Fic: acclimatized
Title: Acclimatized
Author: witblogi
Fandom: STAR TREK
Beta: wyntreaurora
Pairings: Spock/Uhura
Rating: PG (13 if you want to get ban hammer on suggestiveness)
Words: ~2000
Warnings: skimpy starfleet bathing suits, adorable spock freckles the usual
Summary: Uhura never thought she would be watching water dripping from a half Vulcan while treading warm pink water during shore leave. Of course, she never thought she would take up spelunking in Starfleet either and yet here she was.
Notes: written for where_no_woman 's Uhura is awesome fest. Prompt: Spock and Uhura on shore leave. She sees him coming out of a pool/lake/ocean in just his bathing suit and then proceeds to drag him back to their hotel room for sex. Sorry, no hotel made it in D:
The sea-water dripped out of his hair and trickled down the side of his face. He didn’t seem to notice, fascinated as we was by the readings his portable scanner was displaying.
Uhura never thought she would be watching water dripping from a half Vulcan while treading warm pink water during shore leave. Of course, she never thought she would take up spelunking in Starfleet either and yet here she was.
Many things in their relationship had taken her by surprise, but maybe none so much as their shared love of the outdoors.
It had all started during a field training exercise in her first year. As a junior faculty member Commander Spock was assigned to accompany and supervise one of the exercises per semester. Usually non-humanoid instructors were paired to Earth climate zones that best matched that of their home world. Seeing Spock board the shuttlecraft Uhura knew they were headed into the desert. It was sheer coincidence when they disembarked the shuttlecraft and Spock began half shouting over their whipping winds to them their assignment she recognized the far west ridge.
They were in Africa then, she knew the sands here, the weather here, the animals, the sounds of the goddess at work. But it still wasn’t easy, collecting their checkpoint flags and compiling their data readings to make decisions while a sand storm brewed and a Vulcan watched nearby, hood drawn up over his head, eyes shining under their second lid-protected from the sand.
But she did what she could to help the group, wrapped in her own scarf and hood. What little she could offer by ways of home-soil advantage was carefully documented and taken into account while they were being awarded their grades. She knew it was silly, but the small informal comments tucked into her assessment about her admirable performance warmed her heart just a tad.
By the time her third year rolled around she had just one exercise left to complete, the aquatic sectional. The group in the shuttle was larger than usual, and rowdy, all mostly friends by now. The primary instructor was Endukian, Dr. Sal-Nkic, an amphibian humanoid with sleek green-blue scales and sharp yellow eyes. However, due to the size of this group a secondary instructor was assigned - Commander Spock.
Uhura knew what the Starfleet issued bathing suits looked like. Just as inappropriate as the other uniforms, too tight and too small but she was a professional and she wasn’t about to let a small somewhat distressing attraction to her supervisor and advanced phonology instructor get in her way.
The landing point was a rocky cove somewhere in South America. Departing the shuttle the tension was palpable among the cadets as their instructions were given and they were ordered to shuck their outer clothing and stow it into their survival packs. They were split into two camps one with Sal-Nkic and one with Spock. Uhura of course was last to be sorted and stuck in the secondary camp, with Spock.
She tried to focus on getting her pack properly sorted and her knife holster situated comfortably on her ankle and not watch the group stripping down. She tested her breather and the temperature of the water - moderately warm- her compass and her earpiece. She resolutely did not look to where slightly green tinged flesh was being carefully exposed to the cheerful sun’s rays.
The tension between the cadets mostly dissipated by the time they hauled their waterlogged behinds out of the sea and into a sandy cove. They were now all used to seeing each other in their truly ridiculous blue, maroon and gold tinted shorts and bikinis. Uhura was at least a little more relaxed and joked with some of the other girls in the group she was glad Cadet Kirk had already completed his aquatic training. Uhura had been fortunate enough to only have to force being in his presence in the field for the Tundra expedition (He had been an inspiring leader and risked frostbite to rescue another cadet who had forgotten training protocol and taken off one of his mittens- but that wasn’t the point.).
