, she doesn’t need to know, only needs to do.
So she reaches out, touches like she’s not supposed to, like she’ll never forget; and stars above, she does.
Rating: R
Pairings: Gaila/Uhura, mild/side Spock/Uhura
Word Count: 7,238
Summary: It’s a brave new world for both of them. For yetanothermask, who requested Uhura/Gaila: a little college(academy) experimentation for my help_chile Auction. Spoilers for Star Trek XI (2009). Episode spoilers for Star Trek: Enterprise 4.17 - Bound.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title is credit to Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Author’s Notes: To yetanothermask: first and foremost, I am so sorry this took so long for me to complete for you. Secondly: I am equally sorry if it’s absolutely nothing close to what you wanted. It turned out very vignette-y, a little bit fragmented and disparate, and farther from the “usual” characterizations of these two than I’d ever intended when I started out. And a little bit tongue-in-cheek, admittedly, at certain points, because when you said “college” and then “(academy)” I felt the distinct need to be a little cliched with the college elements in certain places. And I also ran with this idea a little bit more than I probably should have, under the Enterprise canon parameters. But yes, I hope you like it :)
Breaking The Girl
The first thing Nyota remembers from her childhood is that she’d wanted to be a singer.
When she closes her eyes and thinks, she can feel rough skin and smooth threads and the way her nana always sang Beyond Antares like it had the answers, the meaning of the universe tangled insides its notes, its chords; every word. She remembers feeling safe in the crook of Nana’s arm, balanced carefully on her lap; remembers the way her grandmother’s hold would tighten around her if she teetered, if she moved to fall -- kept her steady, like the cadence of the song.
She liked the steady, and the safe; she wanted to be a singer.
Later, she remembers wanting to be a veterinarian, someone who worked with animals in some capacity, however great or small. She remembers trips with her mother, outside comm range, far on the plains; remembers studying the smooth, terrifying power of coiled muscles as she watched predators stalk their prey, witnessed common meals of flesh and bone; her little heart thrumming all the while, just beneath her collarbone, her eyes wide and fever-bright in the glint of the moon, the rising sun.
She remembers taking the hurt ones, the sick ones back to the reserve, keeping them sleepy but making them comfortable, making them well; she’d sing to them, sometimes, and for a few of them it’d help; her mama, though, she spoke her mother tongue in low, mournful tones that rumbled in her chest as she’d lean in and stoke fur, hard skin, and they almost understood it, for the way that they’d calm, for the way that she’d croon. Nyota learned Swahili for the animals, so that when her hands lilted over a lion’s mane-when she’d spent enough summers, enough late afternoons past dinnertime at her mother’s side that she could hypo the pregnant Ba'ku gnu herself, so that the caretakers could properly dress its wounds-it could be her voice that soothed them, that put them at ease.
Later still, she’d wanted to be a doctor, for humans, but she thinks that’s probably more because her mom got sick the year she turned fifteen, rather than any actual interest; more just helplessness, and fear, and the realization that singing in Swahili and stroking Mama’s hair wasn’t going to help this, wasn’t going to fix anything.
That same year, she gets a comm from Starfleet, one of those generic ones they send out to all young Federation citizens between ages X and Y with a certain level of academic skill. Her father looks excited when he tells her about it, and she knows why-Starfleet will pay for everything, and will make sure she gets a successful posting once she’s served her necessary tour. A future in Starfleet will make sure she’s taken care of, secure.
She deletes it, and her father doesn’t mention it again.
She spends her time on the reserve more and more often as her mother’s health continues its steady decline over one year, and then another; it makes her feel like she’s needed, makes her feel closer to the times when her mother didn’t look so frail, so weak. The doctors tell her father, her nana that they don’t know what’s wrong, don’t know how to help, and Nyota stops wanting to be a doctor because what she wants-really wants, in that soul-deep, fated way that rings with a timbre in her chest, pitch perfect without even trying-is to help, to fix, to keep and hold and to stop all of the bad things, all of the things that hurt. She wants that, and she knows that doctors, try as they might, aren’t any better off in the struggle.
Her class is small, and she graduates at the top of it with a wide smile and the promise of family dinner-Nana had been making sure that her mama slept extra all week so she’d be able to make it through an hour at the table without drifting off, even if she couldn’t stomach solid food anymore. Nyota fights to swallow the meal her grandma had slaved over for the better part of the morning, struggles to eat around the tightness in her throat when she catches her mother’s blank stare. She bites down tears as she sips wine and smiles at her extended family, gathered around the table with bright eyes, filled up with well-wishes and brittle sympathy; tries to savor the presence, the simple feeling of being in time, just there, with everyone. Tries to soak up the love that underscores all of the heartache.
