If You Really Have to Know (Spock/Uhura--PG)
One:
Nyota has the propensity to sleep with her eyes half-open. At first, Spock was honestly disturbed by this phenomenon. He didn’t think it was normal for a human to sleep with eyes part way open. As time went and goes on, though, he has come to realize and accept that this is normal for some humans, and especially for Nyota.
Two:
The first language she learned was Swahili. It is her grandmother’s grandmother’s language of old. It has thrived throughout her family, and was taught to her as a young girl. Though she does not speak it often, and she does not speak it as fluently as she does Vulcan, or many of the other languages she has learned at Starfleet Academy, she will speak it with her Grandmother (often called Gram). It helps her feel at home, even when she’s many kilometers from it.
Three:
Nyota has the strangest habit of absconding with styluses. It is unintentional, to be sure. She will simply take the stylus from a crewmember’s hand, signing off on one of the forms, and keep the stylus. She walks off before the person has even realized that they are yet again short a stylus, and she is never conscious of it until she’s at her station or in their quarters and she’s releasing her hair from it’s bind, letting the styluses fall from behind her ears.
Four:
When at the Academy, it was more than simple to tell that Nyota was not calm about tests. Spock had instructed her for three of her classes, and in them, he hosted several exams for his students. She was the only one who seemed to visibly panic, while maintaining her neutral visage. It was most perplexing to experience. He could see her brows furrow almost unnoticeably, and her hands would have a slight tremor as she handed her test to him. She always walked away with her head held high, but he could see her right hand clenching as her left rubbed concernedly at her forehead. Most unnecessary, seeing as her grades were beyond impeccable.
Five:
Her grandmother (Gram, to Nyota, and Nyota alone) moved into her parents’ home when she was seven after the death of her grandfather. Her parents were often away from their home, so much of Nyota’s time was spent under the watchful eye of her Gram, who taught her the ways of the old days, before electronics and space. She taught Nyota how to weave; how to cane wicker; how to quilt. While in the Academy, she is not prone to partake in her family activities, but every so often, he has witnessed her looking over several patterns for quilts, or weaving pieces of Spock’s knitting yarn together.
Six:
Aboard the Enterprise, Nyota has several mementos around. On her desk she has several pairs of earrings, under her bunk she has all of her shoes of which she will wear every so often, instead of Starfleet approved boots, but the Captain has never called her on it, and has even complimented her taste in footwear. On the bed, she has a large multicolored quilt she made shortly before the Enterprise’s five year voyage. Of all of her personal belongings, Spock believes that her most fascinating is her slinky collection.
Seven:
Her singing is a manifestation of her need to keep her parents with her. Both her father and mother would sing to her after dinner, and one day she lets him see some of her memories, some that she has held precious to her, and thusly secret from him. He hears her father’s baritone chorus as her mother sings in second soprano lyrics. He feels her elation and joy bubbling up in her chest, and almost feels himself smiling as she would and still does when she thinks of them singing They Who Are Ours.
Eight:
She is able to play a little piano. Nothing too complicated. She is sufficient when it comes to children’s songs, and is able to play Fur Elise. She does not practice often, and she does not feel she needs to. She knows the keys, and the chords, majors and minors, but she feels she does not have the soul for the piano. Not like she does for the lyre.
Nine:
She only wore pants for a single year of her life when she was sixteen years old. She said it was liberating, for the first couple of months (‘I finally felt like I was my own woman, which made no sense at all, of course, but that’s how I felt’), but after the novelty had worn off she said she just felt like every other girl, and more importantly that she had left her family, the women of which were all prone to wearing dresses or skirts, behind. Since her donning of skirts again, she is not wont to be seen in pants, and to this day, he has only observed her in them one time.
Ten:
Nyota secretly purchased cat toys for Soliel, Spock’s feline companion. She stowed them in her coat pocket every time she ventured to his apartment, and while he was making tea and she thought his attention was called away, she would extract the toy and play with Soliel. Spock would not admit to spying, but he did have a certain fascination with Nyota’s simplistic pleasure of teasing a cat with a mouse on a string.
