FIC: Family 2/? (R)
Jan. 13th, 2013 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceres_liberaTitle: Family 2/?
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: ~4900 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: So … a bit more difficult to get back in the swing of writing when work is a bit of a disaster, but still … better late than never! As before, I note that 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, and will likely be 2-3 more parts. I think.
+
Gaila was happy to enter the Botany Bay, to leave the tense and silent hallways of Enterprise behind. It was tangible, this tension, not like scent, but like a cold draft that kept brushing against her skin.
She was being metaphorical, of course. The air circulation systems on the Enterprise, and its soft- and hardware, were absolutely superior. She dared anyone to say anything negative about their performance to her.
But still, the metaphor held.
She engaged the do not disturb force field once inside the sector that was Hikaru’s domain. Technically, she was trespassing, but Hikaru had given her the codes long ago, although she had never before used them. But that had been before tonight, before everything that had happened in the Mess, and later in Sickbay … she shivered.
“You’re cold,” Hikaru said from behind her, putting his hand on her shoulder, and rubbing down her arm “Computer, raise ambient temperature to 30 degrees Celsius in Sector L-5.”
She turned and smiled at her friend, patting his sweet face. “You are always so thoughtful.”
Hikaru looked at her with an assessing gaze in his dark eyes, “Are you getting sick, G? I heard you put the dnd on”—He tilted his head, “You don’t usually want to be alone.”
She shook her head, and pursed her lips at the push of the tears that she felt rising inside, shocked and astonished that they were so close to overspilling. Orions did not cry, would not waste sacred water over such minor trivialities… yet, a small sob escaped her.
“Gaila,” Hikaru’s voice was concerned and surprised as he reached for her, pulling her into a loose embrace.
She allowed it, despite the fact that her current emotions made her feel weak and stupid, something Orion women never were … why was she feeling like this?
“What happened?” Hikaru’s voice was tender.
She sighed. She hated when men treated her like she was a fragile flower. It only revealed them as foolish, even when they were not Bound. “Oh, Hikaru,” she began. “Sorensen and b’Orluf got into a terrible fight in the Mess.”
“What?! They’re best friends!”
“I know,” Gaila said tightly, pulling back, and wiping at her eyes so she could pace. She was so restless. “But they did, and it was terrible! They were fighting verbally at first, and then, it just …” she made an explosive gesture, “and then the whole table was yelling and then they were all hitting each other.”
“Gaila,” Hikaru said, “are you sure?”
“Of course, I am sure,” she snapped at him, and to her horror, felt the tears well up again. “I still have Sorensen’s blood on my pants.” She pushed them down, leaving her legs bare but her genitals covered in deference to Terran sensibilities. “I had to help Doctor Bones pull Sorensen and b’Orluf off of the Cupcake.”
Hikaru’s eyes were as wide as they could go. “How did those guys get the jump on Cupcake?”
“I do not know,” Gaila said, “but the Cupcake’s head was bleeding and he was very, very angry, when he got out from underneath them, and then when he was trying to restrain b
Orluf …”
“What?” Hikaru’s voice was soft, but he was clearly hanging on her every word.
“Sorensen punched b’Orluf in the back of the head,” Hikaru covered his mouth and shook his head, “and b’Orluf got away from the Cupcake and they went right back to fighting until reinforcements came in.”
Gaila kicked off her boots and pants, and walked barefoot through the planting bed on the path Hikaru had made. The tall grasses and flowers brushed at her legs as she passed, their touch soothing and verdant. She climbed wearily up on to the bower that Hikaru had made for her, and sat down. “I had to help Dr. Bones and Security get them all down to the Sickbay.”
“They must have been dosed with something,” Hikaru was shaking his head. “I don’t know what, but … they must have. I mean, I know we haven’t passed through anything weird out there, because no one else …” He trailed off as he engaged his PADD and began reading something, most likely the atmospheric control reports for the last few hours.
“Not that Dr. Bones could find,” Gaila sighed. “He didn’t have enough restraints, at first, but …”
“What?” Hikaru asked again, looking up from his PADD.
“All of a sudden, they all just … stopped fighting,” Gaila said. She felt like crying again, and pulled off her tunics to let the healing rays of light get to her skin. Unlike Terran women, she had no need of wearing a brassiere for support, although she did enjoy wearing pretty lingerie for sport. Otherwise, she found the garment quite cumbersome and constricting, and she felt sorrow that her Terran friends did not have the requisite musculature to support their breasts.
She also felt weak and teary again -- she must not be synthesizing properly, or the extra dose of pheromone blocker that Dr. Bones had given her in Sickbay because she had been involved in the brawl must have been too potent. Perhaps, she simply wasn’t getting enough brawling time, or exercise in general.
Jim would be very upset when he found out that Sorensen had almost gotten the drop on her. He had stressed the necessity of self-defense not just for his Doctor, but for all his friends who served in Starfleet. It was a lesson that she had not required, having been trained long before she met him, but she sincerely appreciated his thoughtfulness, and care. In truth, she had learned new lessons in brawling from him, and his now nearly-forgotten propensity for bar fights.
Gaila drew her hair up and away from her skin, letting more healing rays bathe her in light. She sighed as soon as the spectrum penetrated her dermis, feeling better by the micron as she stretched out.
“That was good though, right?” Hikaru said. He went to his cart and retrieved the spray bottle that he used to put the extra moisture in the air, holding it aloft and waiting for her nod before he doused the air around her.
Gaila watched the water droplets shining in the air, moving through the color spectrum before they dispersed. “Maybe, Hikaru, maybe. But it was very upsetting when they started crying,” she admitted softly. She could still here the disconsolate broken sobs emanating from the friends when they realized what they had done to each other.
Hikaru shook his head, and sighed. “I’m glad they regret what they did,” he said.