It’s futile, but her pulse thrums with it; strong.
Her mother passes away five days later; in the back of her mind, Nyota wonders if she hadn’t pushed herself so hard to sit at that damn table for the whole hour, eyes vacant and muscles slack, if they’d still have found her, stiff and cold in her bed that black dawn, frigid even as the day broke with the heat of Hades on its back.
She spends three weeks without speaking, barely moving-sleepless, staring at the bright sky and the cloudless night with unblinking eyes, and she hears the chatter around her: family and friends and people that she doesn’t know, who don’t matter, all wondering over the way she gazes, the way she looks up almost longingly; questions bearing down with the beat of her heart, and it’s not longing, never could be -- it’s something different.
She cries herself to sleep, begging the cosmos for an answer, a sign; pleading for some way to know, some way to remember what it feels like to be happy, to belong -- to breathe without a burn in her lungs and a tear in her chest, because there’s an empty room in her house, in her soul, where her mother used to be, and home just doesn’t feel safe anymore.
The first words she speaks, when she speaks again, aren’t to anyone she’s ever met, but to a pale-faced recruiter on the commscreen in the living room, when her father’s gone to work and her nana’s still asleep. She tells the woman that she’s reconsidered, and she’s interested in enlisting.
Seven days later, she’s on a shuttle headed west. She leans her head on the viewport in the hull and never looks down, only up, but there’s not wonder there, not for her; when a genial man, resembling her grandfather just before he died, smiles heartily in her direction and tosses a ‘Can’t wait to get up there, hmm?’ at her in passing before he takes a seat, she fights a grimace, forces a smile. It’s not like that, though; not at all.
Nyota stares at the stars, sometimes, and people, they think that they understand what it means.
They don’t.
_________________________________
Gaila, daughter of Marsa, has always known what she’d grow up to be, what she’d become.
Her mother was a legend, an icon -- a goddess among women. She wore her sales like a badge of honor, conducted her “owners” with a stern hand and a careful eye beneath a veneer of endless, varied pleasure from the seventy-three males she’d managed to ensnare. Gaila was her seventeenth child, the third female: an omen of good fortune in her father’s culture, and Marsa prized her ginger hair as particularly alluring -- a curiosity, something exotic. Marketable.
Her first lure goes well; the second, even better. The males practically throw themselves at her, and the confidence her conquests brings only strengthens the appeal, the pull of lust and the scent of attraction. The pride in Marsa’s eyes when she catches Gaila’s eyes, though; that’s what burns the best, what means the most: she’s only ever been one among many, only ever had potential, versus skill -- she’s something now, she’s making her mark.
It’s well into that first year -- amidst the whispers and the snide suggestions of prominence and prestige, alongside the bitter sneers of her sisters, barely concealed plots to encourage her undoing -- that everything falls apart.
In retrospect, perhaps she should have suspected, should have seen. So many beautiful men -- mostly human men -- all circling, fondling, aching with need for her as she danced, swayed, wrapped in chains that couldn’t hold her, couldn’t tie her down; cage her in. She should have noticed the hesitance, the gentle touch of their hands against her skin, pale peach on her verdant green; should have known in the careful gleam behind their eyes, the distraction -- there is no distraction except for her.
When the sedative hits her system, she feels herself fall, and nothing else.
She wakes on a vessel, a ship she’s only known from stories -- stories about stories, the ones she’d known were true only in theory, not in practice. The men tell her that they mean her no harm; she believes them, but it brings no comfort. She’s cold, she’s lonely, and when they tell her they’re taking her into Federation space, that she’s safe now, that she’ll be cared for and protected -- when they speak, she doesn’t correct them. Doesn’t let them know that she needs no protecting.
And so Gaila stares at the ground, avoids the compassionate eyes that think they know what it is that they’ve done; think they understand.
They don’t.
_________________________________
From the very first moment -- stepping off the shuttle in an old, well-loved skirt her grandmother had stitched by hand, bare shoulders broad against a sun that feels different here, that feels foreign and cold -- Nyota knows that this was a terrible idea.