Eleven:
Her favorite poet is from the nineteenth century. Emily Dickenson’s works are easily seen all over her PADDs, and she is even in possession of an actual book. Now and then Spock will request a private reading from Nyota. Mostly she finds such a request agreeable, and he will rest or meditate to the soft chords of her voice as she reads the melancholic, sometimes sardonic lines of a woman long since gone. It is almost to the point that if he read them on his own, he can hear her lullaby cadence speaking, ‘A drop fell on the apple tree, Another on the roof, A half a dozen hit the eaves, And made the gables laugh…’
Twelve:
She is unsurprisingly well-attuned to computers, and before deciding that linguistics would be better suited for her, had thought to enter into computer programming. She muses sometimes, when she feels reflective or romantic that either way she would have been led to him.
Thirteen:
Only Nyota has the ability to discern when he has gone too long without sleep. He, of course, can go much longer without sleep than humans. He is quite adept at going up to a week without resting. However, he finds it preferable that he should not go in excess of three days without sleep. Nyota knows this, and she can detect even the slightest alteration in his manner when he is even the slightest bit tired.
Fourteen:
She sought Jim Kirk out specifically after Gaila’s memorial. When he had not made an appearance it was not hard to see that she was upset by it. She angrily marched to the temporary dorm that he and Doctor McCoy were ordered to stay in after the return from space and beat the door until it was more than obvious that no one was at the residence. After, she investigated the entire Academy grounds looking for the ‘miscreant, jerk who never even had the common decency to say he was sorry.’ However, when she found Jim at a local bar, sans his Doctor, and drinking a strangely flamboyant pink drink, she lost her anger, letting it flow out of her as if it had never even been there.
Fifteen:
She has the propensity to run when she is angered. It is a soothing remedy, something she does so that she can ‘clear her mind’ and try to reason logically. He finds it an odd custom, but nonetheless helpful. After leaving for her runs, she has always been reasonable in their arguments, conceding to him on some topics, or demanding that he should look at it from a more human side. She is hard-pressed to carry on illogical conversations, and he appreciates that tremendously.
Sixteen:
On the rare occasion she partakes in drinking alcoholic beverages, she will buy in bulk from the bar, because she does not enjoy it. She does not like standing at the bar, and cannot help but feel an unknown source is staring at her. So she will buy in large amounts before she settles into a table where her colleagues and friends are located.
Seventeen:
She is without a doubt addicted to coffee, bordering (and Spock would not say this lightly) on fanatic. She has never been caught in the morning without a mug in her strong, slender hands, and she has often refused to function if a carafe is not already in the process of brewing. He has learned that if any… activities are to commence in the morning, he should bring a cup of coffee to her so that she can have a sip or two before they engage in morning exercise.
Eighteen:
She used to hunger for younger siblings. She was an only child in her household. Her father being sterile due to an accident of nature and her mother never wanting for anyone but her ‘Little Star.’ It has long since past, but every so often she will grumble about Jim, or Ensign Chekov, and sometimes even the doctor, and she will slip into some alien tongue. The word she most often uses in any of her languages is always roughly translated to ‘brother.’
Nineteen:
Her favorite flower is the lilac. It is for the hue of the flower (‘gorgeous, soft purple that feels like home and smiles’). However, Spock is more than accustomed to floral meaning and symbolism. The lilac is the harbinger of spring, and is often associated with the first emotions of love. To him, that is Nyota at her very core.
Twenty:
Nyota was adopted at a young age by her aunt and uncle. Her parents (‘my genetic parents’ she reprimands softly, even when she is not there) were unsuited to actually raise her, and although he can not get anything more from her about it, Gram has made some disparaging comments about her son, whom she disowned, and his wife. She says, ‘There isn’t a child alive that should be born into that life, and I have never been so proud of my daughter as I was on the day she took my Ny away from that place.’ He does not know what happened, but he has the sinking feeling, as he looks through the file of Nyota’s parents that neglect and malnutrition had happened at one point.
Twenty-one:
She and Janice Rand, Jim’s yeoman, were at one time acquainted in Starfleet as operational organizers for a help outreach constructed for a planet suffering from a harsh outbreak of plague. They apparently kept up their moral by challenging each other to see who could come up with the most goods for this planet, and every so often this is brought up on the bridge when there is the rare lack of need to focus on their respective tasks. Apparently, Yeoman Rand ‘cheated’ by using her ‘assets’ to her full advantage, while Nyota didn’t have a ‘leg to stand on in that department.’ Spock hasn’t the slightest inclination to what they are referring to, but Jim chuckles even as Nyota looks at the other woman bemusedly, and Yeoman Rand glares at her.