“I know it doesn’t apply to b’Orluf, but that’s very human of them. Still, the rapid cycling -- they must have been exposed to something, G. Something must have happened in Engineering.”
Gaila thought about the tension in the Mess, about the odd tension that seemed to encircle the ship itself, and shivered again.
“Computer,” Hikaru said, “mark me and raise temperature 5 degrees Celsius in this micro-sector of Sector L-5.”
“That’s too warm for your friends, Hikaru,” Gaila said.
“Nah,” he said, his smile as warm as the air was becoming, “not all my friends. Some of my friends love it.”
He slipped his shirts off over his head before he bent and pulled out a covered bowl off his gardening cart. “Your poi, m’lady,” he said chivalrously.
“apouya’qae,” Gaila corrected with a happy sigh.
“Isn’t that what I said?” Hikaru asked mischievously. “Eat, and relax,” he said. His chest was glistening with a light sweat, his essence filling in the middle spectrum. Hikaru smelled like good soil and simple foods and something that she thought of as just him, his earthy warmth. “I’ve got to take care of some of my other friends.”
Gaila raised an eyebrow, allowing him to see her appreciation of his fine physique.
Hikaru just smiled and pointed at her dinner. “Food, G.”
Gaila dipped her fingers into the sweet, spicy delicateness of the apouya’qae. The Enterprise’s Chef did not have her mother’s touch with the dish, but really, it was a more than adequate preparation. She glanced up at Hikaru through her lashes, already beginning to feel restored. “Just as long as you remember that there is more than one kind of sustenance,” she said sweetly, lying back against her bower and sliding her fingers into her mouth.
Hikaru eyed her recumbent form, as her bared skin gleamed in the lights that he had strung over her bower, just for her. “I am not likely to need reminding, G,” he murmured. He stood there a moment more, and then shook himself and went off to his nightly rounds.
Gaila smiled and dipped her fingers in the apouya’qae, content to wait and breathe freely under the healing light until Hikaru’s return.
+
Gaila stretched languidly as she walked down the mostly emptied hallways of the Enterprise. She loved Hikaru, truly. He was sweet, but not sentimental, and he was lithe and graceful in a way that was elegantly masculine, something he had first demonstrated when he had offered her fencing lessons to help her adjust to her damaged leg. She had enjoyed their matches --swordplay or otherwise – and had even learned a thing or two, just as she had taught. All was as it ought to be, there at least.
Still … it occurred to her that the ship should not yet be so silent, not this early in the hours assigned for evening. Perhaps all of the crew were curled up with their lovers, but somehow, she doubted this. She had been heading back to her own quarters, but now … feeling the menace in the deserted hallways, she changed direction and headed forward to where she had made her nest. It was little more than a Jefferies Tube that she had commandeered to be her own. Hard against the hull, her nest was tucked above the smallest forward observation deck and recreation room. That section of the ship had been significantly damaged during the Battle of Vulcan and she’d found her nest when she’d done system repairs in the ducts. She knew that Scotty was aware that she’d altered the ship’s blueprints to dead-end this tube a junction back, to hide her special place, but he kept her secret because of their shared love for the Enterprise itself -- although she doubted that Scotty thought of it as his family’s house, as she’d come to over the many lunar cycles they’d been aboard.
As she approached the turn to the forward turbolift, she heard voices ahead of her. An Operations crewmember hurried by her, head down and looking flushed, and she increased her pace. One familiar voice seemed louder than it actually was in the quiet of the hallway, but it was certainly nothing to the level of the voices that she had heard earlier in the evening. She followed the thread of Jim’s voice around the corner. Perhaps the yeoman had caught the Captain chastising a member of the crew for some reason, and this was why he’d left a trail of distress behind him like a tail. She stopped short of turning the corner when she realized that Jim was talking to Nyota’s Spock and not happily.
Of course, considering what had happened earlier in the evening, this was to be expected. Except that their body language was all wrong for that circumstance. Gaila stood stock still and observed.
Jim was dressed in his recreational blacks, obviously heading to the gymnasium, as was his typical routine, although the hour was later than usual. However, if Jim did not exercise heartily at some point during the day, his nervous energy tended to overflow, much as his sexual energy did if contained for too long. He must have been delayed by the trouble in the Mess, which should have explained why he was looking at Spock with such a grim expression. “There is nothing to discuss, Spock,” Jim said firmly.
“I disagree that there is nothing to discuss, Jim,” Spock said, “but this is not the place to hold such a discussion. If you would just accompany me back to my, or preferably, your quart-“
“No,” Jim said, and there was a note of finality in his tone. “You made your offer, and it was refused.” He turned to get in to the lift, and Spock stepped forward in a manner in which Gaila had never seen a Vulcan move before, swift and … she did not know how to describe it, other than grasping.
“Jim,” Spock said, catching at Jim’s arm.
His tone was almost pleading, and … was he trying to touch Jim’s hand?
Jim turned in the open turbolift door and lifted his arm from where Spock still had hold of his forearm. “You do not have my permission to touch me, Commander.” Jim’s voice held a kind of menacing growl that she only associated with dire situations and she was so struck by the tension of the situation as well as what it suggested that she took in a breath. Spock’s head turned in her direction before Jim’s did.
Spock dropped Jim’s arm as if were radioactive, and then turned to go off in the opposite direction from where she stood, not sending a word of greeting to her or a leavetaking to Jim.
“Are you coming, Gaila?” Jim asked, after a moment.
In the past, before Jim had become Captain, this had been one of his favorite lines, a blatantly sexual innuendo ripe for flirting and fun, but tonight … tonight, Jim meant nothing more than the question he asked, holding the door open.
In the past, she would have kissed and teased Jim and maybe flirted with him to find out what was going on, but now when Jim looked exhausted and stricken and bowed by whatever was happening between him and Spock, she just smiled and said, “Aye, Captain.