She follows the line as it snakes along, curling around stations where stone-faced Starfleet personnel dot the influx of new recruits in straight-spined pinpoints of red and black. She keeps her expression neutral, doesn’t smile when people meet her eyes like she would at home, clasps her hands behind her back, or buries them in the fabric of her clothes as she thins her lips and trains her eyes straight ahead. She takes her room assignment, her materials, her uniforms: dress reds and a few unflattering-looking ensembles in a drab grey-blue, cuffed inconspicuously in science blue, the promise of a future where she might serve on some remote outpost in a system, on a planet she can’t even fathom just yet, studying the indigenous fauna beneath an alien sun.
Just like her mother. Like she’d always hoped.
Nyota wonders, idly, how different the sky might look from wherever she ends up, wherever she goes -- if, from that unnamable place, wherever it may be, she’d have read a different destiny among the stars.
_________________________________
From the very first -- well, fine, perhaps not the very first -- moment, Gaila’s pretty sure she’s made a mistake. So maybe from the very... third moment, or something.
Stepping off the shuttle catches the breath in her throat; the sun beats, harder than her heart, and she shudders, flinches against the breeze and the sound and the reality of being here.
But once that very third moment lingers, stings, and sinks in deep, it passes, and she thinks it’s going to be alright.
Check-in’s fairly basic; she gets a schedule of her first two weeks, packed with placement exams and psychiatric evaluations and other nonsense that she doesn’t pay all that much mind to, and she looks forward to trying on the cute red dress uniform with the skirt that goes all-the-way-up-to-there: she thinks it’ll complement her skin tone and bring out the color of her hair just gorgeously.
If there’s one thing her family -- her life -- has taught her, above all else, it’s adaptability. Learn how to make the best of the things you can’t control.
She can do this, she thinks. This could be okay.
Because the second thing her family, her people had taught her, was that the integrity, the promise and the security of their culture was to be preserved -- the secret kept -- at all costs.
For the sake of their race, their way of life: once you left, you could never return.
She swallows hard and steels herself against the glare, the shadows and the shade; checks the room assignment on her PADD and straightens -- walks.
Keeps walking.
_________________________________
Saying that living with a roommate is a lot easier than Nyota’d expected isn’t actually saying all that much, seeing as she was anticipating something akin to trial by fire in that department. But, given the givens, Gaila’s not really so bad. She’s nice enough; smiles more than Nyota knows what to do with, really. She doesn’t leave her clothes on the floor. She shares her stash of sweets when Nyota’s got a craving. She’s a little bit loud, true, and Nyota’s had to very pointedly clear her throat more than once when she’s bedding some random stranger with a little too much gusto for Nyota to concentrate on studying, but it’s a small thing in the grander scheme.
It’s not long, though, before she realizes that she misses Gaila when the other woman’s not around; worries a little when she disappears for too many nights in a row; reflects more happily on the afternoons when the Orion girl leaves little squares of her favorite espresso-dark-chocolate for her on the small table between their beds.
And then there’s the one evening -- when Gaila’s brushing out her hair and Nyota’s untying her ponytail, and she starts humming; doesn’t even know she’s doing it, or what song’s in her head, until Gaila’s voice breaks through, strong and pitched just right on the notes, the words: “I'll be back though it takes forever,” and Nyota lets her hair fall free; “Forever is just a day,” and Nyota’s not humming any longer, but Gaila keeps singing, pulling her curls out into waves.
“And let the years go fading, where my heart is,” Gaila sings, growing soft, almost introspective as she studies her reflection, and Nyota glances at her, and by the time Gaila’s hummed her own way to the final bars, Nyota’s matched her grin, and joins in the last few lines:
“Somewhere, beyond the stars: Beyond Antares.”
They smile, warm and full at one another from across the room, swallow giggles like girls half their age, and they’re going to be good; Nyota can tell.
_________________________________
It’s practically common knowledge that Gaila loves sex. There are just certain obvious traits about her, things she doesn’t try to hide or temper: Gaila has green skin. Gaila can hack the academy personnel database in less than thirty seconds and change that pissy Grazerite tactics professor’s contact information to indicate that he’s a female, which she thinks would be an improvement, really, except that it infuriates him to no end, and that’s just as gratifying. Gaila can recite the original Federation charter from memory. Gaila loves to copulate more than she likes just about anything.
So yeah: she likes a good tumble in the sheets, and everyone knows it (most of them have joined in, after all, and nothing teaches quite like personal experience). Not many people know why she’s so keen on dancing the horizontal mambo, though.