Once a fire had been lit and Uhura had slipped into one of the male operation cadet’s discarded tunic she finally relaxed enough to look their commanding officer in the eye once again. No longer wet, Spock was eating at a distance from the rest of them atop a smaller cliff formation. Feeling bold and curious Uhura slipped away from the others, bringing her canteen and climbing up after him.
“Cadet.”
“Commander.” She perched upon the jagged peak beside him, noting his re-donned black trousers and Starfleet thermal shirt.
“Permission to speak freely, Sir?”
Spock let his dark eyes slide from the orange pink horizon to her face. He dipped his head fractionally.
“I thought non-terran instructors were only assigned to their regionally preferred habitats.” She spun the top off her canteen.
“That is the generally accepted rule unless a specifically indicated change of locales is requested.” Spock folded his arms over his chest, tucking his hands against his body. Uhura tipped her head back and drank.
“Is that what you did? Request the aquatic assignment?” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“No.” He looked at her again. “As I am half human I am obligated to attend all geographic regions.”
She sat, aching from the swim, light headed from the sun, in another cadet’s shirt, a diving knife strapped to her ankle and stared at him. For the first time the larger than life Commander full of power fizzled away and he was just…Spock. His hair had a barely noticeable wave in it from where it had dried naturally and across his cheeks was the slightest beginnings of mossy freckles brought to the surface by the sun.
“Although, the same rule applies to expeditions that do not agree to my Vulcan heritage. My own tundra training I completed as a cadet is something I never wish to repeat,” he added dryly, his lips tilting ever so gently as the breeze floated over them.
She grinned and capped her canteen, taking in the full shape of his face and shadow along his jaw.
“Okay.” She pushed into a crouch. “That’s all.” She leapt lightly down to the sand and returned to the others without looking back.
The next morning however, when they removed their clothing once more to make the journey back to the shuttle site she made no pretenses of keeping her gaze to herself. Spock raised an eyebrow in her direction while she twirled her knife and flicked her compass open and closed.
A strange friendship bloomed between them back on campus, fueled by those fleeting moments on the rocks in the cove. Never let it be said that Uhura was a woman afraid to ask for what she wanted. They went hiking, biking, diving again, even one memorable Sunday, rock climbing although Spock noted it was a particularly illogical form of physical activity.
The romance however, the actual relationship, hadn’t taken a firm hold of them until they were in space, watching Vulcan being sucked into nothingness, until she felt her heart skip a beat in time with his.
By that point it wasn’t strictly against regulations to be involved with a senior officer. The biggest factor in the whole thing was ironically their commanding officer’s approval. Kirk had found the whole situation endlessly amusing, that he had the final say in if they could be a couple aboard his boat.
It was still unnatural, Uhura had said, that Kirk was a captain and a strangely good one at that. But luckily he had seen their maturity and possibly been influenced by the bruises that had decorated his throat for a good week and had granted them the small concession of being filed as an official Starfleet sanctioned romantic entanglement.
Mainly it meant shared shore leave. Further chances to scale more terrain with Spock, dive deeper into even more coves, and allow her to tread pink water and watch droplets dribble from his hair into his eyes.
He flicked his hair reflexively to the side and continued working sopping fingers against the controls of his scanner. He was working, sadly, collecting geological data beneath the surface of the sea that the scanners couldn’t reach for the Enterprise in orbit. But at least they were out, together, enjoying the strange periwinkle sky and red sand beaches. Her knife, the same one that had accompanied her on their first aquatic expedition together was tucked into a holder at her hips and her hands were full of her own prize. Shells. Large uniquely shaped conch like shells that gleamed in the sunlight at the surface.
Hauling the mesh bag close, she turned towards the beach.
“I’m headed in. Don’t lose track of time and spend your entire shore leave getting pruney looking at rocks,” she warned him pushing out towards the shallow waters where she could wade the rest of the way to their small set up of gear.
“I am incapable of ‘losing track of time’.”
She mouthed the words along with him and rolled her eyes but smiled and continued to swim away enjoying the warmth of the waters and the feeling of the smooth rocks beneath her feet.
On the beach she dried quickly in the heat of the sun and worked on properly cleaning out her shells with sonic amplifiers and a bit of scraping with her knife. Unlike Spock, Uhura was very capable of losing track of time and by the time she had almost finished with her third shell the sun hung low and swollen in the sky.
