One Half the World
Title: One Half the World
Author: kitausu
Rating: PG
Summary: "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other." --Jane Austen
Notes: written for the LGBTfest prompt "Gaila is bisexual; she's not sure why people on Earth assume that's both common and accepted among Orions, because in her experience it's neither."
“So I hear it’s Terran custom to eat copious amounts of ice cream after a breakup, and I’ve helped you study enough that I know sucrose has the same effect on Vulcans as alcohol on Humans. So. I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone and bring you some Rocky Road. Let me in?”
Gaila hears what she thinks might be a defeated sigh coming from the other side of the door, but she knows T’Pring will deny it if she brings it up.
All the same, the door slides open, revealing T’Pring in all her tall, Vulcan glory, which is a feat at about, oh, 0130. She cut her hair short when she entered the Academy, but the Vulcan-standard style accentuates her regal features nicely. It can make her look damned scary, though, when she wants it to. And T’Pring is nothing if not deliberate.
And she stares at Gaila, deliberately, like Gaila’s some kind of fascinating bacteria under T’Pring’s microscope. And okay, Gaila’s wearing a sheer, black negligee, but she refuses to acknowledge that might have anything to do with it.
T’Pring’s eyebrow raises in question, and Gaila squirms. But T’Pring steps out of the way, and Gaila spills into the apartment, grinning. “Thanks. Nice place.”
T’Pring gives her a look. “You are aware, of course, that I have an examination on interspecies ethics at 0800.”
It isn’t a question. Gaila’s been to more xenocultural sensitivity seminars than any other cadet in history. It was only logical that she help T’Pring study. Or so she had claimed. Gaila knows it’s all about her sparkling personality and magnificent body. And she’s magnanimous enough not to even make T’Pring say it.
“Yeah,” Gaila says with a wave of her hand. “But Vulcans don’t need that much sleep. Besides, if you weren’t being all tight-lipped and emotionally stunted, you wouldn’t have to deal with me showing up in the middle of the night with comfort food. Which, I assume, is why the Xenolinguistics major is now the ex-girlfriend?”
T’Pring’s mouth sets in a thin line, and Gaila plops down on a cushion, folding in her legs in an approximation of the Vulcan meditation pose. She closes her eyes and waits until she hears the telltale, almost-silent tap on T’Pring’s feet on the floor. She cracks an eye open to see T’Pring sitting in full lotus position in front of her, studying the warming half-gallon of Rocky Road.
“Excellent,” Gaila purrs, grinning and opening her eyes. “I brought spoons!”
The look on T’Pring’s face is what Gaila and Jim like to call the Why-Do-I-Associate-With-You-Illogical-Human Look (Gaila sometimes likes to point out that, hey, she isn’t human either, but. Regardless, the look is pretty much the same).
“Oh, come on, you’ll love it,” Gaila says, spoon already positioned in front of her own mouth. “Besides, I’m sure Uhura’s out drinking with Jimmy tonight, so you might as well partake in the misery, right?”
“You are illogical,” T’Pring says slowly, but she takes a generous spoonful of the ice cream anyway. Gaila counts this as a victory for the Emotional. She really ought to call up that nice Betazoid girl down the hall from her dorm room and tell her about it. Later.
For now, she just leans back and watches T’Pring’s eyes close when the ice cream hits her tongue. Oh yes, victory. It is sweet.
And it all goes downhill from there.
The thing is, T’Pring drunk is kind of like McCoy drunk (a doctor thing? Yeah, must be a doctor thing). She isn’t like Gaila or Christine Chapel, loud and flirtatious; she isn’t like Jim, what with the way when Sulu takes bets whether he’ll get into a fight or pick someone up it’s always a fifty-fifty chance either way (T’Pring calculated it); she isn’t like Nyota, who goes into riot girl mode. She’s a quiet drunk, not so much losing control as letting her emotionless façade fade a little at the edges.
Gaila isn’t quite sure when things got all serious around here, but they did, and quick.
“When Spock and I dissolved our link, I believed I would bond to a young man named Stonn,” T’Pring is saying. Somewhere between their first bite of Rocky Road and this statement, Gaila and T’Pring migrated to the bed. (It’s bloody queen-sized. Gaila doesn’t know how T’Pring affords this.) Gaila is curled up on one side while T’Pring-on her back, all ramrod-straight and Vulcan, still-is staring at the ceiling.
Gaila sits up then, barely managing to avoid knocking over the almost-finished carton of Rocky Road. “Hold on. You? Hardcore butch lesbian Lieutenant T’Pring of Vulcan. Had a boyfriend?”
T’Pring stiffens. (Yeah, those sensitivity seminars? Didn’t really help much.)
“It was… An unfortunate decision on my part. I was studying at the Vulcan Science Academy then, theoretical physics, at my father’s pressing. It took me a year to stop ignoring logic and my own katra. I explained to Stonn that I was ko-ka-ashausu, and I came to the Academy.” It’s more than Gaila’s ever heard from T’Pring-outside of a lecture-at one time. It seems to drain her, if the way she sinks even further into the mattress is any indication.
“Ko-ka-ashausu,” Gaila repeats, softly. “That is the word for it in Vulcan? For lesbian?”
“Affirmative. It has come to mean bisexual as well, or possibly transgendered depending on the individual.”
Gaila sits up even straighter, eyes boring into T’Pring’s. “Do you know how amazing that is?” she asks. T’Pring’s raised eyebrow asks her question for her.
Gaila nods. “No, really. That you have a word for it. Not as many as Terran English or even Standard, but still.” She pauses, loose red curls draping over her face as she traces patterns in the sheets. “You’d think, for all the sex-related words in Orion-24,203 if you’re wondering-there isn’t a single one for… Orion men don’t get off on two women together the way Terran men do. Orions like to possess. To take. There isn’t even a word for it-homosexual, bisexual, trans, pansexual, anything.”
T’Pring watches her, not even an eyebrow conveying any feeling. It’s a little disconcerting.
“They called us thana kolari. The professors here will tell you it means ‘Extended Orion,’ that it’s something to do with colonies. But it’s more than that. It means ‘outsider.’ One who is lost to the ways of Orion. I am not ko-ka-ashausu, T’Pring. I am not bisexual. No, I find pleasure in both women and men. I am thana kolari-an abomination.”
Gaila slides toward the edge of the bed, feeling hollow, as if she has drained all emotion with her words. She twists to pick up the melted ice cream and go when she feels a slim, elegant hand catch her wrist, prying it away from the carton. T’Pring’s eyes lock on hers as she folds all of Gaila’s fingers back save her first two and presses her own fingers to Gaila’s in mirror image.
“This is how we kiss on Vulcan,” T’Pring says, deliberately as always. Gaila inhales sharply. “It is a colder, more static form of amorous physical contact than the Terran kiss. It allows one control over one’s emotional response, allows one to either project or keep one’s feelings behind mental walls. This is necessary for Vulcans, but Humans find it too unemotional, it seems.”
T’Pring doesn’t pull her hand away. Gaila can feel the pain of Nyota’s leaving, just under the skin. She understands.
“She needs something bigger. Someone who can give her more than I am capable of. I understand this.” Understanding doesn’t calm the hurt. She doesn’t have to say it. Gaila knows.
“You are no abomination for what you are. And I cannot apologize for being Vulcan, even to the one I… care for.”
Gaila leans down, presses her lips to T’Pring’s. She feels T’Pring stiffen under the sudden contact, then relax, not so much kissing back as giving reassurance.
Yes, Gaila almost hears through the touch. You and I are. And that is good.