She likes sex for it’s own sake -- it’s fun, it makes her feel good, it’s good exercise, helps her keep her figure. She likes the feel of skin on skin, likes a hard chest pressed against her nipples, or an unfamiliar breast caught in between her cleavage. She likes the closeness, the heat. Likes the way that it can wash the day away, sweat and stars behind her eyes in the dark, likes when it’s quick and when it’s slow, when she sets the tone, the pitch, or when the pace is something she’s keeping up with, holding back for. It’s exciting -- always changing, always a little bit new -- and the novelty never wears off, not for her.
Well, it helps that she makes her way through three-fourths of the student population within her first month on campus, but that’s mostly irrelevant.
The fact that she’s already gotten with a good half of her professors is far more impressive, anyway.
But she also likes it because it reminds her of home -- the stark scent of salt and musk and visceral lust that clings and cloys and doesn’t waver, dissipate; that’s her mother’s smell, and if she closes her eyes when she goes to sleep, whether she’s pressed against someone else’s spine, or curled tight in sheets still friction-warm from a body that’s been and gone -- if she closes her eyes, she can feel, can see: family, solidarity, power, love. Unorthodox though she knows it has to seem -- has to be to anyone who isn’t like her, who doesn’t know; it is what it is.
But no one ever asks about that.
_________________________________
Considering they live just about on top of one another -- side by side, in each other’s space and each other’s things and sometimes, Gaila doesn’t even notice she’s got Nyota’s skirt on until she’s stripping it off on someone else’s floor, and the waist gets caught around the fuller swell of her hips -- it’s a little bit surprising that it didn’t happen before now. It’s a little bit too odd for coincidence, a little bit of a stretch for even the far reaches of improbable probabilities, even if Gaila has late sessions in the Observatory four days a week, and Nyota’s already found herself wooed into volunteering with the Starfleet branch of the FSPCA. Their schedules don’t exactly coincide.
And it’s not like Gaila’s blind -- she knows her roommate’s an attractive woman, knows there’s power in those subtle, feminine curves of hers, just as much as there’s allure. She’s not stupid.
But the first time Nyota takes off her shirt; outside of the bathroom, back turned and arms folded loose across around the soft cups of her bra, shielding the little glimpse of a swell that escapes the fabric from view not deliberately, just by chance -- the line of her spine sharp beneath that mocha skin, the curl of her ribs a shadow, a tease, like the low sling of her skirt across her hips -- that first time, Gaila takes note.
_________________________________
It’s not that she’s trying to pry -- honestly; she comes in from a late dinner to find the lights off and the tousled mound of sheets and blankets curled atop Nyota’s bed in such a way that it’s obvious she’s burrowed beneath the covers, and Gaila frowns as she realizes it, ponders moving closer to see if Nyota’s really sleeping, to make sure she’s okay, but she catches the flash of their comm unit blinking in the corner, and instead slips on her earpiece to take down the message without disturbing her suite-mate.
She’s about to disconnect just after deleting a message from that Sulu boy about hooking up again sometime when the last accessed message pops back up unbidden -- left unsecured in a hurry, it looks like, and that’s enough to pique Gaila’s interest.
She leans in, and watches the screen, stares at the red-eyed man with the wrinkles of stress and grief along his cheeks -- the same cheeks Nyota has, high and proud and smooth. As he speaks, she feels her stomach clench and her chest tighten as she realizes, puts together that Nyota’s beloved grandmother -- the beautiful matriarch that smiles open and wise from all of the holos Nyota’s ever shown her, that had looked down at her from the top of their wardrobe from the frame that now sits turned upon its face, hidden and dismissed, salt in a wound left gaping; Nyota’s grandma had died that afternoon.
She feels something harsh spark in her when she picks up the sound of a sniffle, a wet sort of gasp that’s muffled by weight, by thread and cotton, coming from the center of Nyota’s bed, and Gaila doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t think. She peels back the covers and crawls in behind her roommate, her friend -- fits her body along Nyota’s delicate frame and presses in, her breasts splayed just beneath Nyota’s shoulder blades as she tucks the other woman’s head beneath her chin, holds her close until she’s all cried out, until the shaking stops and Gaila’s skin is slick, shiny with her tears.
Until she sleeps, and Gaila can, too.