It was pure coincidence that she looked up just as Spock emerged from the sea, the surf crashing against the backs of his legs as he waded out. She never got tired of looking at him walking towards her, knowing that she was his final destination. It didn’t hurt he was dripping wet, a sight she had denied herself only a few fleeting years ago. The Starfleet swimming gear hadn’t become any more respectable and she took the moment to enjoy the view they were affording her.
When he finally stood before her, feet covered with red sand and started stowing his scanning gear she leaned back onto her elbows and tipped her head to continue observing him.
“You are violating several Starfleet uniform regulations,” he said finally giving her a once over while he took his towel from another bag and wiped down his face.
Uhura glanced down at herself. She had always had a penchant for stealing other peoples clothing. This time it was Spock’s blue tunic the commander stripes gleaming against her forearms where she’d pushed the sleeves up.
“This is a fairly secluded section of the beach isn’t it?” she asked, although she knew it was. They had had to climb several rock formations to find it, perfectly situated away from prying eyes and on the edge of the cliff basin that made up the sea floor.
“A Starfleet officer in designated uniform is expected to perform in any situation they are needed to the specifications of their rank and training. Shore leave is not exempt from this protocol.” He quipped regulations at her, but his tone was lacking his usual frost and his posture its sharpness. He was teasing her.
“Well, we can’t have that.” She watched him lower himself into the sand beside her. In the light his eyes were stunningly rich and brown. “I think the only real answer here is to just correct the variables.”
“I could bestow upon you a promotion, but the training required to be a life sciences officer would not suit our immediate need. The only remaining solution is to remove the uniform.”
Uhura smiled cheerfully at him, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks a lulling soundtrack to their conversation. Her hand twitched out touching the now mostly dry scraps of dark red-purple fabric beside her.
“What if I already took off my swimwear?”
Spock’s gaze darted from where her hand had led it back to her face with admirable speed and focus.
“Starfleet has no regulations regarding civilian dress. Nudity is allowed.”
“So what are you waiting for?”
--
Perhaps you'd like more of my fiction: Here.
Author: witblogi
Fandom: STAR TREK
Beta: wyntreaurora
Pairings: Spock/Uhura
Rating: PG (13 if you want to get ban hammer on suggestiveness)
Words: ~2000
Warnings: skimpy starfleet bathing suits, adorable spock freckles the usual
Summary: Uhura never thought she would be watching water dripping from a half Vulcan while treading warm pink water during shore leave. Of course, she never thought she would take up spelunking in Starfleet either and yet here she was.
Notes: written for where_no_woman 's Uhura is awesome fest. Prompt: Spock and Uhura on shore leave. She sees him coming out of a pool/lake/ocean in just his bathing suit and then proceeds to drag him back to their hotel room for sex. Sorry, no hotel made it in D:
The sea-water dripped out of his hair and trickled down the side of his face. He didn’t seem to notice, fascinated as we was by the readings his portable scanner was displaying.
Uhura never thought she would be watching water dripping from a half Vulcan while treading warm pink water during shore leave. Of course, she never thought she would take up spelunking in Starfleet either and yet here she was.
Many things in their relationship had taken her by surprise, but maybe none so much as their shared love of the outdoors.
It had all started during a field training exercise in her first year. As a junior faculty member Commander Spock was assigned to accompany and supervise one of the exercises per semester. Usually non-humanoid instructors were paired to Earth climate zones that best matched that of their home world. Seeing Spock board the shuttlecraft Uhura knew they were headed into the desert. It was sheer coincidence when they disembarked the shuttlecraft and Spock began half shouting over their whipping winds to them their assignment she recognized the far west ridge.
They were in Africa then, she knew the sands here, the weather here, the animals, the sounds of the goddess at work. But it still wasn’t easy, collecting their checkpoint flags and compiling their data readings to make decisions while a sand storm brewed and a Vulcan watched nearby, hood drawn up over his head, eyes shining under their second lid-protected from the sand.
But she did what she could to help the group, wrapped in her own scarf and hood. What little she could offer by ways of home-soil advantage was carefully documented and taken into account while they were being awarded their grades. She knew it was silly, but the small informal comments tucked into her assessment about her admirable performance warmed her heart just a tad.
