Family 1/?
Jan. 1st, 2013 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceres_liberaTitle: Family 1/?
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceres_libera
Rating: R (for language and sexual expression)
Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, Spock/Uhura, others
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~3800 for this part
Characters: Established McCoy/Kirk, with appearances by a raft of ST:XI characters, and a few OCs.
Summary: Gaila has lost her family before. She will not lose another one, not without a fight.
Author’s Note: Happy New Year! One of my resolutions is to get myself back into the habit of writing after a too long fallow period. Switch verse, based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses. Family is the long-missing third story in the Switch-verse, and I don’t suppose that what happens in Fidelity (or Family II) , the upcoming fifth story, will make much sense otherwise. You don’t have to be familiar with the previous stories, but it will most likely help. This is a story written from Gaila’s POV. I am, of course, tempted to say that it will be between three and five parts, but ... I make no promises.
ETA This will update onto AO3 later today when I get home from the family gathering for which I'm currently late.
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Gaila might not believe in monogamy, but she did believe in happiness. She just could not believe that the two states could co-exist, despite all of her Terran friends aspirations to make them do so.
In her experience, which admittedly was observed and not lived, monogamy and happiness as co-factors were too volatile to be sustained: there was always a key differential, i.e., that the status of monogamy could only be maintained for far too short of a period for one partner, and far too long for the other.
In fact, from her observations – and if she hadn’t become an engineer, she might have become an anthropologist simply so that she could study Terrans and their confounding, fascinating behaviors -- she’d noted that monogamy inexorably led to strife, jealousy and all of its associated miseries, as predictably as the transits of the planets. However, like any good anthropologist, she accepted that her Terran friends had an evolutionary bias toward the pair bond, despite the fact that the advantage conveyed by it as the basis for a family structure had always been limited.
Of course, if she was honest with herself, a curious Terran turn of phrase that she found amusing despite the incomprehensibility of the possibility that one could be dishonest with one’s own self, she could admit that her own evolutionary adaptation as an Orion made her prejudiced against the pair bond. Or perhaps it was that she, like any Orion, was simply incapable of understanding the appeal of a permanent, exclusive pair bond. After all, any Orion knew that sex could be had, and quite happily, with a number of partners. And love and romance? That need not be reserved to one partner alone. There would always be favorites, of course, and it was only natural to share those things that gave pleasure with the ones who would most enjoy them. So, flowers and candles for one lover, and handcuffs and blindfolds for another, or a bit of both for each? As long as everyone was happy and loved and most importantly, satisfied, all was well.
But the idea of confining every sexual impulse to one relationship was … well, unnatural.
And for all that they seemed to idealize the pair bond, she wasn’t at all sure that it was healthy for her Terran friends, who had been so conditioned to desire it. After all, Terrans spoke of ‘falling’ in love, as if it were involuntary, and it seemed there was a certain truth to that notion – Spock had pointed her to the relevant science. Once she had understood the biochemistry of Terran pheromone emissions and their lifetime fertility cycles along with the role of pair bonding as an ethnobiological adaptation for the fostering of the young, she was able to discern that pair-bound couples did, in fact, share a complementary body chemistry. However, like all things, it was not a static situation, and the scent of the bond changed over time as it strengthened, deepened, and then, inevitably, fractured.
Nyota had told her that this was due to the youth of their colleagues, that for many of them, these relationships were a kind of practice for a deeper, more permanent bond. Conscious as she was of the affairs that supposedly permanently bonded and exclusive faculty members carried on with those who were not their partners, Gaila found this belief hard to reconcile with the facts. Spock had tried to explain to her the complexities of Terran ‘romance’ and psychology, but, in truth, they both found it perplexingly illogical. After all, what was romantic about deceit?
What Gaila found most amazing was that all of this deceit could occur without her Terran friends being the least bit aware of it. They were, for all intents and purposes, insensible to the scents that would have alerted them to the changes in their primary relationship.
Here, at last, Gaila thought that she had found her purpose, a way that she could pay back her Terran friends for their many kindnesses to her as a newcomer to their culture and society. She was therefore distressed when her Terran friends reacted with anger when informed them that a partner was separating from them, much less what occurred when she informed them of a partner’s ‘cheating’. This was extraordinarily confusing to her. How could her friends place such a premium on fidelity and then shun the knowledge of when infidelity had or was occurring?! Her only answer for this conundrum was that love, and particularly monogamy, made Terrans irrational.
But she had learned to keep her opinions, and her observations, to herself.
+
This did not mean, however, that she would not act.