_________________________________
In the morning, Gaila wakes up when the warmth next to her starts to fade, to cool; she hears the sonic shower running and feels a little bit empty, a little bit full of something light and weightless, and she’s so preoccupied with it -- whatever it is -- that she doesn’t notice, doesn’t see Nyota standing between the washroom and the bed until she speaks, cuts through the gravity where it’s floating away.
“Gaila,” Nyota says, a little breathless, flushed, and if Gaila watches -- and of course she’s watching, because there’s a beautiful woman glowing with sadness and heat in front of her, dressed in nothing but a tee-shirt that barely reaches mid-thigh -- she can see the jump of her quicksilver pulse at the neck, at the delicate curve of her skin over bone, the band of her muscle taut and graceful -- sweet.
“Look, I,” she stammers, and Nyota doesn’t normally stammer, isn’t flustered; it’s a little bit adorable, and a little bit unsettling, stirs something in Gaila’s stomach that she’s not sure she likes, not sure she’d stop if she could as Nyota sighs, exhales deep and slow. “I want to thank you, for, well-”
Gaila simply smiles, cuts her off with a sweet press of her lips -- chaste, almost whisper-soft -- and leads the way for morning coffee at the corner cafe just off campus.
Nyota follows, and the world, ever-so-slightly, shifts with the pace of their steps, the weight of their breath; the way that Gaila feels her fingers entangled with long digits, her palm pressed to a warm hand that trembles a little as it folds against her own, holds it close.
Gaila’s heart beats double time as she walks, surging on a high she can’t come off of, won’t come down from -- not just yet -- and when she sneaks a glance at Nyota just before they order, she can’t help but notice how her face just sparkles, just beams with the flash of her teeth, the strength of her smile.
And Nyota, well, she never smiles.
Not like that.
_________________________________
As a general rule, Gaila doesn’t do steady; doesn’t want always or only or forever. Those promises are beyond her, too rich for her blood, her birthright. She understands what they mean, but not why they matter.
For her part, Gaila prefers the now, because in the now, Nyota smiles at her, soft and simple, just a quirk of her lips like a secret. In the now, Nyota falls asleep in Gaila’s bed, curled tight against her, closer every night, less space between them. Now, Nyota lets Gaila drag the line of her nose careful against the curve of her neck, shivers hard into Gaila’s chest without restraint. Now, Nyota lets Gaila kiss her careful; and soon, Nyota’s gonna start kissing back.
For her part, Gaila prefers a now that doesn’t end.
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Nyota’s tired -- bone tired and dragging; part of her just wants to fall atop her bed and never wake up again. A big part of her wants that.
A bigger part wants Gaila there to hold her while she sleeps.
She sighs, thinks about how they’ve got a holiday coming, how all she wants is to go somewhere far, far away and forget all about her courses, her obligations and her portfolios, her practicums and projects; it can’t come soon enough, this breather, this respite. It’s not going to be enough, she knows -- not going to be enough to temper the way she feels half-wired all the time, frayed and cracking and teetering on the edge, just shy of tumbling -- but it’ll be something.
She shivers, even though it isn’t cold, and tries to put her finger on why the room feels off-balance, off-center; why her steps feel shaky as she strips off her uniform and drops atop her duvet.
She knows what’s missing, of course -- she’s never just wanted someone to be there; to be there.
When Gaila gets in that evening, Nyota meets her just inside their room, the sliding door barely closed behind them before she pulls Gaila into a quick, firm, bursting sort of kiss -- her mouth tight but sure, lips closed but no longer hesitant, no longer scared -- and Nyota grins wide against Gaila’s mouth; doesn’t ignore the flutter that bursts in her stomach, soars through her chest and comes out a shudder, but savors it instead.
They don’t bother to preface it, don’t waste time with questions of foreplay; just breathe each other in and strip each other down, and when Gaila’s hand shifts low at the edge of Nyota’s panties, when Gaila’s tongue dips soft against her navel, Nyota thinks she knows why she’s never just wanted someone to be there before, just to be there.
Because she’s never known someone like Gaila.
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When midterm reports are distributed, Nyota spends the better part of an hour staring at her PADD, refreshing her performance evaluation and waiting, impatiently, for her marks to propagate. She gets an incoming transmission from her xenolinguistics professor -- asking if she’d please come by his office at her earliest possible convenience -- before the scores come in, and spends a good five minutes estimating how long it might take her to get from the library to the Commander’s academic office and back, debating whether her grades will arrive in the interim.
