fic: five times Spock displayed cliche traits of men in relationships
Title: fic: five times Spock displayed cliche traits of men in relationships, and one time Nyota wasn't complaining
Author: celebros aka magicdoyle
Rating: R for sexes
Pairing: Spock/Uhura
Warning: eh, fluff??
Summary: *points to title* Written for the kink meme.
Word Count: 2,189
Disclaimer: They not is be belonging to me. *hugs fanfic-likenesses of characters to chest*
one.
Gaila finally makes up her mind and tosses Nyota the darker shade of lipstick, and she turns to the mirror and has barely pressed it against her mouth when the comm sounds from the other room, the low buzz of a text-only message. She winces - she's already ten minutes later than she'd like to be; at this rate she won't have time to fix the back of her hair before Spock arrives - but she starts out to the other room only to find the green figure already hunched over the comm unit.
"Gaila," Nyota says, exasperated, but she's walking around the bed and she catches, suddenly, the look of subliminated horror on her roommate's face.
"What is it?"
"Uh," Gaila says, auburn eyebrows knitting together with the look that says she's afraid Nyota's about to throw something. She hands over the comm, wordless. Anxious, she glances down at the new message and freezes.
>> CMDR_SPOCK: Cadet Uhura, I regret to inform you that I am
unable to attend your specified social gathering as previously
intended. I have become engaged in work at the long-range sensor
lab and will be unable to leave until 2300 hours, as a number of
cadets have logged requests for replacements. I would be
amenable to engaging in the anticipated continuation of our
previous conversation at any of the Academy's hot beverage
establishments tomorrow morning, at a time convenient to you.
Gaila looks as if she's about to cry. Nyota, on the other hand, is furious. She almost throws the comm against the wall, but the she's not sure rear casing can take that again, so instead she goes to the bathroom and closes the tube of lipstick. Her roommate trails her anxiously.
"Nyota," she says softly, and she spins.
"Fifteen minutes," she says. "In all his brilliance, has it never occurred to him that keeping up my appearance takes longer than that?" She's spent the last two hours getting ready for the much-anticipated third date, and now she wants to rip off the ruffled turquoise dress and muss her hair and possibly tear out her carefully-made-up eyelashes.
"He's a man," Gaila says flatly, "and therefore an unappreciative moron."
"I wanted to kiss him," she responds, shucking the dress with an awkward shimmy and throwing it - Gaila catches it before it hits the floor, looking at her with a familiar mixed expression of attraction and pity. "And Gaila, please don't say there's always you, because I am not getting whatever variation of herpes Jim's given you this week." Gaila looks genuinely wounded for a moment. She sighs. "No, I don't -"
"I haven't given Jim oral in six weeks, for your information," Gaila says, lying back on her bed.
"That was totally uncalled-for," Nyota says, shaking her head, "I'm sorry, I just -"
"Expected him to be a little different from all the immature boys who've propositioned you in the past?" Gaila says gently, knowingly. "I'm not taking his side, but please bear in mind he probably has no idea what he's just done. Mention it in the morning."
"You think I'm getting coffee with him after that?" she asks, raising her eyebrows.
"No, I suppose you'd better tease him a little. Maybe cancel ten minutes in advance. He'll be disappointed, and then he'll realize..."
"He won't be disappointed, and anyway, that's so passive-aggressive. Hardly a display of my superior communications skills," she says.
Gaila looks at her coolly for a moment, and finally folds the dress and hangs it back in the closet. After a while, Nyota texts Spock back that she won't be able to make tomorrow; he doesn't answer, no doubt engrossed in a translation. Not long after, Colie comes by to pick up Gaila for the party, and Nyota finds herself donning a simpler dress and a lighter shade of lipstick. She'll be damned if she'll let relationship woes keep her away from her precious social time.
two.
"I've got it," Nyota says, palming the check as Spock reaches for it. He raises an eyebrow.
"I had intended to provide the necessary credits for both our meals," he says, rather firmly, and places his hand over hers. She can't help but tense slightly. It's cheating, this attempt to soften and distract her.
"No need," she says, slipping the check out from under his warm hand. "I was the one who chose the venue, after all - isn't it logical that I should be the one to pay?"
