So Uhura generally settled for using the solitary equipment and chatting with neighbors who could be normal about her having more to her abs and breasts and hips and biceps than most.

At the moment, she had decent company, for a certain value of company: on her left, a man lifting reasonable weights for his toothpick arms without trying to impress her, and a few feet away on her right, a very young ensign doing careful stretches on a mat, wearing loose black exercise pants and an equally loose tunic rather than the unforgiving red leggings and "vest" (glorified bra) used for sweatier work. Like Uhura's at the moment, lifting her body weight by each arm.

She could have attached weights to increase her efficiency, but the truth was that she already found pull-ups deeply boring. She closed her eyes, focusing on the expansion of her lungs and light burn in her arm.

The toothpick-armed man—she didn't know his name, just that he was a fellow lieutenant in rank but well below her in position—drew a sharp breath that nearly approached a wheeze. As Uhura opened her eyes to make sure he hadn't hurt himself, his dumbbells crashed to the floor with a series of cacophonous, grating clunks.

"Ma'am!" he said, scrambling to his feet. "My apologies! I didn't see..."

"Lieutenant," Uhura started to say, only to realize his sight line wasn't directed at her at all, but at where the girl (ensign) had been doing stretches. Uhura, still hanging from the bar, turned to look. Then she blinked.

The ensign had left, and Jessica T. Kirk had arrived.

Captain Kirk stifled a smile as Uhura's not-companion stammered his way through further apologies, and desperately tried to avoid looking below their commanding officer's neck. Other people scattered around the gym, whether new or established crew, whispered to each other on the mats and machines.

To Uhura’s eye, Kirk had obviously arrived for her own fitness routine, given their mutually tragic red leggings/bra situations and mutually impressive muscles. Kirk was a little taller, but not much, and had the same kind of build as Uhura, sturdy, curvy, certainly strong; she’d guess they were no more than five or six kilos apart if that.

“Excuse me, lieutenant,” Uhura broke in, dropping lightly to the balls of her feet. She turned to Kirk. “Did you want to use the bar?”

Lieutenant Toothpick flushed, now trying to avoid looking at either of them.

“No, actually,” said the captain. “At least not if—please relax, Mr. Parker,” she interrupted herself, smiling enough to take the edge off. “You have as much right to be here as me.”

"Yes, ma'am," he said pathetically. "Captain."

Kirk swiveled even more towards Uhura, her back now almost entirely to Parker. Uhura rather doubted that was going to help.

"Actually," said the captain, "I came over to ask you a ... favor, of sorts, Uhura."

"Me?" Uhura said, repressing a laugh. No point in humiliating the poor man further in front of the captain, red pants or no.

"I think you might be the only woman here in my weight class," Kirk said, "and I saw your combat certifications—impressive, by the way—and I thought you might be interested in, ah, a bout. Sparring, I mean. Lancashire style, maybe, since we're both trained in that." As she spoke, Captain Kirk's practiced composure faded, leaving only a hopeful young woman little older than Uhura. Her voice ticked up into a smoother range as she chattered, words running quickly together rather than delivered with the deliberation and clarity of a theatre diva used to proclaiming lines to reach the back of an auditorium with or without a microphone.

Mezzo-soprano if she sings, Uhura thought.

(Uhura might have read Kirk's personnel record, too, once she saw the name of their new captain. As might be expected of a history-making trailblazer, Captain Kirk had been an overachiever at the Academy across numerous programs—including the theatre arts one.)

Uhura began, "Captain—"

Kirk's lapse lasted no longer than her monologue, her arms folding as she withdrew back into her usual asymmetric posture, hip tilted and one ankle bent behind the other. Uhura guessed she'd adopted it in imitation of something—it seemed too strange and dramatic for anything else—but had no idea what.

"It's not an order," Kirk said, back to her usual tones. "You can say no, there won't be any—ramifications for telling me to shove it." She paused, then added dryly, "Off-duty."

"Captain," said Uhura, "I'd be delighted. I haven't had a decent sparring opponent in ages." Daringly, she poked Kirk's bicep. She'd never have dreamed of doing that with Pike, but she hadn't spoken to Pike above three or four times, except through the intercraft system. "Prepare to lose, though."

"I'd count it an honor, Lieutenant Uhura," said Captain Kirk, thirty-two and bright-faced again. "But I will make you fight for it."

Uhura beamed.

"Thank you," she said.

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