She’s worried a good dent into her bottom lip -- bruised and thin -- by the time she slides her PADD back into her shoulder bag and takes off at a jog to see what, exactly, Professor Spock might want.
It’s almost automatic, almost unintentional when she bats her eyelashes in the face of that stoic Vulcan stare -- it’s something that all of the women have learned in dealing with him; at the least, it’s a distraction for themselves from the discomfort that comes from the strength, the unwavering focus of that gaze.
Her gut clenches when she spots the little glaucous flush where it blossoms high on his cheekbones -- only visible when he turns, bows his head and catches the light just so; it might just be her imagination, she thinks -- something bigger, something more sane inside her, thinks -- but it doesn’t matter.
He’s talking, telling her she has potential, and she doesn’t flutter her lashes in anything but confusion when he inquires after her interest in linguistics, in communications and phonetics, whether she’d be inclined to pursue further instruction, explore the opportunity, see if perhaps it’s a better fit for her talents.
She has no idea what he’s talking about. She’s already saying yes.
That little green blush wasn’t just her imagination.
She forgets to check her grades until the next morning, with Gaila curled up at her back, her forehead propped right at the base of Nyota’s neck, breath raising the hairs like silk on her skin.
Top marks, naturally.
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Change is change is change alike -- affects everything and everyone -- and Gaila never notices it until she can’t recognize whatever it is that’s been altered, until it’s something new altogether.
Gaila doesn’t much care for change, really.
It happens slowly, Gaila’s sure; it probably happens in parts, in steps, careful and gradual like most things do, but Gaila doesn’t see it, doesn’t notice the slow slip away until it’s gone and things are already different -- after the changing is already through. She’s sure there were small decisions, little concessions and shifts in routine, but they’re both busy, they’re both preoccupied; but through it, Gaila had come back to their room to find Nyota on her pillow, more often than not, and that was enough.
But Nyota has standing appointments with Spock for private linguistics lessons now, during the time that she and Gaila used to set aside for dinner twice a week; all before Gaila can even ask, before Nyota herself can figure out why -- beyond the fact that it makes sense, that she’s good at this, that it’s more useful, and if she can speak the languages she can go places, interact with cultures, see things she’s never dreamt of, do things she’d never have imagined, that don’t smack of home; and maybe she’ll see some exotic fauna along the way, and if not, maybe it just won’t matter as much as she thought it might.
Before Nyota has the chance to talk herself out of it, she’s changing her track to Communications.
Soon enough, Nyota doesn’t fall asleep in Gaila’s bed much anymore, because Nyota’s rarely home at all.
It takes Gaila a good few hours to notice when Nyota’s scent finally fades from their quarters -- long after her books look too tidy and her bed too untouched.
It takes Gaila a few days to register that, however she feels about this turn of events, exactly, it isn’t anything good.
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When Gaila’s assigned to the Kobayashi Maru simulation for maintenance, the conundrum -- the confusion -- only deepens.
She watches him -- as her fingers slide across the displays, as she uses her nails to get under the crevices when the release functions don’t respond on the control panels, when she can’t quite get down to the wires, expose the mechanisms that underly the whole -- she watches the notorious Commander Spock; watches his reflection in the glass that lines the balcony set above, overlooking the exam room.
He’s all hard lines and stiff angles; he doesn’t really speak, not much, but when he does, it’s all clipped and stoic -- monotone, with just enough inflection to tell he’s an asshole. She doesn’t see the appeal.
In the windows, his eyes look a little bit hollow; a little bit faint -- like a blade she can’t quite see, can’t quite know whether or not it’s real; just that it’ll cut, and cut hard. Fast. Draw blood, long and clean.
He doesn’t blink when he addresses her, and Gaila hates him, for no other reason than that he lives and breathes.
She’s never felt like this before.
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When Spock asks her to dinner, Nyota doesn’t think much of it. She isn’t oblivious enough that she doesn’t see the implications, but somehow, it doesn’t register as anything serious -- doesn’t even resonate on the level of ‘date’.
They have a small spread at a sushi bar she remembers mentioning that she’d wanted to try -- one afternoon or another, while Spock had tried to describe the precise slant of her lips, the correct curl of her tongue to produce just the right pitch for the trickier bits of the Andorian alphabet. He looks uncomfortable for most of the evening, lets her carry the trickling conversation; he orders soup for himself while she indulges in a plate of sashimi, watching her intently with every lift of his spoon -- she can’t tell if the olive in his complexion is anything more telling than the ambient lighting.