"My salary is more than sufficient for such expenses, whereas -"
"I've got plenty of money for eating out, Spock."
"I would appreciate if you would at least apportion the total sum to allow me to make use of my credits for the portion of the food and beverages that I consumed."
"There's no need," she says, as sweetly as she can as irritation stings at her. Has she made so little progress at establishing herself as an equal partner in her relationships? In the end all she can do is allow his compromise that he will return the favor in the future, and she's never been less pleased to plan a future date.
three.
Gaila had assured her that she'd never looked more stunning, but Spock greets her with only his almost-traditional remark that her appearance is aesthetically pleasing, and she has the impression he wouldn't even do that if he hadn't clinically observed it as a traditional courting practice. She hadn't expected him to acknowledge the sigificance of the three-month anniversary of their mutual acknowledgement of their relationship - she felt a little bit silly with her excitement over it. But...
It's is the first time he's seen her with her hair in anything but her formal style. Gaila and Colie had spent what seemed like hours with the old heat-curler, and her hair is arrayed now in elegant waves down the sides of her face, her eye shadow visibly dark green, matching her sleeveless off-one-shoulder wrap. The lip gloss is a perfect texture, not sticky or gritty, giving her mouth a soft sheen. She'd wanted... something more than this.
The music performance receives a standing ovation, but her heart's not in the clapping. Their late dinner is pleasant, too, and Spock kisses her on the street afterwards with especial abandon, husky and almost-breathless as he bids her good night, but some part of her wanted the verbal acknowledgement of the extra effort she'd made to look this way - for him.
four.
There are ways in which it's endearing, his ignorance about human sexuality, and while there are advantages to teaching him how to touch her, his lack of knowledge is also immensely frustrating. Granted, he has excuses that the majority of her previous boyfriends haven't had - namely, virginity - but it doesn't stop the disappointment she feels when he hesitates as he fingers her inexpertly, his finger slipping into her at entirely the wrong angle, as she has to guide his mouth up to her clit, dig her fingers into his hair to encourage him on.
Once she's achingly wet and he's hard and damp with sweat and pre-come, it doesn't matter as much, because that part seems to come more naturally to him - he knows just how to tease her, rubbing his hardness against her until she's begging him, running his hands down her sides and pressing his thumbs just slightly as they pass over her nipples, grasping her hips and lifting them slightly and letting his breath shudder and hitch as he enters her slowly, but it'll be months before he's learned her body enough not to need prompting in the beginning.
five.
She doesn't care about propriety. She's two months from graduation and she's tired of dressing and leaving his aparment at three in the morning. He's indulged her requests to be held after sex, and seems to enjoy curling around her from behind, still nude and infinitely gentle with an arm wrapped around her waist. But inevitably, as she begins to drift off, he'll shift his lips against her ear and remind her in a whisper what could be risked if it were noted that she was leaving his residence in the mornings.
She wants to wake up with him in the sunlight. They've been sleeping together for five months and he's never allowed her to stay til sunrise. Once she'd suggested they take a weekend together, somewhere no one would care about their comings and goings, but he'd looked at her calmly and reasonably pointed out that such a thing could be even more evident to the Board and the Admiralty. It's true that their friendship is no secret, and perhaps there are already suspicions of more, but she's two months from graduation. She doesn't have the energy to argue the ways they could make it work - making it look like a shared research trip, for example.
It's illogical. But she wants to know if she'd wake to find him watching her with that soft look in his eyes. In her fantasies the sun is in his hair and he brushes his fingernails against her cheek, leaning forward to kiss her and murmuring a good-morning and rolling forward to press his lean body against hers, holding her tightly while each part of her body awoke.
She tries to tell herself that his refusal to give in doesn't signify the same thing it did for the handful of boys and men who came before him. That it's reasonable, that he's doing it now so that they'll have a later together. It doesn't make it any easier, waking up the morning after alone even with the memory of him printed against her body.
and one.
Their first common ground was language, and true to that spirit he finds a thousand ways to show her his love - in subtle ways. Two months into their tour of the Enterprise, he takes out the lyre she knows his parents gave him when he was young, the ka’athyra, and silently plays to her for over an hour, all his attention focused on her even as the music of his lost homeland swirls through his fingers.