By the time her third year rolled around she had just one exercise left to complete, the aquatic sectional. The group in the shuttle was larger than usual, and rowdy, all mostly friends by now. The primary instructor was Endukian, Dr. Sal-Nkic, an amphibian humanoid with sleek green-blue scales and sharp yellow eyes. However, due to the size of this group a secondary instructor was assigned - Commander Spock.
Uhura knew what the Starfleet issued bathing suits looked like. Just as inappropriate as the other uniforms, too tight and too small but she was a professional and she wasn’t about to let a small somewhat distressing attraction to her supervisor and advanced phonology instructor get in her way.
The landing point was a rocky cove somewhere in South America. Departing the shuttle the tension was palpable among the cadets as their instructions were given and they were ordered to shuck their outer clothing and stow it into their survival packs. They were split into two camps one with Sal-Nkic and one with Spock. Uhura of course was last to be sorted and stuck in the secondary camp, with Spock.
She tried to focus on getting her pack properly sorted and her knife holster situated comfortably on her ankle and not watch the group stripping down. She tested her breather and the temperature of the water - moderately warm- her compass and her earpiece. She resolutely did not look to where slightly green tinged flesh was being carefully exposed to the cheerful sun’s rays.
The tension between the cadets mostly dissipated by the time they hauled their waterlogged behinds out of the sea and into a sandy cove. They were now all used to seeing each other in their truly ridiculous blue, maroon and gold tinted shorts and bikinis. Uhura was at least a little more relaxed and joked with some of the other girls in the group she was glad Cadet Kirk had already completed his aquatic training. Uhura had been fortunate enough to only have to force being in his presence in the field for the Tundra expedition (He had been an inspiring leader and risked frostbite to rescue another cadet who had forgotten training protocol and taken off one of his mittens- but that wasn’t the point.).
Once a fire had been lit and Uhura had slipped into one of the male operation cadet’s discarded tunic she finally relaxed enough to look their commanding officer in the eye once again. No longer wet, Spock was eating at a distance from the rest of them atop a smaller cliff formation. Feeling bold and curious Uhura slipped away from the others, bringing her canteen and climbing up after him.
“Cadet.”
“Commander.” She perched upon the jagged peak beside him, noting his re-donned black trousers and Starfleet thermal shirt.
“Permission to speak freely, Sir?”
Spock let his dark eyes slide from the orange pink horizon to her face. He dipped his head fractionally.
“I thought non-terran instructors were only assigned to their regionally preferred habitats.” She spun the top off her canteen.
“That is the generally accepted rule unless a specifically indicated change of locales is requested.” Spock folded his arms over his chest, tucking his hands against his body. Uhura tipped her head back and drank.
“Is that what you did? Request the aquatic assignment?” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“No.” He looked at her again. “As I am half human I am obligated to attend all geographic regions.”
She sat, aching from the swim, light headed from the sun, in another cadet’s shirt, a diving knife strapped to her ankle and stared at him. For the first time the larger than life Commander full of power fizzled away and he was just…Spock. His hair had a barely noticeable wave in it from where it had dried naturally and across his cheeks was the slightest beginnings of mossy freckles brought to the surface by the sun.
“Although, the same rule applies to expeditions that do not agree to my Vulcan heritage. My own tundra training I completed as a cadet is something I never wish to repeat,” he added dryly, his lips tilting ever so gently as the breeze floated over them.
She grinned and capped her canteen, taking in the full shape of his face and shadow along his jaw.
“Okay.” She pushed into a crouch. “That’s all.” She leapt lightly down to the sand and returned to the others without looking back.
The next morning however, when they removed their clothing once more to make the journey back to the shuttle site she made no pretenses of keeping her gaze to herself. Spock raised an eyebrow in her direction while she twirled her knife and flicked her compass open and closed.
A strange friendship bloomed between them back on campus, fueled by those fleeting moments on the rocks in the cove. Never let it be said that Uhura was a woman afraid to ask for what she wanted. They went hiking, biking, diving again, even one memorable Sunday, rock climbing although Spock noted it was a particularly illogical form of physical activity.