She’s not sure if she wants it to be anything more.
She catches red out of the corner of her eye -- it’s gone before she can identify its source, can figure where it’s from -- and the sheen of green takes on a different meaning, flushes hot on her skin and plummets low in her gut.
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Gaila knows, before she slides in behind Nyota for the first times in weeks, maybe longer -- probably longer, given the way Gaila’s skin itches for it, given the way her pulse thumps for just a touch, something other hands can’t satisfy, other lips can’t quite reach; settles in and tastes the skin below Nyota’s ear where she’s sprawled, open on the bed with a book in her hand, innocent; Gaila knows she’s pushing herself past a line that she never should have drawn, let alone dared to try and cross.
But Gaila, well -- she doesn’t fear consequences quite as much as she probably should.
As soon as Nyota stiffens, stills beneath the swipe of Gaila’s tongue at the soft jut of her cheek, Gaila pulls away with a huff; knows what it is, what’s not said, and keeps it that way. There are certain things she’d rather never hear, and she knows -- knows from the way Nyota’s eyes get hazy and swell hot with remorse and regret -- that those are the very things that are poised on those lips that Gaila likes so much, loves to taste so deep.
“It’s not like you’re brushing fingers with the bastard beneath the fucking katric ark,” Gaila spits; half because she believes it, half because she can’t, and there’s nothing else, really -- that’s the crux of it, more or less; less or more.
Nyota, though: her jaw hinges open, just a little -- just enough, so that the luscious swell of her lower lip glistens with the moisture of her breath -- and there’s a pause, a stutter; a shudder in her eyes that betrays everything she doesn’t understand, everything she thinks she feels and knows, but isn’t sure of, can’t be certain about.
“He-”
It’s all Gaila needs to know, in one breathy, whispered little pronoun that means nothing, everything; that should mean her and oh, and nothing else.
“No, it’s fine,” Gaila cuts Nyota off sharp, stark and cold as she stands and moves to leave, shimmies into a pair of jeans that cling to her curves to the point of obscenity; ones she knows she’s seen Nyota herself stare at before, study at her hips and lower without shame, and all’s fair in love and war and lust and hate and life, she thinks, and this fits the bill more times over than she’s willing to own. “We’ll stop.”
Because it’s not like there were any promises, here; this was never going to be always, or only -- it wasn’t meant to be forever.
But Gaila, well; somewhere deep down, she’d kind of hoped.
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When Gaila hooks up with a first-year, all wide-eyed and bowed lips at the hollow of Gaila’s throat, panting as Gaila finger-fucks her quick and dirty, it’s only because the girl smells sweet and clean, wears Nyota’s perfume.
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When Gaila comes back, Nyota’s wrapping up a conversation with Spock; Gaila says nothing, just slips beneath the covers of her bed, still half-dressed, but Nyota recognizes the look of her, the scent -- knows where she’s been.
Knows; and in spite of herself, Nyota finds it a little bit hard to breathe.
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Gaila’s no stranger to awkward interactions with one’s ex. She has enough of them, in the broadest sense -- most of her interactions with living, breathing, sentient beings could, in fact, fall in that category. She’s an old pro.
This, though; this is different.
They live together, for one; can’t get out of it, and don’t want to, not really -- it’s hard enough to find a suitable roommate through the random draw at the beginning, but by this point, something’s got to be up with a person who just happens to have a vacancy. Much as the tension is stifling, sometimes, it’s not worth the risk of getting some mouth-breather to live with.
They learn to coexist without actually communicating with one another for the better part of a semester and a half; Gaila takes extra hours on shift, and Nyota joins half of the campus organizations she can even fathom being involved in. It’s a stilted back-and-forth; Nyota pulls longer hours, and Gaila pulls more one night stands to stay away, to stay sane.
Things change when Gaila gets sick -- some strain of some virus that she can’t pronounce, but that makes Nyota’s eyes widen with real fear when she finally asks, grudgingly stopping for more than a moment to consider her roommate, curled and sweating in her bed. Gaila’s not sure she could have, would have managed the same courtesy.
Nyota, though -- she gets soup from the mess and warms water for tea, wets cloths to wipe across Gaila’s brow when she tosses, tries and fails to sleep; even calls in a favor of her one doctor friend -- that attractive McCoy character who flat out refused Gaila’s advances from day one -- to stop by and see to her on his evening off, because Gaila couldn’t manage to get out of bed, but desperately didn’t want Medical called in to take her away and treat her on site in the clinic.
