Fic: Nightingale (1/1)
Title: Nightingale
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Chapel/Uhura
Word Count: 4,232
Summary: It starts with a broken wrist. For silviakundera at the trek_exchange Fic Exchange; Prompt ”Uhura/Nurse Chapel; first-time fic.” General spoilers for Star Trek: The Original Series; Episode Spoilers for 1.05 - The Man Trap, 1.09 - What Are Little Girls Made Of?, and 2.08 - The Changeling.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. The song “Miss Otis Regrets” belongs to the genius of Cole Porter.
Author’s Notes: For silviakundera: This was rather more difficult for me to write than it should have been, but the experimenting was generally good fun in the end - I’d never written femslash before. It’s kind of episodic and mostly really vague, and the characterizations ended up somewhere between TOS and Reboot (except in the case of the brief mention of Kirk, who is entirely Reboot) - plus, there was a lot of medical jargon that I dropped along the way, because it seemed to take away from the tone, so the techno-babble, as well as the accuracy, is now admittedly lacking - but I hope it’s enjoyable nonetheless, fluffy, pining romp that it is; just don’t try to take it too seriously ;)
Nightingale
It starts with a broken wrist.
It’s an accident of course - from sparring in the rec room, she admits with some embarrassment, but she refuses, with a thin-lipped grimace, to divulge any further details - yet given the condition of her forearm, thoroughly bruised to the elbow and sliced through with serpentine lines separating skin, she’s lucky she hadn’t managed a severed artery. Though, admittedly, Christine has always been inclined to think the worst.
So she shakes her head in Nyota’s direction, which garners a bemused sort of smile from her patient as she tends to her aches and pains, pressing a sequence of hyposprays to her neck and trying not to admire the way the muscles strain and pull against her skin, rich like coffee, or cocoa, unrefined and yet smooth, so heartbreakingly smooth and sweet, she’s sure of it. Christine knows - somewhere visceral and incomprehensible and so absolutely absurd and unfounded and entirely foolish that it can’t possibly be wrong - that Nyota Uhura can taste of nothing less.
She turns quickly to retrieve the osteo-regenerator, feeling her stomach drop as the direction of her thoughts becomes painfully clear, and she blames the blush that colors her cheeks on the warmth of the room even as she shivers, and the strange sort of smile she receives in return for her fumbling excuses only turns her a deeper shade of beet. She fixes her eyes on the instrument in her hand, careful not to meet those depthless pools fixed at her hairline, and watches, fascinated for the first time in years at her craft, as open wounds turn red, soften to white and then dissolve, her breath catching uncomfortably in the hollow of her throat as she carefully dabs away the spots of blood marring that perfect mocha skin.
The smile that stretches soft white teeth out between full lips once Nyota’s arm is as good as new reminds her where she is, nudges her to draw back and not to stare at the jut of tantalizing bone at her clavicle, the way the deep crimson of her athletic wear clings just so against the gentle curve of her chest, how the second-skin of the unitard gathers in the fold between her thighs, stretches over the perfect dip of her lower back as she walks away.
And Christine, to her utter dismay, can’t breathe right for the what’s left of beta shift.
____________________________________
Okay, so if she’s honest with herself, she knows it really starts much earlier, much more innocently and unexpectedly; one evening over dinner.
Their friendship isn’t really all the surprising, or even all that unusual - they grow close in the quick and intuitive way that women sometimes do, drawn together by a deep similarity of character while their divergent interests temper their pride, the complications rife in female interaction. And so, from the first week on the ship, they share what meals they can, taking turns setting the menu - Christine varying between nutrition and simple favorites from the days in which eating at all was an unexpected privilege, and at times even a burden upon her consuming research schedule, whereas Nyota tended to bring a more eclectic taste to their palate, appreciating regional cuisine from all over the world, and not just Terran specialties, but often even more exotic things; her first taste of plomeek soup, in fact, had been at Nyota’s urging when she’d been feeling under the weather.