The side of Jim’s mouth drew up in the crooked smile that she always found endearing when it was sincere, yet his blue eyes lacked the usual sparkle that the wry expression evoked. It was a somewhat disturbing contrast.
“Bones said you were in the middle of that situation in the Mess, Gaila,” Jim asked her. “Are you OK?”
“I went to Botany,” she said in her usual tone. She knew that Jim would notice that she had not answered his question directly, but she would not burden him with her petty troubles when he had so many other burdens to shoulder. Indeed, Jim’s shoulders seemed to her to have broadened over the years particularly so that he could be the Captain that he had had to become.
She was being metaphorical again, but she quite enjoyed the symbolic play of such language, now that she truly understood it. It had taken quite some time for Nyota’s explanations to be absorbed.
In Jim’s case, shouldering of burdens was a particularly apt phrase. She had always found Jim to be an especially fine specimen of Terran male, albeit pale. His brilliantly blue eyes did light up his complexion, but she still found him sadly lacking in melanin, much less chlorophyll. He had, however, gotten even more attractive as the years of his captaincy had aged him. He seemed taller than he had when she first met him, although she knew that was because he was no longer that posturing and somewhat insecure young man he had been, but a man sure of his command who stood with his shoulders back and his spine straightened. Of course, he was also fully grown now, his skeleton hardened and heavier than it had been back at the Academy, with more breadth in the chest and shoulder, more like his Bones than the Jim he had been when they had been lovers.
Gaila felt a sudden enormous pride in him, and a kind of possessiveness that she did not normally feel. She loved him fiercely, and always.
Jim’s blue eyes were searching her person now, noting the blood stains on her pants.
“I am well, Jim,” she said with crisp assurance, and his eyes regarded her face. “It was, however, distressing to see such good friends fighting in such a manner.”
Jim looked at his feet, and paused before he looked up at her.
“Good friends should try to resolve their differences with words,” she continued. “Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”
Jim’s smile was small, and lacking any sort of teeth. “Absolutely,” he answered.
“We resolved our differences,” Gaila stated, “when I accepted your words of apology.”
Jim nodded as the turbolift came to a halt at the deck upon which he would debark. “And I am still, and always, grateful for that, Gaila.” He hesitated, and turned back, holding the door ajar. “But the friend who was in the wrong has to offer the words of apology first, and he has to understand exactly what he has done or said that was wrong. That’s what we have to hope will happen, otherwise it’s just empty gesture.”
Gaila listened to his words, and nodded and smiled as was expected of her by Terran social conventions. She wished Jim a good night and he let the door close. When Jim disappeared from her view, her smile dropped.
Hope, she thought bitterly. Hope was useless without action – she had known this forever. And although she was Orion through and through, she had vowed that she would not Bind others to her without their consent and make them bend to her will. She would, however, do whatever else was necessary and not wait on something as unformed as hope. Manipulate was the word Nyota used, and she always heard the negative connotation when Nyota verbalized the concept.
This did not concern her. She would do no harm, would take no action until she knew what the correct one was. She exited the corridor and walked briskly down the empty halls until she reached the Jefferies Tube that would lead her, ultimately, to her nest.
In the Sol years since they had begun their mission, she had spent a fair amount of time in there, although not every night -- just those on which she was the loneliest, felt the lack of companionship most keenly. It wasn’t about sex – even on Enterprise, she had her pick of partners, and there were always the shore leaves – but Starfleet, in its desire to accommodate her needs, had berthed her alone. Jim’s Doctor had told her that their reasoning was that she’d be able to go off her suppressants for some part of the time she was off-shift, but his raised eyebrow and the pronounced slurring of his words in the absence of alcohol had belied his disbelief and ire at the notion. Obviously, he knew how incrementally small that window of time would be, and although she suspected that Command was really trying to avert having to deal with the ramifications of berthing her with a non-Orion and its potential attendant issues, she had said nothing. Her vow not to Bind was her business, and no other’s.
But it was then that she’d made her nest, filling it with silks and pillows and various pieces of tech. The peace and respite that being in it brought her was worth more than she could explain to a non-Orion. She particularly loved to be above a crowd on game nights, or when any of the crafting groups or book clubs were gathering. The hum of conversation was audible because she’d diverted a feed from the room into her nest, and set it on low volume. Occasionally, she even unrolled the viewscreen that she’d hidden amongst her silks and tapped into the visual feed.
She knew that many of her Terran friends would consider her a voyeur, and not look kindly on her surveillance, but it’s not as if she were intruding into private spaces – everyone knew that the common areas were constantly monitored. Besides, on those nights when she was loneliest, nothing soothed her to sleep so well as the bright wash of voices, rising and falling, as they worked on a common task. She had been homesick for years for the communal spaces of Orion, but only here on Enterprise, had she found a way to recreate that long-missed home. And, of course, late at night, in the quietest hours of gamma, the room had become something of a choice place for lovers without single berths to meet and tryst. She wondered if her presence, even hidden as it was, had somehow influenced that, but did not dwell overly much on the idea. Being woken by the sounds and smells of sex made her happy, contributed to her wellbeing, and if her unknown presence made the experience better for her Enterprise family, that was satisfaction enough.
On this particular evening, she was pleased to hear Doctor Bones’ mellifluous voice from the room below, once she turned on the audio feed. It was the time for the textile crafting group to meet, and usually, if she did not feel like going down to the room and participating, she would have piled her pillows behind her back and worked on her small loom, weaving the silks of her people. Tonight, however, she verified Nyota’s absence on the view screen and grimly found her keyboard. She bypassed the Security protocols and began to search, looking for anomalies, for anything that seemed different since Ambassador Selek had come aboard.