The romance however, the actual relationship, hadn’t taken a firm hold of them until they were in space, watching Vulcan being sucked into nothingness, until she felt her heart skip a beat in time with his.
By that point it wasn’t strictly against regulations to be involved with a senior officer. The biggest factor in the whole thing was ironically their commanding officer’s approval. Kirk had found the whole situation endlessly amusing, that he had the final say in if they could be a couple aboard his boat.
It was still unnatural, Uhura had said, that Kirk was a captain and a strangely good one at that. But luckily he had seen their maturity and possibly been influenced by the bruises that had decorated his throat for a good week and had granted them the small concession of being filed as an official Starfleet sanctioned romantic entanglement.
Mainly it meant shared shore leave. Further chances to scale more terrain with Spock, dive deeper into even more coves, and allow her to tread pink water and watch droplets dribble from his hair into his eyes.
He flicked his hair reflexively to the side and continued working sopping fingers against the controls of his scanner. He was working, sadly, collecting geological data beneath the surface of the sea that the scanners couldn’t reach for the Enterprise in orbit. But at least they were out, together, enjoying the strange periwinkle sky and red sand beaches. Her knife, the same one that had accompanied her on their first aquatic expedition together was tucked into a holder at her hips and her hands were full of her own prize. Shells. Large uniquely shaped conch like shells that gleamed in the sunlight at the surface.
Hauling the mesh bag close, she turned towards the beach.
“I’m headed in. Don’t lose track of time and spend your entire shore leave getting pruney looking at rocks,” she warned him pushing out towards the shallow waters where she could wade the rest of the way to their small set up of gear.
“I am incapable of ‘losing track of time’.”
She mouthed the words along with him and rolled her eyes but smiled and continued to swim away enjoying the warmth of the waters and the feeling of the smooth rocks beneath her feet.
On the beach she dried quickly in the heat of the sun and worked on properly cleaning out her shells with sonic amplifiers and a bit of scraping with her knife. Unlike Spock, Uhura was very capable of losing track of time and by the time she had almost finished with her third shell the sun hung low and swollen in the sky.
It was pure coincidence that she looked up just as Spock emerged from the sea, the surf crashing against the backs of his legs as he waded out. She never got tired of looking at him walking towards her, knowing that she was his final destination. It didn’t hurt he was dripping wet, a sight she had denied herself only a few fleeting years ago. The Starfleet swimming gear hadn’t become any more respectable and she took the moment to enjoy the view they were affording her.
When he finally stood before her, feet covered with red sand and started stowing his scanning gear she leaned back onto her elbows and tipped her head to continue observing him.
“You are violating several Starfleet uniform regulations,” he said finally giving her a once over while he took his towel from another bag and wiped down his face.
Uhura glanced down at herself. She had always had a penchant for stealing other peoples clothing. This time it was Spock’s blue tunic the commander stripes gleaming against her forearms where she’d pushed the sleeves up.
“This is a fairly secluded section of the beach isn’t it?” she asked, although she knew it was. They had had to climb several rock formations to find it, perfectly situated away from prying eyes and on the edge of the cliff basin that made up the sea floor.
“A Starfleet officer in designated uniform is expected to perform in any situation they are needed to the specifications of their rank and training. Shore leave is not exempt from this protocol.” He quipped regulations at her, but his tone was lacking his usual frost and his posture its sharpness. He was teasing her.
“Well, we can’t have that.” She watched him lower himself into the sand beside her. In the light his eyes were stunningly rich and brown. “I think the only real answer here is to just correct the variables.”
“I could bestow upon you a promotion, but the training required to be a life sciences officer would not suit our immediate need. The only remaining solution is to remove the uniform.”
Uhura smiled cheerfully at him, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks a lulling soundtrack to their conversation. Her hand twitched out touching the now mostly dry scraps of dark red-purple fabric beside her.
“What if I already took off my swimwear?”
Spock’s gaze darted from where her hand had led it back to her face with admirable speed and focus.
“Starfleet has no regulations regarding civilian dress. Nudity is allowed.”
“So what are you waiting for?”
--
Perhaps you'd like more of my fiction: Here.