Observation, however, was always first and foremost to any plan of action, as when her sweet Nyota -- who despite her sharp tongue truly was as dear to her as any of the sisters that Gaila had left behind – had begun to exhibit the signs and scents of a Terran falling in love. Up until that very point in their kinship, Nyota had displayed impeccably correct manners: she had flirted and taken partners where she willed, and all had been light and goodness – good for her complexion and circulation, good for her stress level – healthy.
But the scent that Nyota had begun to exude boded no good, Gaila was sure of it, and continued being sure of it until she smelled Commander Spock when he was near Nyota. His essence was different than Nyota’s, of course – not only was he male, he was a copper-based humanoid despite his mixed ancestry. In truth, she wasn’t exactly sure what she was smelling at first. She had little to compare it with: although she herself was copper-based, her people did not emit pheromones for pair bonding purposes, and her exposure to pair-bonded Vulcans was non-existent. Further complicating the matter was the fact that Vulcans could and did choose partners and make lifebonds for practical -- logical, rather than emotional -- reasons. Since it was hard for her to assess what she was smelling, she, like any good anthropologist, observed. And over time, as Spock became more and more attached to her Nyota, she discerned the evolution of his scent, comprehended the rise of his desire for her.
Although their state of monogamy still concerned her, there was some assurance in the serious manner in which Vulcans created bonds. Too seriously, in her opinion, but that was neither here nor there. Vulcans did not fall in love – they weighed the options, the pros and the cons, and only then created bonds. From her perspective, it was as ponderous a process of declaring love as the Terran way was precipitous, but the very nature of it somewhat appeased her fears.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that Nyota quietly vibrated with happiness and love day after day, and week after week, or that Spock seemed to dote on her in his own quiet, and surprisingly sweet, way. Perhaps it was the influence of his Terran mother that had made him the kind of lover who brought Nyota baskets of flowers from the surfaces of planets he went to on away missions, or purchased her texts of rare dialects for her to decipher for pleasure.
That was what Nyota wanted, and Gaila was happy for her pleasure, but none of that sweetness was really to Gaila’s taste. She’d always had an eye for, and a true appreciation of, the slightly wicked. That was why she and Jim had gotten on so well.
Jim was good in bed, and fun to be with, and a bit of trickster – and how humiliating was that, that he had tricked her -- but … she had considered all more than forgiven when she’d roused from drugged unconsciousness to the glorious sight of Jim’s Doctor bending over her. She was in pain, but she was alive and not forever lost in the wreckage of the Farragut. Her belief in her Terran friends had been vindicated, because she’d known that if anyone would find her, it would be Jim, who hid his sweetness from almost everyone. She had never told a soul, not even Nyota, about the tearful apologies he’d whispered into her hair when held her before she was transferred to the Potemkin on their way back to Earth. Because while Jim might be a little wicked, he was a fierce advocate for what he considered to be right, and she would always love that about him. Their sensibilities connected on other levels as well – they were both hackers and gamesters, and she had been known to participate in a brawl or two, or well, more, herself.
Yes, she and Jim were very alike, and not just because they both liked sex. For Gaila, that was like saying that she liked breathing, and not a personality attribute. No, the chief way that she and Jim intersected was very basic: he liked to be happy, he wanted to be happy and strove to achieve that goal. Coincidentally, his reach for happiness was, like hers, partly about defying those who’d brought misery into their early lives. There was an old Terran saying of which she was particularly fond that stated, “A life well-lived is the best revenge.” She intended that would be true, leaving all that she had known before for freedom and adventure and choice.
So, when Jim had paired off with the Doctor just before they set off on the Enterprise’s five-year mission? Gaila had been shocked.
Of all of her Terran friends, Jim had been the one who most behaved like an Orion, happily going from partner to partner while maintaining some key relationships. The universe was one big buffet of sensation, of scent and texture and joy – she couldn’t imagine limiting herself to one meal, much less one partner, something she’d thought that her adventurous Jim understood.
So, his change to monogamy was truly confounding. Even more confounding? There’d been no real change in Jim’s scent to tip her off – Jim had always been attached to his Doctor, even before they’d had sex – just the addition of the common smells of sex itself. What had changed was the manner in which Jim had been so quietly transformed by happiness. How he radiated like a sol star whenever his Doctor was near, after they became lovers. It didn’t matter if the Doctor was grumbling at Jim, or eating dinner in the mess with him and gesticulating with his fork, or standing next to Jim’s chair on the Bridge, Jim just shone whenever the man was around. It would be easy to say that she’d only seen a facsimile of Jim up until now, but that was too simplistic and not really true. In some way she could not define, Jim was somehow more himself now than he’d ever been before.