Twenty-two:
Nyota is incredibly flexible. Spock feels that is enough said.
Twenty-three:
She goes through stints where she will hardly eat a thing besides bread. It is not neglectful towards her health by any means. When she goes through these stages, she will eat some of everything, and is sure to keep a protein bar with her. However, her diet will mostly be bread, any bread at all.
Twenty-four:
She appreciates it when he paints her fingernails. She does not enjoy the task of doing them herself, her hands unsteady to counterbalance her exception hearing and linguistics skills. ‘I always make a mess of them’ she tells him one evening as he brushes a deep, royal purple onto her nails with a precision she says she will never conquer. It is highly erotic for both of them. Spock’s senses are over-stimulated every time his knuckle grazes the soft skin of her hand, and she admittedly, and blushingly, loves to see his face so relaxed as he concentrates on getting the coat even and smooth. It is a testament of their self-control, he feels, that they have only smudged her nail polish a handful of times in the several years he has been servicing her nails.
Twenty-five:
She brings Spock cookies when she feels that he is ‘down’, and in need of ‘cheering up.’ It is always the same type his mother made when she had the resources, almond-oatmeal with dried cranberries. He does not know how she stumbled onto this recipe, and when he inquires about it, she says simply ‘It’s something Gram always made when I wasn’t feeling my best.’ It is in those moments when he does wonder about fate and whether the law of probability stands a chance against it.
Twenty-six:
Spock, personally, believes that Nyota is beautiful no matter what she wears, or what she was doing. However, the way she smiles when she dons the wardrobe of Vulcan woman and twirls around in front of him with a jubilant abandon that most if not all Vulcan women would find distasteful, she is the most beautiful woman in the universe. When even Sarek comments on her loveliness, she smiles radiantly, and he has no doubt she will keep that moment dear to her.
Twenty-seven:
In her wardrobe, hidden behind her illogically high number of undergarments, there is a box. It is a trivial size, fitting easily into Spock’s coupled palms, and only about half as tall and wide. It is designed and decorated with Africa’s past in mind, before the Eugenics War that plundered Africa. Woody, in hues of brown, and on top a tiny seashell from the coast of Kenya, it is where she keeps small trinkets from her family. A lock of her mother’s hair, a button from her father’s favorite shirt, as well as a letter her grandfather had written on actual paper to her Grandmother when they were courting. ‘You keep your mother with your through her painting; I keep my family with me through their keepsakes and pride.’
Twenty-eight:
Nyota and Lieutenant Sulu are having ‘texting wars,’ as Ensign Chekov has deemed it. When they are off duty, or even when the one is enjoying their extracurricular time while the other is on the bridge, they will send each other hundreds upon hundreds of what Nyota has called ‘spam.’ He has inquired as to what they were conversing about during these ‘wars’ only to find out that it is apparently a battle to outdo the other using only words. Spock was confused as to why Nyota had yet to win, but she patiently explained that they were using Standard words only. He is still perplexed as to the point of this pastime.
Twenty-nine:
During their tenure at the Academy, Spock stumbled upon her standing on the large grassy lawn, staring up into a dark, imposing clouds just as they released their heavy load onto the Earth. Nyota did not search for shelter. Instead, she lifted her chin further towards the sky, letting the water beat down against her. As he watched her slowly raise her arms up towards the sky, her wrists turning and flicking her long graceful hands beneath her quickly soaking cadet uniform, it came to his attention quite rapidly that she was indelibly fond of the rainstorms.
Thirty:
On nights where Spock and Jim play chess in Jim’s quarters, the doctor will set up another table, small though it may be, and he and Nyota will engage in card games, normally gin rummy, but sometimes poker. One evening they apparently grew so tired of their normal games, while waiting for he and Jim to finish their battle, they resorted to ‘go fish.’
Thirty-One:
Nyota has collected all of Gaila’s tapestries, which she had acquired over the twenty-six months of their companionship. For a while she kept them in a box, kept in the depths of her closet for many months, marked with exceedingly plain penmanship ‘Butterfly.’ After the Enterprise’s departure date was given, however, she extracted the box, and set about cutting and sewing and padding. It was quite intriguing to Spock, to watch her long fingers work, turning already intricate fabrics into an intricate quilt with a large, multicoloured butterfly in the center. He only inquired as to what she was doing once, as she pulled out and shredded her late friend’s finest silks and chiffons (‘I’m taking her with me this time’).