She knew who the Ambassador really was, of course, and not because she had hacked into the secure channels meant for Jim’s eyes only, although she considered it a part of her role to ensure that no one else did. Her tenacity had paid off – she’d unmasked more than one of Starfleet’s spies, some of whom Jim had kept on the ship, counting on Gaila to monitor their transmissions so that he could outsmart them, an assignment with which she was more than happy. These spies, some of them from Command, but a number from the Diplomatic Corps, had counted on their packets being buried so deeply in data-streams no one would notice them, but Gaila could always sense what did not belong no matter what the format.
Her instinct was telling her that it was Ambassador Selek, the Spock that had been in another universe and time, that was the current outlier. Instinct, however, was not data, and so she searched, going back to the weeks before he had come aboard.
She had little comparative data of a personal nature. She had met the Ambassador on previous trips, of course, yet, although he’d always been cordial and engaging, he’d never been particularly interested in her. Instead, when he had sought her out, it was for her insight and intelligence regarding his younger counterpart, and that Spock’s relationship with her Nyota. It had been these conversations that had given him away, that allowed her to catalogue his scent and understand just how much of it was like Nyota’s Spock. It was similar enough in such key ways that she had to believe the two Vulcans related, and closely. The Ambassador had confirmed his relationship to Spock as closer than brother, but not father and son, and left it at that.
Nyota’s Spock had told her the whole truth when she’d described her puzzlement, inquiring what kind of familial bond that they could have based upon those terms. Never would she have imagined ‘clone’, and not simply because of their age difference. Their scents were similar, but not the same.
Gaila searched the data, wondering what she would sense now if she were to speak with Selek, and Spock … what was he doing? He had clearly made what Terrans called ‘a pass’ at Jim, but why? There was nothing, nothing in his scent to indicate that his feelings for Nyota had begun to devolve. So … why?
She didn’t even realize how much time had passed until she heard Jim’s voice over the feed, noting now that the hum of chatter had dropped to nearly nothing. She checked the chron to see that two hours had passed since she’d left Jim at the turbolift, and tapped into the visual feed.
Jim was laughing as his Doctor made him sit and hold a skein apart on his hands so that the Doctor could wind the yarn into a ball, and she smiled to see the unfeigned happiness and ease in his expression as he regarded his lover.
“Pretty sure we have a program that will do this,” Jim said.
“Oh, hush,” the Doctor said. “Like it’s such a hardship. Chalk it up into the ‘other duties as necessary’ category.”
“For captaincy?” Jim asked, his voice warm with amusement.
Doctor Bones’ hands were moving swiftly and incisively as always, seeming like creatures in and of themselves. She was sure that he could master her loom quite easily, unlike most Terrans.
“Ass,” the Doctor remarked, finishing off the yarn with a flourish, and tucking the end into the center of the sphere. He bent forward and kissed Jim murmuring something that sounded like ‘thanks’, but when he turned to move away and put the yarn in the open bin on the wall, Jim caught his hand and pulled him back.
“What, darlin’?” the Doctor asked in a warm drawl.
“Just c’mere,” Jim said, and the Doctor sighed, stepping high to avoid the sprawl of Jim’s legs and siting down right next to him on the couch.
Jim had kept ahold of the Doctor’s hand, and when his lover was seated, Jim raised their linked fingers and kissed just below the Doctor’s long index finger, before he slumped further down on the couch and dropped his head against his partner’s shoulder. He let out a big sigh.
The Doctor used his feet to move an ottoman over toward them, and they both stretched long legs out on it, intertwining them into a bit of a pile. “Was a long day,” the Doctor remarked. He turned his head and looked down, trying to see Jim’s face.
“I still don’t understand what happened,” Jim said.
“That makes two of us, darling,” the Doctor answered. “Hormones were all over the place, yes, but I still can’t figure out why.” He shook his head and sighed heavily. “That’s tomorrow’s problem. C’mon, sugar. Let’s go home and get you cleaned up.”
Jim was still wearing his recreational blacks, and even with the filtration systems, she could sense the odor of his dried perspiration. Jim’s eyes were mostly closed, and he made a low murmur.
“It’s our night for the tub,” the Doctor said in a tone that could only be described as sultry.
Jim’s eyes popped open and he tilted his head up to look at his lover, raising an eyebrow.
Gaila frowned. He looked so very tired, and oddly young at the same time.
Doctor Bones raised the hand that Jim wasn’t holding and stroked through Jim’s hair, his long fingers rubbing along Jim’s scalp and then down his neck.
Jim moaned, and the Doctor kissed his cheek, and then the lid of one of his eyes.
“C’mon,” the Doctor urged. “A good soak is just what the Doctor ordered.”
“My doctor,” Jim said in a tone Gaila could only describe as possessive.
“Damn straight,” Doctor Bones said, and untangled his feet from Jim’s, pushing the ottoman out, and standing up. He tugged on Jim’s hand, and pulled him to his feet, tossing the yarn into the bin and ordering it closed as he urged Jim toward the door.
Jim disengaged the privacy lock that she had not noticed him engage, and he and the Doctor slipped through the doors into the corridors, the Doctor ordering the lights off before the door whisked close.
She altered her video feed to follow them, smiling as she noticed that Jim, who usually was so discreet about any kind of public display of affection, did not let go of his Doctor’s hand in any of the public spaces, not even when they entered the Captain’s quarters and the door closed behind them, obscuring them from her view.
She smiled and curled into her pillows, determined to take a couple of hours of rest, before she returned to her surveillance.
+
Author:
ceres_liberaRating: R (for language and sexual expression)
Pairings: Kirk/McCoy, Spock/Uhura, others
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~4900 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: So … a bit more difficult to get back in the swing of writing when work is a bit of a disaster, but still … better late than never! As before, I note that 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, and will likely be 2-3 more parts. I think.
+
Gaila was happy to enter the Botany Bay, to leave the tense and silent hallways of Enterprise behind. It was tangible, this tension, not like scent, but like a cold draft that kept brushing against her skin.