Some of that shine, at the very least, had to be sexual satisfaction, which was totally understandable. Gaila had always assumed that the Doctor would be an incredible lover, what with those hands, the smoldering promise in his eyes, that mouth and the air of brooding intensity that surrounded him. Couple all that with his powerful handsomeness, his profound knowledge of physiology, the deep growl of his voice and those hands (which were totally worth another mention) and well … she was only sorry that the Doctor wasn’t the type to indulge, as he would put in, in escapades. No, the Doctor was all intent and serious attention, and she shivered at the very thought of all his passionate regard focused upon her, as she was sure Jim did. Because the Doctor was the only one that Jim had ever looked at with a gaze of a certain intensity, no matter how much he might ‘sweet talk’ as the Doctor would say, ‘everything on two legs, and with fins and feathers besides’. But none of them were important, because the Doctor was the one with whom Jim wanted to bond.
More importantly, Gaila had known from the beginning that Jim had always been the focus of the Doctor’s intensity. The Doctor’s steadiness eased her agitation somewhat, although it did make her fearful to see Jim risking both his heart and his happiness on something as predictably ephemeral as monogamy. She knew how important it was to have people you could count on for beings like herself and Jim, and if he lost the Doctor’s love and support … she couldn’t bear to think about it. She, of all people knew what it meant to rebuild yourself from nothing, knew how lucky she’d been. Starfleet had given her more than a career and the sense of self-reliance that had not been bred into her in her collective -- it had given her Nyota and Jim, who she loved like sister and brother, friend and lover, for their tender hearts and fierce minds. It had brought her to the Enterprise, where she’d found the family that she’d never thought to have again. She loved them all, her second and most treasured family, from the pallid, volatile Scotty to sweet, and not so innocent, Chekov. She cherished Hikaru and his tender love for all things green, for the warm quietness that masked his warrior soul. But out of all of them, there were none that she loved more than Nyota and Jim, and those partners that made them happy, and whom she’d come to value for themselves, quiet, serious, Spock and Jim’s passionate Doctor.
That then -- that complacency that things would remain in stasis -- had been her first mistake.
+
Gaila entered the Officer’s Mess for her post-shift meal, set to coincide with what would be the Terran evening. The room was crowded, a welter of noise and scents making her feel momentarily vertiginous, a sensation that she had become familiar with over the years. Her day had been long, and she was tired, but she loved the ritual of the communal meal, even though she found that the confluence of smells significantly dimmed her appetite. Still, she had to eat to synthesize properly, so she would take some sustenance now, and some more nourishment in the lush verdancy of Hikaru’s section of the Botany lab before she retired to the comfort of her nest. She turned from the replicator and was overwhelmed by the sharp tang of anxiety that had risen like a high note above the other scents permeating the room. Her nostrils flaired and she centered on it, just as her eye was caught by the elder and younger Spock sitting across from each other at a small table. Her eyes narrowed as she watched, and she inhaled, wishing that she could isolate the words that they were saying to each other as easily as she could identify their essences.
“Gaila darlin’,” the Doctor said from above her, his essence a mixture of healthy Terran man, the meat he consumed regularly and the warm notes of wood from the alcohol that he preferred, and the subtle mixture of his body’s scent with Jim’s. He came and stood abreast of her, his eyes also traveling to the two Spocks. “I wouldn’t advise sitting over there.” He shook his head and made a demurring noise.
“I had no intention of doing so, Doctor Bones,” Gaila said. “Even had they not been …” she found herself at an uncommon loss for words.
“Whatever it is that they’re doin’,” the Doctor said in agreement, taking her tray, and indicating that she should walk ahead of him. “It doesn’t look real friendly.”
Gaila looked up at him. “Selek seems different to me this time, Doctor,” she said, then paused. “Is he ill? I know that he is not as aged as Vulcans usually become, but … “
“I don’t know, Gaila darlin’,” The Doctor guided her to a small, empty table on the opposite side of the room where it was quiet. Some of the engineers were having an especially volatile argument and the testosterone flaring was dizzying to her. She smiled at the Doctor’s back. He put down both of their trays, and continued speaking, now that he could be heard. “The other times when he’s come aboard, he’s sought me out for an exam or some such, but this time?”
The Doctor pulled out her chair for her and she smiled at him, pleased as ever with his courtly attentions. He really was very handsome, and so very kind, despite his grumpy posturing. She sighed. It was such a shame that he and Jim had succumbed to a monogamous life.
“I swear he’s staying away from me.” He sat down in his own seat opposite her, but his eyes were across the room and not on her.
“You are worried,” Gaila said with mild surprise.
The Doctor took a sip of the tea that he drank by the liter, and then made a face, before adding a minute amount of sweetener to it. “I saw Nyota earlier,” he said quietly. “She was distressed.”
