#frandayam

It starts raining harder.  Because the Academy just has to be in San Francisco with the planet’s most wonderful weather and because Nyota just has to be out tonight and because apparently this evening wasn’t quite miserable enough.

She shuts her eyes.  When she opens them, she’s going to be in her room.  With her paper finished.  And the man next to her will have slipped her his comm number with a handsome smile that is every equivalent to the way his shoulders fill out his jacket.

Except that when she does open them, it’s still raining and it’s Commander Spock standing there.  Looking at her.

Nyota blinks.

Because he’s not… there’s no way that…

She clears her throat.  “Sir.”

He nods.  “Cadet.”

And then he turns around again, back to his study of the street that had facilitated her study of him and -

She looks away.  Squints out at the rain and categorically refuses to even so much as glance back at him again.

Or his pants.  Because… No.  Just no.  

Fifty required sources, seventy five percent of their grade, the topics only assigned last week - he is by far the most frustrating professor Nyota’s had, which considering the faculty at the Academy is really saying something.

And he’s not even - the way his jacket now - he’s so lanky.  Gangly - gawky, even - in his uniform.  And awkward so much of the time, standing up at the front of the room by the lectern.  Also boring as anything, which Nyota has found amazing all semester because he’s somehow made even xenopolysemic morphemes dull and tedious, and she loves them.

Or loved them until Commander Spock put them up on his lecture slides and now she spends his classes wondering how the clock can move so slowly.

He turns towards her again and she can once again clearly see that angle of his chin and upswept brows that the edge of his hood hid.  

His lips purse and then smooth again and he says, “Being prepared for the weather would be logical, Cadet.”

Obviously.  She presses her own mouth together before she says, “I’m aware, Commander.  I lent my jacket to my friend.”

Since she had thought that the shuttle would be along on its normal schedule and that it wouldn’t rain this hard and that the t-shirt she had worn to the gym would be fine enough for her short wait - and that of everyone, Commander Spock wouldn’t be here, interrupting an already lovely evening.

He’s still just watching her.  And really, it’d be more than fine if he stopped.

Which he only does to bend down to the bag at his feet.  Quickly, he unzips it, pulls something out, and holds it out to her.

A sweatshirt.  One of the Academy ones with a Starfleet crest on the back and another over the left chest, one of the very ones that Nyota has the same of, hanging warm and dry in her closet in her room, that she would have been smart to bring with her.  Or make Gaila bring, so that Nyota could have her own coat and wouldn’t be standing here trying to decide if she isn’t just too proud - and if this isn’t just too weird - to reach out and take it from him.

She is so, so cold.

“Thanks,” she finally says.

It’s warm.  And it smells good.  Which is… not something she particularly cares to think about all too closely, but whatever soap he uses is really rather nice.

Or shaving cream, maybe.  Aftershave.

Something, certainly.

She tucks her hands up inside the too long sleeves and tries not to think about it.  The sweatshirt, the smell of his whatever it is, the fact they’re here alone, the fact he’s here at all - none of it.

It works only until the shuttle arrives.

It’s packed.  Which goes a long way to explaining how it could be so late, though does nothing to ease the headache tonight is causing.

And it doesn’t stop.  They get a wave that is likely supposed to be apologetic from the driver and the shuttle splashes past them.

Well.  This could probably be worse.  Somehow.

Another shuttle will come by in twenty five minutes.  And the bus - a fifteen minute walk away - runs far more often.  Or there’s just heading home from here, a longer walk in the rain than Nyota particularly wants to suffer through, but that paper’s waiting for her and Commander Spock, silent and still as he watches the taillights of the shuttle fade down the street, is only reminding her that she has entirely too much of it left to write.

She turns to him.  “Have a nice-

“I am intending to-”

She stops and he stops and it’s the worst sort of staring match between them.

She clears her throat and gives him a sort of half wave that is only the more awkward for her hand still being tucked in her - his - sleeve.

“Sorry.  Sir.  Go ahead.”

“I had thought to get an air cab,” he says.

She nods.  “Ok.”