She was being metaphorical, of course. The air circulation systems on the Enterprise, and its soft- and hardware, were absolutely superior. She dared anyone to say anything negative about their performance to her.
But still, the metaphor held.
She engaged the do not disturb force field once inside the sector that was Hikaru’s domain. Technically, she was trespassing, but Hikaru had given her the codes long ago, although she had never before used them. But that had been before tonight, before everything that had happened in the Mess, and later in Sickbay … she shivered.
“You’re cold,” Hikaru said from behind her, putting his hand on her shoulder, and rubbing down her arm “Computer, raise ambient temperature to 30 degrees Celsius in Sector L-5.”
She turned and smiled at her friend, patting his sweet face. “You are always so thoughtful.”
Hikaru looked at her with an assessing gaze in his dark eyes, “Are you getting sick, G? I heard you put the dnd on”—He tilted his head, “You don’t usually want to be alone.”
She shook her head, and pursed her lips at the push of the tears that she felt rising inside, shocked and astonished that they were so close to overspilling. Orions did not cry, would not waste sacred water over such minor trivialities… yet, a small sob escaped her.
“Gaila,” Hikaru’s voice was concerned and surprised as he reached for her, pulling her into a loose embrace.
She allowed it, despite the fact that her current emotions made her feel weak and stupid, something Orion women never were … why was she feeling like this?
“What happened?” Hikaru’s voice was tender.
She sighed. She hated when men treated her like she was a fragile flower. It only revealed them as foolish, even when they were not Bound. “Oh, Hikaru,” she began. “Sorensen and b’Orluf got into a terrible fight in the Mess.”
“What?! They’re best friends!”
“I know,” Gaila said tightly, pulling back, and wiping at her eyes so she could pace. She was so restless. “But they did, and it was terrible! They were fighting verbally at first, and then, it just …” she made an explosive gesture, “and then the whole table was yelling and then they were all hitting each other.”
“Gaila,” Hikaru said, “are you sure?”
“Of course, I am sure,” she snapped at him, and to her horror, felt the tears well up again. “I still have Sorensen’s blood on my pants.” She pushed them down, leaving her legs bare but her genitals covered in deference to Terran sensibilities. “I had to help Doctor Bones pull Sorensen and b’Orluf off of the Cupcake.”
Hikaru’s eyes were as wide as they could go. “How did those guys get the jump on Cupcake?”
“I do not know,” Gaila said, “but the Cupcake’s head was bleeding and he was very, very angry, when he got out from underneath them, and then when he was trying to restrain b
Orluf …”
“What?” Hikaru’s voice was soft, but he was clearly hanging on her every word.
“Sorensen punched b’Orluf in the back of the head,” Hikaru covered his mouth and shook his head, “and b’Orluf got away from the Cupcake and they went right back to fighting until reinforcements came in.”
Gaila kicked off her boots and pants, and walked barefoot through the planting bed on the path Hikaru had made. The tall grasses and flowers brushed at her legs as she passed, their touch soothing and verdant. She climbed wearily up on to the bower that Hikaru had made for her, and sat down. “I had to help Dr. Bones and Security get them all down to the Sickbay.”
“They must have been dosed with something,” Hikaru was shaking his head. “I don’t know what, but … they must have. I mean, I know we haven’t passed through anything weird out there, because no one else …” He trailed off as he engaged his PADD and began reading something, most likely the atmospheric control reports for the last few hours.
“Not that Dr. Bones could find,” Gaila sighed. “He didn’t have enough restraints, at first, but …”
“What?” Hikaru asked again, looking up from his PADD.
“All of a sudden, they all just … stopped fighting,” Gaila said. She felt like crying again, and pulled off her tunics to let the healing rays of light get to her skin. Unlike Terran women, she had no need of wearing a brassiere for support, although she did enjoy wearing pretty lingerie for sport. Otherwise, she found the garment quite cumbersome and constricting, and she felt sorrow that her Terran friends did not have the requisite musculature to support their breasts.
She also felt weak and teary again -- she must not be synthesizing properly, or the extra dose of pheromone blocker that Dr. Bones had given her in Sickbay because she had been involved in the brawl must have been too potent. Perhaps, she simply wasn’t getting enough brawling time, or exercise in general.
Jim would be very upset when he found out that Sorensen had almost gotten the drop on her. He had stressed the necessity of self-defense not just for his Doctor, but for all his friends who served in Starfleet. It was a lesson that she had not required, having been trained long before she met him, but she sincerely appreciated his thoughtfulness, and care. In truth, she had learned new lessons in brawling from him, and his now nearly-forgotten propensity for bar fights.
Gaila drew her hair up and away from her skin, letting more healing rays bathe her in light. She sighed as soon as the spectrum penetrated her dermis, feeling better by the micron as she stretched out.
“That was good though, right?” Hikaru said. He went to his cart and retrieved the spray bottle that he used to put the extra moisture in the air, holding it aloft and waiting for her nod before he doused the air around her.
Gaila watched the water droplets shining in the air, moving through the color spectrum before they dispersed. “Maybe, Hikaru, maybe. But it was very upsetting when they started crying,” she admitted softly. She could still here the disconsolate broken sobs emanating from the friends when they realized what they had done to each other.
Hikaru shook his head, and sighed. “I’m glad they regret what they did,” he said.
“I know it doesn’t apply to b’Orluf, but that’s very human of them. Still, the rapid cycling -- they must have been exposed to something, G. Something must have happened in Engineering.”
Gaila thought about the tension in the Mess, about the odd tension that seemed to encircle the ship itself, and shivered again.
“Computer,” Hikaru said, “mark me and raise temperature 5 degrees Celsius in this micro-sector of Sector L-5.”
“That’s too warm for your friends, Hikaru,” Gaila said.
“Nah,” he said, his smile as warm as the air was becoming, “not all my friends. Some of my friends love it.”