Gaila raised an eyebrow. “I have not seen Nyota today,” she said slowly.
“Spock didn’t come to her last night,” the Doctor said in an undertone intended not to carry. “In fact, he didn’t come home a’tall.”
Gaila drew in a sharp breath, inhaling. Across the room, the argument grew stronger, and even louder. “He has not been unfaithful to Nyota,” she said certainly.
The Doctor stared at her, and leaned in to be heard. “Have you smelled an unfaithful Vulcan before?” he asked incredulously, scientific curiosity overcoming his typical good manners.
“Doctor,” Gaila smiled, quelling a nervous giggle, “—Bones,”
“Call me Leo, darlin’,” he said quietly, “I keep telling you – that’s what my family calls me.”
“Leo,” she whispered softly, around the lump of tears in her throat, “I know what Spock smells like when he desires something, and he does not bear that essence now.”
He nodded. “Our Spock,” he clarified.
She nodded.
“What does he smell like, then?” he asked.
She was silent for a long time, and then shook her head. “I do not know how to name it,” she said. “I only know that he is … anxious.”
“Anxious?” the Doctor said thoughtfully. “Anxious. About what?”
“I do not know,” she said, speaking as quietly as he was. “Since the Ambassador has come aboard …”
He nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s making me anxious, Gaila, and I don’t need any help in that department, thank you very much.” The Doctor paused. “And I can’t say that I’m happy about how he’s treating Nyota, either. What do you scent from the elder Spock?”
Gaila raised her head and followed Leo’s line of sight to the table where the two men sat, Spock’s posture rigid, the Ambassador’s impassive. They looked, of all things, like a father and son locked in disagreement. “I do not know him at all,” Gaila said. “He is not the same as our Spock.”
“No,” Leo said grimly. “And he ain’t the same as he used to be, either.” He turned his head to look at her. “This trip, if he isn’t with Spock, then he’s trying to talk to Jim.”
“About what?” Gaila asked.
“Jim won’t say,” Leo said, cutting through dinner somewhat more energetically than the piscean entrée required. “And I don’t like that,” he said, darkly. “A’tall. When it’s ship’s business, or universe-wrecking crises and the like, that’s fine. But this?” He took a mouthful and chewed before he looked up at her. “It ain’t about that, I guaran-damn-”
Across the room, a tray suddenly crashed to the floor and a welter of voices raised as the argument between the engineers resolved into an all-out brawl between half a dozen of them.
“Mother of God!” the Doctor said, and tapped his comm, even as he was standing up. “Security to the Mess, stat!” The Doctor was a man who was used to command, and he was on the move and yelling for the fighters to stand down with Gaila right behind him, heart pounding.
She passed two tables of ensigns arguing about what the argument was over, and Doctor Bones snapped at them both to “Keep quiet, you nitwits! And that’s an order!”
The men wrestling on the ground resisted their combined efforts to separate them, and they got no help from the members of their party who were alternating between yelling and crying.
“What in the name of God!” Doctor Bones said. “Hanlon!” He yelled at the large security chief. “A little help here? They’re trying to kill each other!”
She moved aside to let Hanlon and Giotto work their way into the scrum and looked for Spock, surprised that he hadn’t joined them to stop the affray, only to find that he was gone from the Mess. The seat he’d been sitting was pushed out from the table, not pushed back in, as was his wont. Gaila scanned the room but caught no sight of Spock, only a faint trail of scent that he’d left to the door, a high anxious tang in the even more redolent than usual room.
Gaila turned back to observe Spock’s supper companion. The Ambassador was not looking at her, or the brawl that was being broken up at her feet. Instead, he was staring stonily ahead, jaw set, eyes dark, impervious to what was happening right in front of him.
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Author:
ceres_liberaRating: R (for language and sexual expression)
Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, Spock/Uhura, others
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~3800 for this part
Characters: Established McCoy/Kirk, with appearances by a raft of ST:XI characters, and a few OCs.
Summary: Gaila has lost her family before. She will not lose another one, not without a fight.
Author’s Note: Happy New Year! One of my resolutions is to get myself back into the habit of writing after a too long fallow period. Switch verse, based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses. Family is the long-missing third story in the Switch-verse, and I don’t suppose that what happens in Fidelity (or Family II) , the upcoming fifth story, will make much sense otherwise. You don’t have to be familiar with the previous stories, but it will most likely help. This is a story written from Gaila’s POV. I am, of course, tempted to say that it will be between three and five parts, but ... I make no promises.
ETA This will update onto AO3 later today when I get home from the family gathering for which I'm currently late.