Thirty-two:
She almost cut her hair off after the debacle on Triskelion. It had been a long, hard time for her, and she had had to beat a Triskelion thrall into submission with a simple metal canister. The details are again lost on him, only knowing that she had clung to his frame for hours on end, and had been distant for a time afterwards. He knew it was something much more when he saw her in their bathroom, staring blankly at the mirror. One of her hands caressed her hair, picking it up gently before she let it float onto her shoulder again. In her other hand, she held a pair of scissors loosely on her fingers. She was wrapped in her thoughts, and had not noticed his approach, and so he watched her in her reflection; observed the horrors that washed over her features. She only raised the scissors once, her eyes slowly becoming focused on her hair, and the directionality of the metal tool in her hand. However, she put them down just as quickly, shaking her head at herself angrily. When she saw him in the mirror’s reflection, saline tears lining her eyes, she knew he had been there watching her (‘He kept touching my hair…’ she said before she walked into him, trying to bury herself into his arms).
Thirty-three:
She has a habit of bringing her friends their favorite desserts on their date of birth. Spock receives cookies. ‘Len’ receives a slice of pecan pie. Kirk has even been known to appear on the bridge with a bag of almost burnt sugar cookies in his hands. When it came time for Scotty’s first birthday, however, she falters. She looks through the dessert menu offered by the cooks, and even sees if there’s something that the replicators can manufacture. She doesn’t want to ask the Scot for his favorite dessert, because she has always made it a habit to simply know. However, when Scotty sits down at ‘his’ lunch table with a cherry pie that she had ordered for his birthday, he looks beyond ecstatic.
Thirty-four:
Her father took her sailing every summer as a young girl, out into the high seas where she learned about the different species of fish that lay hidden from her sight. ‘He told me, “Do not accept only what you can see, Nyota. There are worlds all around us that you cannot see.” It was my first lesson in coexisting with not just my world, but with so many others, my first step towards Starfleet.’ Spock will not deny that he felt the inexplicable urge to thank her father for that.
Thirty-five:
Despite her claims that the Captain is nothing more than an overgrown child and more prone to foolishness than anything even close to bravery or captaincy, the first time after she visited him in Sickbay, she glares angrily at the table in their quarters. When Spock acquires as to the reasoning behind her mood, she says simply, not entirely aware of herself, he is sure, ‘Closest person I’ve ever come to having a sibling is in the damn Sickbay because he doesn’t seem to know the meaning of ‘duck.’’ It is mostly muttered beneath her breath, and he is positive that had he been anyone else, he would not have heard her, but he did, and it gives just a bit of insight into how she actually views Jim.
Thirty-six:
The first time Nyota insisted he see her homeland, they went to the beach for the day. Spock found it humid, but as a dark, ominous looking storm rolled in over the ocean, flashing lightening angrily across green-gray clouds, and the retreating colour of the orange-red sky, Nyota sat up straight, her attention wound inside the storm approaching. The wind whipped around them, but as Spock pivoted to suggest it was time to depart from their current position, she literally scrambled behind him, her arms wrapping around his still fully clad chest (she only wore her bathing suit) and pulling him into her firm, yet giving abdomen. ‘Watch it…watch it dance.’ He was far more intrigued by her eyes, and the way they flashed and danced brighter than the electrical charges streaking the sky.
Thirty-seven:
After being taken away from her genetic parents, she has never been in contact with them again. She has no want to. She needs no questions answered and absolutely no curiosity as to where they are now or what they are doing. She has her mother and father (‘I have my real parents’) and it is all she needs. Her parents love her and obviously ‘that is more than they could do.’
Thirty-eight:
She has kept all of her language texts, just on the 8.634% chance that she will one day be unable to discern an alien language, or the basic roots of them.
Thirty-nine:
Her Gram gave her a prism necklace so that she could have ‘rainbows in space.’
Forty:
When she was a little girl, under the age of ten, she assures him, she wanted to ride a zebra. She had no care for regular horses. She only wanted to ride a zebra. She says its still on her ‘to-do’ list before she dies.
Forty-one:
Nyota does not wish to have children. She says, ‘If by chance it were to happen then I would not actively work against it. However…I think that if I were meant to be a mother, I would be.’ He is uncertain as to whether she means forever, or just for the moment, but after being in a relationship for four years he still feels uncertain about asking her.