He slipped his shirts off over his head before he bent and pulled out a covered bowl off his gardening cart. “Your poi, m’lady,” he said chivalrously.
“apouya’qae,” Gaila corrected with a happy sigh.
“Isn’t that what I said?” Hikaru asked mischievously. “Eat, and relax,” he said. His chest was glistening with a light sweat, his essence filling in the middle spectrum. Hikaru smelled like good soil and simple foods and something that she thought of as just him, his earthy warmth. “I’ve got to take care of some of my other friends.”
Gaila raised an eyebrow, allowing him to see her appreciation of his fine physique.
Hikaru just smiled and pointed at her dinner. “Food, G.”
Gaila dipped her fingers into the sweet, spicy delicateness of the apouya’qae. The Enterprise’s Chef did not have her mother’s touch with the dish, but really, it was a more than adequate preparation. She glanced up at Hikaru through her lashes, already beginning to feel restored. “Just as long as you remember that there is more than one kind of sustenance,” she said sweetly, lying back against her bower and sliding her fingers into her mouth.
Hikaru eyed her recumbent form, as her bared skin gleamed in the lights that he had strung over her bower, just for her. “I am not likely to need reminding, G,” he murmured. He stood there a moment more, and then shook himself and went off to his nightly rounds.
Gaila smiled and dipped her fingers in the apouya’qae, content to wait and breathe freely under the healing light until Hikaru’s return.
+
Gaila stretched languidly as she walked down the mostly emptied hallways of the Enterprise. She loved Hikaru, truly. He was sweet, but not sentimental, and he was lithe and graceful in a way that was elegantly masculine, something he had first demonstrated when he had offered her fencing lessons to help her adjust to her damaged leg. She had enjoyed their matches --swordplay or otherwise – and had even learned a thing or two, just as she had taught. All was as it ought to be, there at least.
Still … it occurred to her that the ship should not yet be so silent, not this early in the hours assigned for evening. Perhaps all of the crew were curled up with their lovers, but somehow, she doubted this. She had been heading back to her own quarters, but now … feeling the menace in the deserted hallways, she changed direction and headed forward to where she had made her nest. It was little more than a Jefferies Tube that she had commandeered to be her own. Hard against the hull, her nest was tucked above the smallest forward observation deck and recreation room. That section of the ship had been significantly damaged during the Battle of Vulcan and she’d found her nest when she’d done system repairs in the ducts. She knew that Scotty was aware that she’d altered the ship’s blueprints to dead-end this tube a junction back, to hide her special place, but he kept her secret because of their shared love for the Enterprise itself -- although she doubted that Scotty thought of it as his family’s house, as she’d come to over the many lunar cycles they’d been aboard.
As she approached the turn to the forward turbolift, she heard voices ahead of her. An Operations crewmember hurried by her, head down and looking flushed, and she increased her pace. One familiar voice seemed louder than it actually was in the quiet of the hallway, but it was certainly nothing to the level of the voices that she had heard earlier in the evening. She followed the thread of Jim’s voice around the corner. Perhaps the yeoman had caught the Captain chastising a member of the crew for some reason, and this was why he’d left a trail of distress behind him like a tail. She stopped short of turning the corner when she realized that Jim was talking to Nyota’s Spock and not happily.
Of course, considering what had happened earlier in the evening, this was to be expected. Except that their body language was all wrong for that circumstance. Gaila stood stock still and observed.
Jim was dressed in his recreational blacks, obviously heading to the gymnasium, as was his typical routine, although the hour was later than usual. However, if Jim did not exercise heartily at some point during the day, his nervous energy tended to overflow, much as his sexual energy did if contained for too long. He must have been delayed by the trouble in the Mess, which should have explained why he was looking at Spock with such a grim expression. “There is nothing to discuss, Spock,” Jim said firmly.
“I disagree that there is nothing to discuss, Jim,” Spock said, “but this is not the place to hold such a discussion. If you would just accompany me back to my, or preferably, your quart-“
“No,” Jim said, and there was a note of finality in his tone. “You made your offer, and it was refused.” He turned to get in to the lift, and Spock stepped forward in a manner in which Gaila had never seen a Vulcan move before, swift and … she did not know how to describe it, other than grasping.
“Jim,” Spock said, catching at Jim’s arm.
His tone was almost pleading, and … was he trying to touch Jim’s hand?
Jim turned in the open turbolift door and lifted his arm from where Spock still had hold of his forearm. “You do not have my permission to touch me, Commander.” Jim’s voice held a kind of menacing growl that she only associated with dire situations and she was so struck by the tension of the situation as well as what it suggested that she took in a breath. Spock’s head turned in her direction before Jim’s did.
Spock dropped Jim’s arm as if were radioactive, and then turned to go off in the opposite direction from where she stood, not sending a word of greeting to her or a leavetaking to Jim.
“Are you coming, Gaila?” Jim asked, after a moment.
In the past, before Jim had become Captain, this had been one of his favorite lines, a blatantly sexual innuendo ripe for flirting and fun, but tonight … tonight, Jim meant nothing more than the question he asked, holding the door open.
In the past, she would have kissed and teased Jim and maybe flirted with him to find out what was going on, but now when Jim looked exhausted and stricken and bowed by whatever was happening between him and Spock, she just smiled and said, “Aye, Captain.
The side of Jim’s mouth drew up in the crooked smile that she always found endearing when it was sincere, yet his blue eyes lacked the usual sparkle that the wry expression evoked. It was a somewhat disturbing contrast.
“Bones said you were in the middle of that situation in the Mess, Gaila,” Jim asked her. “Are you OK?”
“I went to Botany,” she said in her usual tone. She knew that Jim would notice that she had not answered his question directly, but she would not burden him with her petty troubles when he had so many other burdens to shoulder. Indeed, Jim’s shoulders seemed to her to have broadened over the years particularly so that he could be the Captain that he had had to become.