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Gaila might not believe in monogamy, but she did believe in happiness. She just could not believe that the two states could co-exist, despite all of her Terran friends aspirations to make them do so.
In her experience, which admittedly was observed and not lived, monogamy and happiness as co-factors were too volatile to be sustained: there was always a key differential, i.e., that the status of monogamy could only be maintained for far too short of a period for one partner, and far too long for the other.
In fact, from her observations – and if she hadn’t become an engineer, she might have become an anthropologist simply so that she could study Terrans and their confounding, fascinating behaviors -- she’d noted that monogamy inexorably led to strife, jealousy and all of its associated miseries, as predictably as the transits of the planets. However, like any good anthropologist, she accepted that her Terran friends had an evolutionary bias toward the pair bond, despite the fact that the advantage conveyed by it as the basis for a family structure had always been limited.
Of course, if she was honest with herself, a curious Terran turn of phrase that she found amusing despite the incomprehensibility of the possibility that one could be dishonest with one’s own self, she could admit that her own evolutionary adaptation as an Orion made her prejudiced against the pair bond. Or perhaps it was that she, like any Orion, was simply incapable of understanding the appeal of a permanent, exclusive pair bond. After all, any Orion knew that sex could be had, and quite happily, with a number of partners. And love and romance? That need not be reserved to one partner alone. There would always be favorites, of course, and it was only natural to share those things that gave pleasure with the ones who would most enjoy them. So, flowers and candles for one lover, and handcuffs and blindfolds for another, or a bit of both for each? As long as everyone was happy and loved and most importantly, satisfied, all was well.
But the idea of confining every sexual impulse to one relationship was … well, unnatural.
And for all that they seemed to idealize the pair bond, she wasn’t at all sure that it was healthy for her Terran friends, who had been so conditioned to desire it. After all, Terrans spoke of ‘falling’ in love, as if it were involuntary, and it seemed there was a certain truth to that notion – Spock had pointed her to the relevant science. Once she had understood the biochemistry of Terran pheromone emissions and their lifetime fertility cycles along with the role of pair bonding as an ethnobiological adaptation for the fostering of the young, she was able to discern that pair-bound couples did, in fact, share a complementary body chemistry. However, like all things, it was not a static situation, and the scent of the bond changed over time as it strengthened, deepened, and then, inevitably, fractured.
Nyota had told her that this was due to the youth of their colleagues, that for many of them, these relationships were a kind of practice for a deeper, more permanent bond. Conscious as she was of the affairs that supposedly permanently bonded and exclusive faculty members carried on with those who were not their partners, Gaila found this belief hard to reconcile with the facts. Spock had tried to explain to her the complexities of Terran ‘romance’ and psychology, but, in truth, they both found it perplexingly illogical. After all, what was romantic about deceit?
What Gaila found most amazing was that all of this deceit could occur without her Terran friends being the least bit aware of it. They were, for all intents and purposes, insensible to the scents that would have alerted them to the changes in their primary relationship.
Here, at last, Gaila thought that she had found her purpose, a way that she could pay back her Terran friends for their many kindnesses to her as a newcomer to their culture and society. She was therefore distressed when her Terran friends reacted with anger when informed them that a partner was separating from them, much less what occurred when she informed them of a partner’s ‘cheating’. This was extraordinarily confusing to her. How could her friends place such a premium on fidelity and then shun the knowledge of when infidelity had or was occurring?! Her only answer for this conundrum was that love, and particularly monogamy, made Terrans irrational.
But she had learned to keep her opinions, and her observations, to herself.
+
This did not mean, however, that she would not act.
Observation, however, was always first and foremost to any plan of action, as when her sweet Nyota -- who despite her sharp tongue truly was as dear to her as any of the sisters that Gaila had left behind – had begun to exhibit the signs and scents of a Terran falling in love. Up until that very point in their kinship, Nyota had displayed impeccably correct manners: she had flirted and taken partners where she willed, and all had been light and goodness – good for her complexion and circulation, good for her stress level – healthy.
But the scent that Nyota had begun to exude boded no good, Gaila was sure of it, and continued being sure of it until she smelled Commander Spock when he was near Nyota. His essence was different than Nyota’s, of course – not only was he male, he was a copper-based humanoid despite his mixed ancestry. In truth, she wasn’t exactly sure what she was smelling at first. She had little to compare it with: although she herself was copper-based, her people did not emit pheromones for pair bonding purposes, and her exposure to pair-bonded Vulcans was non-existent. Further complicating the matter was the fact that Vulcans could and did choose partners and make lifebonds for practical -- logical, rather than emotional -- reasons. Since it was hard for her to assess what she was smelling, she, like any good anthropologist, observed. And over time, as Spock became more and more attached to her Nyota, she discerned the evolution of his scent, comprehended the rise of his desire for her.