A month later, they are visiting their unconscious Captain in Sickbay after their second abysmally failed diplomatic mission. Doctor McCoy is in his office, but one of the nurses has pulled up chairs for them to sit at Kirk's bedside - he's expected to wake within the hour, and Spock has volunteered them to monitor him until then. His eyes never leave the biobed, but he reaches down almost-absently, takes her hand loosely in his, and brings it to his lips, kissing her fingertips gently.
Three months after that, they return from another supposedly-diplomatic mission during which she had briefly been forced to pretend serious injury so as not to be seen as a threat to their aggressors. He makes love to her wildly, desperately, and afterwards just holds her, breathing her distinctly unshowered must deeply as if it were sweet nectar.
When they've been on the Enterprise for eight months, she comes back to their shared quarters after a particularly difficult shift to find that he has somehow found the time to prepare an elaborate private dinner. He's burning her favorite incense, and later as they lie in bed he informs her that he has convinced the Captain to put in a request for four days of shore leave on a planet that harbors endangered species after their upcoming mission. He pauses slightly, and then adds softly that Brentalia will be in their summery season, during which time they estimate 97% of mornings to be sunny.
The next morning his comm buzzes before 0600. She wakes, groggy, as he clambers out of bed and moves to the far corner of the room to take the call. Kirk's voice cuts through her sleepy haze, sounding immensely irritated: "Spock, can you come to the bridge?" and she could swear she hears Spock shushing him as he moves quickly into the next room.
She drifts back to sleep, and when she wakes to her alarm an hour later, she is surprised to find Spock nestled around her in the spare space behind her on the bed. He kisses the back of her neck and allows her to turn over in his arms. On their bedside table is a new vase holding a single stem of an orange flower - one she recognizes instantly as Lt. Sulu's hybridized attempt to reproduce one of the plants native to Vulcan.
"Thought Kirk needed you," she says, yawning and snuggling into his warmth.
"I deemed my desire to remain with you to be greater than the need to fulfill his seeming inability to cope with early-morning malfunctions without my presence," he answers, and she laughs. He would deny it to the ends of the world but there's a slight smugness in his voice. As if he's well aware that he's just earned a morning orgasm or two.
Author: celebros aka magicdoyle
Rating: R for sexes
Pairing: Spock/Uhura
Warning: eh, fluff??
Summary: *points to title* Written for the kink meme.
Word Count: 2,189
Disclaimer: They not is be belonging to me. *hugs fanfic-likenesses of characters to chest*
one.
Gaila finally makes up her mind and tosses Nyota the darker shade of lipstick, and she turns to the mirror and has barely pressed it against her mouth when the comm sounds from the other room, the low buzz of a text-only message. She winces - she's already ten minutes later than she'd like to be; at this rate she won't have time to fix the back of her hair before Spock arrives - but she starts out to the other room only to find the green figure already hunched over the comm unit.
"Gaila," Nyota says, exasperated, but she's walking around the bed and she catches, suddenly, the look of subliminated horror on her roommate's face.
"What is it?"
"Uh," Gaila says, auburn eyebrows knitting together with the look that says she's afraid Nyota's about to throw something. She hands over the comm, wordless. Anxious, she glances down at the new message and freezes.
>> CMDR_SPOCK: Cadet Uhura, I regret to inform you that I am
unable to attend your specified social gathering as previously
intended. I have become engaged in work at the long-range sensor
lab and will be unable to leave until 2300 hours, as a number of
cadets have logged requests for replacements. I would be
amenable to engaging in the anticipated continuation of our
previous conversation at any of the Academy's hot beverage
establishments tomorrow morning, at a time convenient to you.
Gaila looks as if she's about to cry. Nyota, on the other hand, is furious. She almost throws the comm against the wall, but the she's not sure rear casing can take that again, so instead she goes to the bathroom and closes the tube of lipstick. Her roommate trails her anxiously.
"Nyota," she says softly, and she spins.
"Fifteen minutes," she says. "In all his brilliance, has it never occurred to him that keeping up my appearance takes longer than that?" She's spent the last two hours getting ready for the much-anticipated third date, and now she wants to rip off the ruffled turquoise dress and muss her hair and possibly tear out her carefully-made-up eyelashes.