She was being metaphorical again, but she quite enjoyed the symbolic play of such language, now that she truly understood it. It had taken quite some time for Nyota’s explanations to be absorbed.
In Jim’s case, shouldering of burdens was a particularly apt phrase. She had always found Jim to be an especially fine specimen of Terran male, albeit pale. His brilliantly blue eyes did light up his complexion, but she still found him sadly lacking in melanin, much less chlorophyll. He had, however, gotten even more attractive as the years of his captaincy had aged him. He seemed taller than he had when she first met him, although she knew that was because he was no longer that posturing and somewhat insecure young man he had been, but a man sure of his command who stood with his shoulders back and his spine straightened. Of course, he was also fully grown now, his skeleton hardened and heavier than it had been back at the Academy, with more breadth in the chest and shoulder, more like his Bones than the Jim he had been when they had been lovers.
Gaila felt a sudden enormous pride in him, and a kind of possessiveness that she did not normally feel. She loved him fiercely, and always.
Jim’s blue eyes were searching her person now, noting the blood stains on her pants.
“I am well, Jim,” she said with crisp assurance, and his eyes regarded her face. “It was, however, distressing to see such good friends fighting in such a manner.”
Jim looked at his feet, and paused before he looked up at her.
“Good friends should try to resolve their differences with words,” she continued. “Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”
Jim’s smile was small, and lacking any sort of teeth. “Absolutely,” he answered.
“We resolved our differences,” Gaila stated, “when I accepted your words of apology.”
Jim nodded as the turbolift came to a halt at the deck upon which he would debark. “And I am still, and always, grateful for that, Gaila.” He hesitated, and turned back, holding the door ajar. “But the friend who was in the wrong has to offer the words of apology first, and he has to understand exactly what he has done or said that was wrong. That’s what we have to hope will happen, otherwise it’s just empty gesture.”
Gaila listened to his words, and nodded and smiled as was expected of her by Terran social conventions. She wished Jim a good night and he let the door close. When Jim disappeared from her view, her smile dropped.
Hope, she thought bitterly. Hope was useless without action – she had known this forever. And although she was Orion through and through, she had vowed that she would not Bind others to her without their consent and make them bend to her will. She would, however, do whatever else was necessary and not wait on something as unformed as hope. Manipulate was the word Nyota used, and she always heard the negative connotation when Nyota verbalized the concept.
This did not concern her. She would do no harm, would take no action until she knew what the correct one was. She exited the corridor and walked briskly down the empty halls until she reached the Jefferies Tube that would lead her, ultimately, to her nest.
In the Sol years since they had begun their mission, she had spent a fair amount of time in there, although not every night -- just those on which she was the loneliest, felt the lack of companionship most keenly. It wasn’t about sex – even on Enterprise, she had her pick of partners, and there were always the shore leaves – but Starfleet, in its desire to accommodate her needs, had berthed her alone. Jim’s Doctor had told her that their reasoning was that she’d be able to go off her suppressants for some part of the time she was off-shift, but his raised eyebrow and the pronounced slurring of his words in the absence of alcohol had belied his disbelief and ire at the notion. Obviously, he knew how incrementally small that window of time would be, and although she suspected that Command was really trying to avert having to deal with the ramifications of berthing her with a non-Orion and its potential attendant issues, she had said nothing. Her vow not to Bind was her business, and no other’s.
But it was then that she’d made her nest, filling it with silks and pillows and various pieces of tech. The peace and respite that being in it brought her was worth more than she could explain to a non-Orion. She particularly loved to be above a crowd on game nights, or when any of the crafting groups or book clubs were gathering. The hum of conversation was audible because she’d diverted a feed from the room into her nest, and set it on low volume. Occasionally, she even unrolled the viewscreen that she’d hidden amongst her silks and tapped into the visual feed.
She knew that many of her Terran friends would consider her a voyeur, and not look kindly on her surveillance, but it’s not as if she were intruding into private spaces – everyone knew that the common areas were constantly monitored. Besides, on those nights when she was loneliest, nothing soothed her to sleep so well as the bright wash of voices, rising and falling, as they worked on a common task. She had been homesick for years for the communal spaces of Orion, but only here on Enterprise, had she found a way to recreate that long-missed home. And, of course, late at night, in the quietest hours of gamma, the room had become something of a choice place for lovers without single berths to meet and tryst. She wondered if her presence, even hidden as it was, had somehow influenced that, but did not dwell overly much on the idea. Being woken by the sounds and smells of sex made her happy, contributed to her wellbeing, and if her unknown presence made the experience better for her Enterprise family, that was satisfaction enough.
On this particular evening, she was pleased to hear Doctor Bones’ mellifluous voice from the room below, once she turned on the audio feed. It was the time for the textile crafting group to meet, and usually, if she did not feel like going down to the room and participating, she would have piled her pillows behind her back and worked on her small loom, weaving the silks of her people. Tonight, however, she verified Nyota’s absence on the view screen and grimly found her keyboard. She bypassed the Security protocols and began to search, looking for anomalies, for anything that seemed different since Ambassador Selek had come aboard.
She knew who the Ambassador really was, of course, and not because she had hacked into the secure channels meant for Jim’s eyes only, although she considered it a part of her role to ensure that no one else did. Her tenacity had paid off – she’d unmasked more than one of Starfleet’s spies, some of whom Jim had kept on the ship, counting on Gaila to monitor their transmissions so that he could outsmart them, an assignment with which she was more than happy. These spies, some of them from Command, but a number from the Diplomatic Corps, had counted on their packets being buried so deeply in data-streams no one would notice them, but Gaila could always sense what did not belong no matter what the format.
Her instinct was telling her that it was Ambassador Selek, the Spock that had been in another universe and time, that was the current outlier. Instinct, however, was not data, and so she searched, going back to the weeks before he had come aboard.