Although their state of monogamy still concerned her, there was some assurance in the serious manner in which Vulcans created bonds. Too seriously, in her opinion, but that was neither here nor there. Vulcans did not fall in love – they weighed the options, the pros and the cons, and only then created bonds. From her perspective, it was as ponderous a process of declaring love as the Terran way was precipitous, but the very nature of it somewhat appeased her fears.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that Nyota quietly vibrated with happiness and love day after day, and week after week, or that Spock seemed to dote on her in his own quiet, and surprisingly sweet, way. Perhaps it was the influence of his Terran mother that had made him the kind of lover who brought Nyota baskets of flowers from the surfaces of planets he went to on away missions, or purchased her texts of rare dialects for her to decipher for pleasure.
That was what Nyota wanted, and Gaila was happy for her pleasure, but none of that sweetness was really to Gaila’s taste. She’d always had an eye for, and a true appreciation of, the slightly wicked. That was why she and Jim had gotten on so well.
Jim was good in bed, and fun to be with, and a bit of trickster – and how humiliating was that, that he had tricked her -- but … she had considered all more than forgiven when she’d roused from drugged unconsciousness to the glorious sight of Jim’s Doctor bending over her. She was in pain, but she was alive and not forever lost in the wreckage of the Farragut. Her belief in her Terran friends had been vindicated, because she’d known that if anyone would find her, it would be Jim, who hid his sweetness from almost everyone. She had never told a soul, not even Nyota, about the tearful apologies he’d whispered into her hair when held her before she was transferred to the Potemkin on their way back to Earth. Because while Jim might be a little wicked, he was a fierce advocate for what he considered to be right, and she would always love that about him. Their sensibilities connected on other levels as well – they were both hackers and gamesters, and she had been known to participate in a brawl or two, or well, more, herself.
Yes, she and Jim were very alike, and not just because they both liked sex. For Gaila, that was like saying that she liked breathing, and not a personality attribute. No, the chief way that she and Jim intersected was very basic: he liked to be happy, he wanted to be happy and strove to achieve that goal. Coincidentally, his reach for happiness was, like hers, partly about defying those who’d brought misery into their early lives. There was an old Terran saying of which she was particularly fond that stated, “A life well-lived is the best revenge.” She intended that would be true, leaving all that she had known before for freedom and adventure and choice.
So, when Jim had paired off with the Doctor just before they set off on the Enterprise’s five-year mission? Gaila had been shocked.
Of all of her Terran friends, Jim had been the one who most behaved like an Orion, happily going from partner to partner while maintaining some key relationships. The universe was one big buffet of sensation, of scent and texture and joy – she couldn’t imagine limiting herself to one meal, much less one partner, something she’d thought that her adventurous Jim understood.
So, his change to monogamy was truly confounding. Even more confounding? There’d been no real change in Jim’s scent to tip her off – Jim had always been attached to his Doctor, even before they’d had sex – just the addition of the common smells of sex itself. What had changed was the manner in which Jim had been so quietly transformed by happiness. How he radiated like a sol star whenever his Doctor was near, after they became lovers. It didn’t matter if the Doctor was grumbling at Jim, or eating dinner in the mess with him and gesticulating with his fork, or standing next to Jim’s chair on the Bridge, Jim just shone whenever the man was around. It would be easy to say that she’d only seen a facsimile of Jim up until now, but that was too simplistic and not really true. In some way she could not define, Jim was somehow more himself now than he’d ever been before.
Some of that shine, at the very least, had to be sexual satisfaction, which was totally understandable. Gaila had always assumed that the Doctor would be an incredible lover, what with those hands, the smoldering promise in his eyes, that mouth and the air of brooding intensity that surrounded him. Couple all that with his powerful handsomeness, his profound knowledge of physiology, the deep growl of his voice and those hands (which were totally worth another mention) and well … she was only sorry that the Doctor wasn’t the type to indulge, as he would put in, in escapades. No, the Doctor was all intent and serious attention, and she shivered at the very thought of all his passionate regard focused upon her, as she was sure Jim did. Because the Doctor was the only one that Jim had ever looked at with a gaze of a certain intensity, no matter how much he might ‘sweet talk’ as the Doctor would say, ‘everything on two legs, and with fins and feathers besides’. But none of them were important, because the Doctor was the one with whom Jim wanted to bond.