"He's a man," Gaila says flatly, "and therefore an unappreciative moron."
"I wanted to kiss him," she responds, shucking the dress with an awkward shimmy and throwing it - Gaila catches it before it hits the floor, looking at her with a familiar mixed expression of attraction and pity. "And Gaila, please don't say there's always you, because I am not getting whatever variation of herpes Jim's given you this week." Gaila looks genuinely wounded for a moment. She sighs. "No, I don't -"
"I haven't given Jim oral in six weeks, for your information," Gaila says, lying back on her bed.
"That was totally uncalled-for," Nyota says, shaking her head, "I'm sorry, I just -"
"Expected him to be a little different from all the immature boys who've propositioned you in the past?" Gaila says gently, knowingly. "I'm not taking his side, but please bear in mind he probably has no idea what he's just done. Mention it in the morning."
"You think I'm getting coffee with him after that?" she asks, raising her eyebrows.
"No, I suppose you'd better tease him a little. Maybe cancel ten minutes in advance. He'll be disappointed, and then he'll realize..."
"He won't be disappointed, and anyway, that's so passive-aggressive. Hardly a display of my superior communications skills," she says.
Gaila looks at her coolly for a moment, and finally folds the dress and hangs it back in the closet. After a while, Nyota texts Spock back that she won't be able to make tomorrow; he doesn't answer, no doubt engrossed in a translation. Not long after, Colie comes by to pick up Gaila for the party, and Nyota finds herself donning a simpler dress and a lighter shade of lipstick. She'll be damned if she'll let relationship woes keep her away from her precious social time.
two.
"I've got it," Nyota says, palming the check as Spock reaches for it. He raises an eyebrow.
"I had intended to provide the necessary credits for both our meals," he says, rather firmly, and places his hand over hers. She can't help but tense slightly. It's cheating, this attempt to soften and distract her.
"No need," she says, slipping the check out from under his warm hand. "I was the one who chose the venue, after all - isn't it logical that I should be the one to pay?"
"My salary is more than sufficient for such expenses, whereas -"
"I've got plenty of money for eating out, Spock."
"I would appreciate if you would at least apportion the total sum to allow me to make use of my credits for the portion of the food and beverages that I consumed."
"There's no need," she says, as sweetly as she can as irritation stings at her. Has she made so little progress at establishing herself as an equal partner in her relationships? In the end all she can do is allow his compromise that he will return the favor in the future, and she's never been less pleased to plan a future date.
three.
Gaila had assured her that she'd never looked more stunning, but Spock greets her with only his almost-traditional remark that her appearance is aesthetically pleasing, and she has the impression he wouldn't even do that if he hadn't clinically observed it as a traditional courting practice. She hadn't expected him to acknowledge the sigificance of the three-month anniversary of their mutual acknowledgement of their relationship - she felt a little bit silly with her excitement over it. But...
It's is the first time he's seen her with her hair in anything but her formal style. Gaila and Colie had spent what seemed like hours with the old heat-curler, and her hair is arrayed now in elegant waves down the sides of her face, her eye shadow visibly dark green, matching her sleeveless off-one-shoulder wrap. The lip gloss is a perfect texture, not sticky or gritty, giving her mouth a soft sheen. She'd wanted... something more than this.
The music performance receives a standing ovation, but her heart's not in the clapping. Their late dinner is pleasant, too, and Spock kisses her on the street afterwards with especial abandon, husky and almost-breathless as he bids her good night, but some part of her wanted the verbal acknowledgement of the extra effort she'd made to look this way - for him.
four.
There are ways in which it's endearing, his ignorance about human sexuality, and while there are advantages to teaching him how to touch her, his lack of knowledge is also immensely frustrating. Granted, he has excuses that the majority of her previous boyfriends haven't had - namely, virginity - but it doesn't stop the disappointment she feels when he hesitates as he fingers her inexpertly, his finger slipping into her at entirely the wrong angle, as she has to guide his mouth up to her clit, dig her fingers into his hair to encourage him on.