She had little comparative data of a personal nature. She had met the Ambassador on previous trips, of course, yet, although he’d always been cordial and engaging, he’d never been particularly interested in her. Instead, when he had sought her out, it was for her insight and intelligence regarding his younger counterpart, and that Spock’s relationship with her Nyota. It had been these conversations that had given him away, that allowed her to catalogue his scent and understand just how much of it was like Nyota’s Spock. It was similar enough in such key ways that she had to believe the two Vulcans related, and closely. The Ambassador had confirmed his relationship to Spock as closer than brother, but not father and son, and left it at that.
Nyota’s Spock had told her the whole truth when she’d described her puzzlement, inquiring what kind of familial bond that they could have based upon those terms. Never would she have imagined ‘clone’, and not simply because of their age difference. Their scents were similar, but not the same.
Gaila searched the data, wondering what she would sense now if she were to speak with Selek, and Spock … what was he doing? He had clearly made what Terrans called ‘a pass’ at Jim, but why? There was nothing, nothing in his scent to indicate that his feelings for Nyota had begun to devolve. So … why?
She didn’t even realize how much time had passed until she heard Jim’s voice over the feed, noting now that the hum of chatter had dropped to nearly nothing. She checked the chron to see that two hours had passed since she’d left Jim at the turbolift, and tapped into the visual feed.
Jim was laughing as his Doctor made him sit and hold a skein apart on his hands so that the Doctor could wind the yarn into a ball, and she smiled to see the unfeigned happiness and ease in his expression as he regarded his lover.
“Pretty sure we have a program that will do this,” Jim said.
“Oh, hush,” the Doctor said. “Like it’s such a hardship. Chalk it up into the ‘other duties as necessary’ category.”
“For captaincy?” Jim asked, his voice warm with amusement.
Doctor Bones’ hands were moving swiftly and incisively as always, seeming like creatures in and of themselves. She was sure that he could master her loom quite easily, unlike most Terrans.
“Ass,” the Doctor remarked, finishing off the yarn with a flourish, and tucking the end into the center of the sphere. He bent forward and kissed Jim murmuring something that sounded like ‘thanks’, but when he turned to move away and put the yarn in the open bin on the wall, Jim caught his hand and pulled him back.
“What, darlin’?” the Doctor asked in a warm drawl.
“Just c’mere,” Jim said, and the Doctor sighed, stepping high to avoid the sprawl of Jim’s legs and siting down right next to him on the couch.
Jim had kept ahold of the Doctor’s hand, and when his lover was seated, Jim raised their linked fingers and kissed just below the Doctor’s long index finger, before he slumped further down on the couch and dropped his head against his partner’s shoulder. He let out a big sigh.
The Doctor used his feet to move an ottoman over toward them, and they both stretched long legs out on it, intertwining them into a bit of a pile. “Was a long day,” the Doctor remarked. He turned his head and looked down, trying to see Jim’s face.
“I still don’t understand what happened,” Jim said.
“That makes two of us, darling,” the Doctor answered. “Hormones were all over the place, yes, but I still can’t figure out why.” He shook his head and sighed heavily. “That’s tomorrow’s problem. C’mon, sugar. Let’s go home and get you cleaned up.”
Jim was still wearing his recreational blacks, and even with the filtration systems, she could sense the odor of his dried perspiration. Jim’s eyes were mostly closed, and he made a low murmur.
“It’s our night for the tub,” the Doctor said in a tone that could only be described as sultry.
Jim’s eyes popped open and he tilted his head up to look at his lover, raising an eyebrow.
Gaila frowned. He looked so very tired, and oddly young at the same time.
Doctor Bones raised the hand that Jim wasn’t holding and stroked through Jim’s hair, his long fingers rubbing along Jim’s scalp and then down his neck.
Jim moaned, and the Doctor kissed his cheek, and then the lid of one of his eyes.
“C’mon,” the Doctor urged. “A good soak is just what the Doctor ordered.”
“My doctor,” Jim said in a tone Gaila could only describe as possessive.
“Damn straight,” Doctor Bones said, and untangled his feet from Jim’s, pushing the ottoman out, and standing up. He tugged on Jim’s hand, and pulled him to his feet, tossing the yarn into the bin and ordering it closed as he urged Jim toward the door.
Jim disengaged the privacy lock that she had not noticed him engage, and he and the Doctor slipped through the doors into the corridors, the Doctor ordering the lights off before the door whisked close.
She altered her video feed to follow them, smiling as she noticed that Jim, who usually was so discreet about any kind of public display of affection, did not let go of his Doctor’s hand in any of the public spaces, not even when they entered the Captain’s quarters and the door closed behind them, obscuring them from her view.
She smiled and curled into her pillows, determined to take a couple of hours of rest, before she returned to her surveillance.
+
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no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 11:16 pm (UTC)I am getting a better idea of what is going on with Spock..but still it is a mystery..
Eagerly awaiting the next chapter...nice to have you back.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-13 11:44 pm (UTC)And Gaila...Once again I enjoyed all the dimensions that you are revealing in her personality and culture. Her POV is so unique in how she looks at people. LOVED how caring Sulu was of her!
"T"
no subject
Date: 2013-01-14 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-14 02:32 am (UTC)I'm so glad you're writing again! I know it's difficult to keep it going over months and years, during the fallow times of fandom and when there's not much going on to inspire us (thank GOD we get the movie in 5 months), so it's great to see this story. Looking forward to the next parts.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 07:56 am (UTC)also, gaila rocks forever and forever. i have always deeply appreciated how you write your characters. they're so very carefully conceived and it shows in how you've described hikaru here. he's a good gentle but fierce man here, it's lovely to see.
anyway, thanks so much for being back. ;)
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Date: 2013-01-15 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-23 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-18 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-19 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-19 07:51 pm (UTC)