More importantly, Gaila had known from the beginning that Jim had always been the focus of the Doctor’s intensity. The Doctor’s steadiness eased her agitation somewhat, although it did make her fearful to see Jim risking both his heart and his happiness on something as predictably ephemeral as monogamy. She knew how important it was to have people you could count on for beings like herself and Jim, and if he lost the Doctor’s love and support … she couldn’t bear to think about it. She, of all people knew what it meant to rebuild yourself from nothing, knew how lucky she’d been. Starfleet had given her more than a career and the sense of self-reliance that had not been bred into her in her collective -- it had given her Nyota and Jim, who she loved like sister and brother, friend and lover, for their tender hearts and fierce minds. It had brought her to the Enterprise, where she’d found the family that she’d never thought to have again. She loved them all, her second and most treasured family, from the pallid, volatile Scotty to sweet, and not so innocent, Chekov. She cherished Hikaru and his tender love for all things green, for the warm quietness that masked his warrior soul. But out of all of them, there were none that she loved more than Nyota and Jim, and those partners that made them happy, and whom she’d come to value for themselves, quiet, serious, Spock and Jim’s passionate Doctor.
That then -- that complacency that things would remain in stasis -- had been her first mistake.
+
Gaila entered the Officer’s Mess for her post-shift meal, set to coincide with what would be the Terran evening. The room was crowded, a welter of noise and scents making her feel momentarily vertiginous, a sensation that she had become familiar with over the years. Her day had been long, and she was tired, but she loved the ritual of the communal meal, even though she found that the confluence of smells significantly dimmed her appetite. Still, she had to eat to synthesize properly, so she would take some sustenance now, and some more nourishment in the lush verdancy of Hikaru’s section of the Botany lab before she retired to the comfort of her nest. She turned from the replicator and was overwhelmed by the sharp tang of anxiety that had risen like a high note above the other scents permeating the room. Her nostrils flaired and she centered on it, just as her eye was caught by the elder and younger Spock sitting across from each other at a small table. Her eyes narrowed as she watched, and she inhaled, wishing that she could isolate the words that they were saying to each other as easily as she could identify their essences.
“Gaila darlin’,” the Doctor said from above her, his essence a mixture of healthy Terran man, the meat he consumed regularly and the warm notes of wood from the alcohol that he preferred, and the subtle mixture of his body’s scent with Jim’s. He came and stood abreast of her, his eyes also traveling to the two Spocks. “I wouldn’t advise sitting over there.” He shook his head and made a demurring noise.
“I had no intention of doing so, Doctor Bones,” Gaila said. “Even had they not been …” she found herself at an uncommon loss for words.
“Whatever it is that they’re doin’,” the Doctor said in agreement, taking her tray, and indicating that she should walk ahead of him. “It doesn’t look real friendly.”
Gaila looked up at him. “Selek seems different to me this time, Doctor,” she said, then paused. “Is he ill? I know that he is not as aged as Vulcans usually become, but … “
“I don’t know, Gaila darlin’,” The Doctor guided her to a small, empty table on the opposite side of the room where it was quiet. Some of the engineers were having an especially volatile argument and the testosterone flaring was dizzying to her. She smiled at the Doctor’s back. He put down both of their trays, and continued speaking, now that he could be heard. “The other times when he’s come aboard, he’s sought me out for an exam or some such, but this time?”
The Doctor pulled out her chair for her and she smiled at him, pleased as ever with his courtly attentions. He really was very handsome, and so very kind, despite his grumpy posturing. She sighed. It was such a shame that he and Jim had succumbed to a monogamous life.
“I swear he’s staying away from me.” He sat down in his own seat opposite her, but his eyes were across the room and not on her.
“You are worried,” Gaila said with mild surprise.
The Doctor took a sip of the tea that he drank by the liter, and then made a face, before adding a minute amount of sweetener to it. “I saw Nyota earlier,” he said quietly. “She was distressed.”
Gaila raised an eyebrow. “I have not seen Nyota today,” she said slowly.
“Spock didn’t come to her last night,” the Doctor said in an undertone intended not to carry. “In fact, he didn’t come home a’tall.”
Gaila drew in a sharp breath, inhaling. Across the room, the argument grew stronger, and even louder. “He has not been unfaithful to Nyota,” she said certainly.
The Doctor stared at her, and leaned in to be heard. “Have you smelled an unfaithful Vulcan before?” he asked incredulously, scientific curiosity overcoming his typical good manners.
“Doctor,” Gaila smiled, quelling a nervous giggle, “—Bones,”
“Call me Leo, darlin’,” he said quietly, “I keep telling you – that’s what my family calls me.”
“Leo,” she whispered softly, around the lump of tears in her throat, “I know what Spock smells like when he desires something, and he does not bear that essence now.”
He nodded. “Our Spock,” he clarified.
She nodded.
“What does he smell like, then?” he asked.