When Gaila finally gets through the worst of it, she realizes that she can’t remember much of the ordeal -- a whole two weeks of chills and sweats and daydreams like nightmares in the waking hours, counterpoint to sleepless nights -- but what she does remember is never waking up without Nyota close by.
Things change, after that.
It’s not exactly comfortable, but neither is it what it was; they chat idly, catch up about the goings-on of their day-to-day routines. Gaila even quizzes Nyota on her dialects one night over takeout, and it’s nearly nice, or somewhere close enough to count.
That’s not to say, though, that Gaila’s over the whole ordeal, though; she’s never been the bigger person, really, doesn’t see the point.
She’s been known to sabotage inessential bits of the Kobayashi Maru sim, for instance, if she knows it’ll delay Commander Spock from his plans with his woman that evening. She’ll accidentally grab Nyota’s favorite outfit and toss it in with the soiled linens the day before she’s slated to go with Spock for dinner, so it’s off at laundry services when she’s looking for it.
She likes Jim Kirk, but it’s not just for his benefit that she brings him back to hers, hoping to start a trend that Nyota might just walk in on; that might just piss her off.
And she hates it -- just a bit, because it really is a little cruel -- but when they’re called to report, to stand and fight just as they’ve been trained to do; when Nyota forces a grin beneath the strain of her brow, her fury obvious when Gaila turns and beams at her once they’ve heard their assignments-Gaila to the Enterprise (which had taken a bit of creative hacking, true, but had proven fairly elementary in the end) and Nyota to the Farragut-well, Gaila can’t, won’t fight down the thrill of satisfaction that swells, escapes in a little gratified cackle at the back of her throat as a result.
Honestly, she’s almost disappointed that Nyota won’t ever know it was Gaila who did it, who swapped their ships and put herself inside Nyota’s dream, the only way she knew how.
Hell hath no fury, and all that.
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When she watches half of the people she knows in this world, this life, fall from airlock and smolder in flames; when she watches life disintegrate as she holds on for her own, palms bleeding as she grits her teeth, clutches with desperation now, instead of resolve-Gaila fights the sudden flare of real illness, of aching regret that pierces her chest and almost convinces her, almost persuades her to just let go when she realizes that she’s the reason Nyota’s heart’s no longer beating, her lungs no longer breathing, the reason her body’s torn to bits where it floats among the wreckage, the massacre of the Farragut and everyone, everything else as it drifts along in space.
She’s the reason, and if someone-she doesn’t look, can’t see who-hadn’t come just then and pulled her, hefted her back onto the catwalk and away from her dangling fate, she’d have likely let go with a breath on the wild, impossible chance that she could have traded their places, could have turned the tables back the way they were.
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Before all is said and done: before they’ve figured how, exactly, they mean to return home, before damage has been assessed and casualties reported, Nyota slips away to what’s left, what’s become of their makeshift sickbay, over-full and understaffed, the acrid scent of injury and death still pungent, still stinging in her eyes.
She’s only looking for one person.
It’s not hard to find her -- not just because there are so few Orions on board, but more because there’s something there, something they have that never went away, not entirely; couldn’t have, for the way that Nyota’s chest had seized and ached from the very moment she’d glanced over the damage reports, had known that Gaila’d been on one of the decks that had been hit -- and for a moment, she just stands there, watches from a distance as Gaila winces, twitches and tries not to flinches away as one of the nurses pulls at the corner of her dressings, lifts a dermal regenerator to the side of her face that’s all torn, all dark emerald and mottled brown, and Nyota doesn’t know what she feels, doesn’t know what it means or what might come of any of it.
But when Gaila’s eyes meet hers -- widen and constrict within a heart-stopping second before tears run down the battered flesh of her cheeks and she crumples in, shoulders hunched in and her bandaged fingers clutching tight to her chest as she starts to shake; when Nyota starts to move, threads her way through the chaos, the melee until she’s there, and she the tightness between her lungs doesn’t feel any better, like it should -- almost feels worse; when she hovers over Gaila -- her Gaila -- close enough to brush her skin should she shudder just a little harder, should Nyota breathe a little deeper: in that moment, she doesn’t need to know, only needs to do.
So she reaches out, touches like she’s not supposed to, like she’ll never forget; and stars above, she does.