Forty-two:
Gaila taught her to dance the dance of the Orion one long boring evening before Nyota went home for the winter holidays. According to Nyota they practiced the steps in the small spaces of their dorm room, and continued even after they returned from holiday. From that point forward, any time that they were both without substantial amounts of educational work to do or the stresses of their lives became to much to put aside in the mind, they would dance side by side. On the Enterprise, when it closes in on the first anniversary of the Narada incident, she settles him on their bed (adorned with a large hand-made quilt stitched entirely of Gaila’s exotic fabrics). She runs her hand over his cheek lovingly, smiling as heat rises beneath his flesh, and then she dances for him, for them, for Gaila, and for a civilization gone too soon.
Forty-three:
She and the doctor are constantly in a half-hearted debate over whether romance novels really trump mystery novels. The doctor maintains that since most mystery novels contain some sort love interest, she’s ‘calling the tea kettle black.’ Nyota is of the opinion that mystery novels are more substantial seeing as there is actually a plot beyond ‘quick, get all your clothes off.’
Forty-four:
Nyota once ‘pranked’ the entire bridge crew as well as a few select others, such as Mr. Scott and Nurse Chapel, by changing the settings of their quarters’ computer panels to only accept commands in Tellarite. Needless to say, there were four very perturbed and two amused (Jim and Lieutenant Sulu) people crowding around their doors about two hours after Nyota had initiated the computer ‘updates.’
Forty-five:
She and Ensign Chekov play tennis when they have correlating shifts. She looks forward to it more than he had honestly anticipated her to, seeing as the Ensign’s mind works mathematically and he can generally keep her running on the court for upward of two hours. However, Nyota is adamant that she isn’t interested in the score of the game. She holds that if she were interested in a balanced match she would play against Nurse Chapel. She says she enjoys the conversations they have. For being so young, Chekov apparently has a sharp wit and a certain adorable sarcasm that ‘keeps her in stitches.’
Forty-six:
Nyota cannot sleep next to him for too long during the night unless they keep the cabin at a cooler temperature. When she awakens, she always scoots back towards him. She is a restless sleeper, though, always moving, and he believes that his body temperature is too hot for her comfort. He still finds it soothing when she wakes to realize they are not touching and immediately rectifies the situation.
Forty-seven:
She makes his mother a birthday dinner every year, despite the illogicality of it. She does, though, making a bright vegetable medley that his mother would have adored and she places a white lily from Lieutenant Sulu’s botany lab at the third setting she always makes for her. Though his mother is dead, and it is irrational to do all these things, he finds his heart beating faster as they take their place in their quarters with near-silent music in the background.
Forty-eight:
She writes poetry for him, and transfers it to him under assumed names, though he knows very well who they are from. The assumed names are always those of other poets, and the poems are usually two to four couplets discussing or stating anything from total affection to irritation with her subordinates. Either way, he has kept them all.
Forty-nine:
She enjoys it when he brushes her fingers with his own. She likes the intimacy of it, even though she does not receive the same stimulation as he does. She likes that it pleasures him, enjoys the ‘softening of his eyes’ when he makes that contact and how he will visibly relax. She likes for him to initiate the contact, though she has been known to begin it. Mostly she likes the way he does it, and has only ever done it, with her.
Fifty:
Nyota’s love for him is truly unfathomable, and he finds that fascinating.
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7: If this is an actual song, I’ll be so surprised. It’s just a poem in my head, and it’s about people who are connected without actually being connected. I don’t have it written yet, but if and when I do, I will probably post it.
25: I wish, wish, wish, WISH I could find this recipe again. An old friend sent it to me before we lost touch, and stupid me, I lost it. They were, in all likelihood, the best cookies I had ever eaten. Alas, I lost them and her. If anyone knows a recipe like this…please, do tell.
27: Reading on Memory Alpha (where I live because I love it sooooo) the Eugenics War did actually massacre a good portion of Africa. Also, it is speculated that Uhura was indeed from East Africa, and that she knew Swahili, so basing everything on that information, I picked Kenya as her home state from the United States of Africa. Hope this doesn’t offend.
Also! Chekov’s secrets are soon to come…and I have no idea what the hell to write for him or Sulu…or Scotty really, so if you have anything you would like to see for those boys, leave your idea in a comment. I would love, love, love to hear them.