She was silent for a long time, and then shook her head. “I do not know how to name it,” she said. “I only know that he is … anxious.”
“Anxious?” the Doctor said thoughtfully. “Anxious. About what?”
“I do not know,” she said, speaking as quietly as he was. “Since the Ambassador has come aboard …”
He nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s making me anxious, Gaila, and I don’t need any help in that department, thank you very much.” The Doctor paused. “And I can’t say that I’m happy about how he’s treating Nyota, either. What do you scent from the elder Spock?”
Gaila raised her head and followed Leo’s line of sight to the table where the two men sat, Spock’s posture rigid, the Ambassador’s impassive. They looked, of all things, like a father and son locked in disagreement. “I do not know him at all,” Gaila said. “He is not the same as our Spock.”
“No,” Leo said grimly. “And he ain’t the same as he used to be, either.” He turned his head to look at her. “This trip, if he isn’t with Spock, then he’s trying to talk to Jim.”
“About what?” Gaila asked.
“Jim won’t say,” Leo said, cutting through dinner somewhat more energetically than the piscean entrée required. “And I don’t like that,” he said, darkly. “A’tall. When it’s ship’s business, or universe-wrecking crises and the like, that’s fine. But this?” He took a mouthful and chewed before he looked up at her. “It ain’t about that, I guaran-damn-”
Across the room, a tray suddenly crashed to the floor and a welter of voices raised as the argument between the engineers resolved into an all-out brawl between half a dozen of them.
“Mother of God!” the Doctor said, and tapped his comm, even as he was standing up. “Security to the Mess, stat!” The Doctor was a man who was used to command, and he was on the move and yelling for the fighters to stand down with Gaila right behind him, heart pounding.
She passed two tables of ensigns arguing about what the argument was over, and Doctor Bones snapped at them both to “Keep quiet, you nitwits! And that’s an order!”
The men wrestling on the ground resisted their combined efforts to separate them, and they got no help from the members of their party who were alternating between yelling and crying.
“What in the name of God!” Doctor Bones said. “Hanlon!” He yelled at the large security chief. “A little help here? They’re trying to kill each other!”
She moved aside to let Hanlon and Giotto work their way into the scrum and looked for Spock, surprised that he hadn’t joined them to stop the affray, only to find that he was gone from the Mess. The seat he’d been sitting was pushed out from the table, not pushed back in, as was his wont. Gaila scanned the room but caught no sight of Spock, only a faint trail of scent that he’d left to the door, a high anxious tang in the even more redolent than usual room.
Gaila turned back to observe Spock’s supper companion. The Ambassador was not looking at her, or the brawl that was being broken up at her feet. Instead, he was staring stonily ahead, jaw set, eyes dark, impervious to what was happening right in front of him.
+
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Date: 2013-01-01 07:50 pm (UTC)I am going back to read your other verses so that I have a refreshed memory as to how this story ties in with the other verses
I have a good idea about what's going on from my memories of the prior verses,but I'd like to savior all of your wonderful words so later tonight I will have some very enjoyable reading to do.
Welcome back...I hope you can stay a while
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Date: 2013-01-13 09:38 pm (UTC)Thank you for your support.
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Date: 2013-01-13 11:20 pm (UTC)Glad your are more writer than lurker..though being either/both is fine...I tend to lurk..lol
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Date: 2013-01-01 08:15 pm (UTC)Excellent job. I can't wait to see what happens next!
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Date: 2013-01-13 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 11:33 pm (UTC)Simply awesome. Looking forward to more!
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Date: 2013-01-13 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-02 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-02 06:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:39 pm (UTC)So lovely to see you here, and thank you kindly!
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Date: 2013-01-02 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-03 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-04 02:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-04 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-04 10:19 am (UTC)Happy New Year to you too :)
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Date: 2013-01-13 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-04 12:14 pm (UTC)And Bones? I just love how you write Bones!
I can't wait for more!
"T"
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Date: 2013-01-13 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-04 07:47 pm (UTC)Switch was one of the first stories I found when I fell into this fandom a month or two ago. I really can't wait for more of this story. I really like your characterization of everyone, especially Gaila and Bones.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-05 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-06 05:10 am (UTC)i'm soooooo EXCITED for this fic. i've been waiting forever for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! just so glad. :D :D :D
and, as always, i love your gaila. she's just this perfect blend of wonderful and alien... which would be the point, yeah?
anyway, so glad you're back!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 09:52 pm (UTC)Hello, you! I hope that all is well with you and that you're healthy and prospering. It's nice to be back!
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Date: 2013-01-10 05:26 am (UTC)Happy New Year to us! :D
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Date: 2013-01-13 09:53 pm (UTC)