“If you are also returning to campus?”

Oh.  Well, she is.  She stares up at him, debating.

“You are welcome to join me,” he says into the silence and she nods too quickly.

“No, I-”  Know that.  Clearly.  From what he had said already, which maybe isn’t all that clear to him.  There’s something stony about his expression.

Which leaves her with the choice to walk home or wait here and see him in class tomorrow with that much less time to finish his paper, or endure a too-long ride with him next to her in the cab and still see him in class tomorrow.  Which really, given the lackluster lecture she’ll have to sit through either way, sounds a lot like a lose-lose.

Though one option has her thawing out her toes that much sooner, so she nods.

“Thanks,” she says and clears her throat and pulls the sleeves down further over her hands.

His sweatshirt still smells nice.

When the cab comes, he holds the door open for her and then settles next to her, his bag by his feet and his hands folded in his lap.  He even tugs his hood down, raindrops scattering over his shoulders and at least he looks far more like the officer she’s used to like this, his profile stern and austere as streetlights pass by outside the window.

Then, he turns to her.  “How are you enjoying your semester?”

“Oh.”  She nods.  “Fine, thank you.”  

It takes her a moment - it’s so odd with him here, his long legs folded up, only the space of the cab between them, none of the distraction of rain pouring down, the other students in the lecture hall, the cram of the turbolift the few times she’s run into him on it, other cadets and officers packed in around them.  No, this is entirely too quiet for her to think clearly so only after a long pause she gets out, “And yourself?”

“Acceptable.”  He brushes at spots of rain on his pant leg.  “Do you know what classes you intend to take next semester?”

“Intro to Celestial Navigation,” she says.  “Probably that first contact practicum?  The one that Lieutenant Calder is teaching.  And Advanced Morphology, and probably Xenoetymology, if I can get into it.”

“It is a popular course.”

“It is,” she says.  So is the practicum and she’ll be lucky if she can get on the roster for that too.  Celestial Nav is required and there’s more than enough sections, and only her and a handful of other students would ever be interested in the upper level morphology courses, so she’s not exactly worried that there won’t be room for her.  No, it’s boring as all hell to most cadets and anyone with any sense steers well clear of it.  

Logical, probably.  Or something.

“What are you teaching?” she asks.  “Do you know already?”

“Interspecies ethics and I run a number of training simulators for command track cadets.”

“Not Theory of Semantics again?”

“No,” he says and glances over at her.  There’s a moment - far too long of one - where his eyes meet hers.  Then, his eyebrow lifts and he says, “Advanced Morphology instead.”

“Right.”  She nods.  “Well, then.”

The cab slows.  Through the rain, she can make out the outline of her dorm, hazy and distorted in the sheet of water falling past the window.

“Have a pleasant evening,” he says and wherever he’s off to, he doesn’t unbuckle his safety belt nor make any move towards the door handle on his side of the cab.

Which means he’s dropping her off.  Which is… well, it’s rather nice.  And leaves her only a short distance to dash through the rain instead of a walk through campus from wherever it is that he’s heading on his own.

“Thanks.”  She clears her throat again.  “See you tomorrow.”

On the other side of a too long paper.

He nods.  “And next semester.”

“Yeah,” she says and reaches for the latch on the door.  “And next semester.”

She’s upstairs before she realizes she still has his sweatshirt.  And now it’s spotted from the rain where drops fell over her shoulders and arms.

Carefully, she pulls it off and drapes it over the back of her desk chair to dry.  She’ll give it back to him in the morning.  Along with a padd holding her paper.  Which will draw the attention of every other cadet in the room, so maybe… well, she knows where his office is.  And if she’s going to have to suffer through another one of his courses next semester, she’ll likely be in there more than a few times, since she well enough knows now that his standards are high enough that she ought to start making use of his office hours if she doesn’t want his courses to tank her GPA.

So she’ll bring it by then.  And ask after the final, maybe, so that she can get started on it sooner rather than later.

And say thank you, too.  For tonight.  Since really, he didn’t have to see her back home.