Once she's achingly wet and he's hard and damp with sweat and pre-come, it doesn't matter as much, because that part seems to come more naturally to him - he knows just how to tease her, rubbing his hardness against her until she's begging him, running his hands down her sides and pressing his thumbs just slightly as they pass over her nipples, grasping her hips and lifting them slightly and letting his breath shudder and hitch as he enters her slowly, but it'll be months before he's learned her body enough not to need prompting in the beginning.
five.
She doesn't care about propriety. She's two months from graduation and she's tired of dressing and leaving his aparment at three in the morning. He's indulged her requests to be held after sex, and seems to enjoy curling around her from behind, still nude and infinitely gentle with an arm wrapped around her waist. But inevitably, as she begins to drift off, he'll shift his lips against her ear and remind her in a whisper what could be risked if it were noted that she was leaving his residence in the mornings.
She wants to wake up with him in the sunlight. They've been sleeping together for five months and he's never allowed her to stay til sunrise. Once she'd suggested they take a weekend together, somewhere no one would care about their comings and goings, but he'd looked at her calmly and reasonably pointed out that such a thing could be even more evident to the Board and the Admiralty. It's true that their friendship is no secret, and perhaps there are already suspicions of more, but she's two months from graduation. She doesn't have the energy to argue the ways they could make it work - making it look like a shared research trip, for example.
It's illogical. But she wants to know if she'd wake to find him watching her with that soft look in his eyes. In her fantasies the sun is in his hair and he brushes his fingernails against her cheek, leaning forward to kiss her and murmuring a good-morning and rolling forward to press his lean body against hers, holding her tightly while each part of her body awoke.
She tries to tell herself that his refusal to give in doesn't signify the same thing it did for the handful of boys and men who came before him. That it's reasonable, that he's doing it now so that they'll have a later together. It doesn't make it any easier, waking up the morning after alone even with the memory of him printed against her body.
and one.
Their first common ground was language, and true to that spirit he finds a thousand ways to show her his love - in subtle ways. Two months into their tour of the Enterprise, he takes out the lyre she knows his parents gave him when he was young, the ka’athyra, and silently plays to her for over an hour, all his attention focused on her even as the music of his lost homeland swirls through his fingers.
A month later, they are visiting their unconscious Captain in Sickbay after their second abysmally failed diplomatic mission. Doctor McCoy is in his office, but one of the nurses has pulled up chairs for them to sit at Kirk's bedside - he's expected to wake within the hour, and Spock has volunteered them to monitor him until then. His eyes never leave the biobed, but he reaches down almost-absently, takes her hand loosely in his, and brings it to his lips, kissing her fingertips gently.
Three months after that, they return from another supposedly-diplomatic mission during which she had briefly been forced to pretend serious injury so as not to be seen as a threat to their aggressors. He makes love to her wildly, desperately, and afterwards just holds her, breathing her distinctly unshowered must deeply as if it were sweet nectar.
When they've been on the Enterprise for eight months, she comes back to their shared quarters after a particularly difficult shift to find that he has somehow found the time to prepare an elaborate private dinner. He's burning her favorite incense, and later as they lie in bed he informs her that he has convinced the Captain to put in a request for four days of shore leave on a planet that harbors endangered species after their upcoming mission. He pauses slightly, and then adds softly that Brentalia will be in their summery season, during which time they estimate 97% of mornings to be sunny.
The next morning his comm buzzes before 0600. She wakes, groggy, as he clambers out of bed and moves to the far corner of the room to take the call. Kirk's voice cuts through her sleepy haze, sounding immensely irritated: "Spock, can you come to the bridge?" and she could swear she hears Spock shushing him as he moves quickly into the next room.
She drifts back to sleep, and when she wakes to her alarm an hour later, she is surprised to find Spock nestled around her in the spare space behind her on the bed. He kisses the back of her neck and allows her to turn over in his arms. On their bedside table is a new vase holding a single stem of an orange flower - one she recognizes instantly as Lt. Sulu's hybridized attempt to reproduce one of the plants native to Vulcan.
"Thought Kirk needed you," she says, yawning and snuggling into his warmth.
"I deemed my desire to remain with you to be greater than the need to fulfill his seeming inability to cope with early-morning malfunctions without my presence," he answers, and she laughs. He would deny it to the ends of the world but there's a slight smugness in his voice. As if he's well aware that he's just earned a morning orgasm or two.