That night, however, Christine had received word that her mother had been hospitalized after a shuttle accident - she was stable, but the recovery wasn’t going to be particularly easy - and so she’d taken the opportunity to program the replicator with one of the few recipes that reminded her of home: the green bean casserole her grandmother used to make for every holiday, even Valentine’s Day. She savors the tang of mushroom and onion, relishing in the memories that the taste brings to the fore, but her true enjoyment in the meal is in watching Nyota chew at every forkful - the way that the crisp onion straws peek between her teeth when her mouth parts just a hair between swallows, or the way her tongue darts around each bean and twirls it in and around like the most dangerous, the most elusive sort of prey. And Christine forgets to blink after a while, wondering idly if that perfect arch of tan, where the soft pink of her gum tissue meets the darker purse of her lip, tastes like the ocean breeze. Because if it doesn’t, it should.
Coughing around a mouthful that slides down wrong, her throat feeling suddenly tight, Christine recognizes with unexpected clarity that she needs to stop this line of thought before it goes any further. Because Nyota is her friend. Possibly the best friend she’s had since before the Academy. And while her psych training rattles terminology and textbook case studies around her mind as her pulse speeds anxiously, she knows, even without her education, that friends simply aren’t meant to think that way about their friends. It never ends well. As such, she really needs to put the brakes on her runaway train of a fantasy and rein in the bubbling sense of lightness that’s growing in her, threatening to burst and send her floating from the mess hall like a damn sparrow, like a dove. She needs to stop.
And if she doesn’t, she at least knows that she should.
____________________________________
The next time, it’s a reaction to arugulous chimantensis venom, and she’s an absolute mess of emotions, if she’s honest with herself. She’s angry as anything - indignant, even - because she’d fought like hell with McCoy about that plant, told him that having the damn thing on a starship was just a disaster waiting to happen. But McCoy had deferred to the Captain on the matter, having been preoccupied with “an actual crisis, Christine, as in the type that happens and needs to be fixed, immediately, so if you could put a hold on the hypotheticals...” And Christine has the utmost respect for her Captain, she really does. She just finds herself often wishing that said Captain had a maturity level exceeding that of a twelve year old when it came to his thrice-damned curiosity. Because, upon being presented with her concerns, his eyes simply widened, and he called over her shoulder to his helmsman to ask when he could see the thing, and to consequently grouse as to why he hadn’t been shown such a novelty yet in the first place. Boys, she had decided at that point - as Sulu laughed and agreed to give the captan a private tour of his collection of carnivorous plants - would inexorably be boys, and if women greater than herself hadn’t managed to curb that tendency by now, she certainly wasn’t suited for the task.
Now, though, she regrets her ambivalence, her unwillingness to pursue the matter further; she feels nauseous at the horrible possibilities that tear through her mind like fire, each potentiality like kindling to the growing flames - what if Sulu hadn’t felt the need to keep this one plant, of all his specimens, in his quarters instead of with the rest in the botanic garden? What if his rooms weren’t so close to the turbolift? What if he’d taken the open suite just a few decks further away from medical? What if the thorn had pierced just a little deeper, if the poison had spread just a little quicker into the bloodstream, if the effects had set in just a bit sooner, before she’d made it to sick bay? If the swelling had started quicker, if it had progressed further, if her throat had closed and she’d collapsed on the way and if she’d -
“And of course Hikaru failed to mention that the damn thing had tentacles.” And it’s only as she huffs - nearly squawks, really - utterly indignant, that Christine realizes that Nyota’s been keeping a steady stream of lopsided conversation going for some time now, and she lets the soothing quality of her voice (which is perfect and pitched and akin to the sound of a baby’s first breath, it’s so innocent and pure, even in anger) put her at ease as she runs the tricorder one more time. “Because that’s endearing, isn’t it? A jellyfish that’s masquerading as a plant.” She chuckles to herself, the sound strange but welcome, light even as its hindered by the fact that her left cheek is still at least twice as large as it should be. “Last time I offer to take care of his hoard of freakish vegetation while he’s off gallivanting, that’s for sure.”
Christine laughs - though more out of hysteric desperation, and the joyous reassurance that each musical note of Nyota’s voice sends pooling warm in her chest, than any real humor - and forgets about the what ifs.
____________________________________
It was shortly after their engagement - and it seems so long ago, now, like another life entirely - when Roger told her once, as she washed dishes the old fashioned way in a sink too shallow, in the small quarters next to her lab; whispered in her ear that love was all about the small things. And Christine - she’d just laughed, her whole word light as he kissed along her jaw, and she thought she’d understood. She loved him for the way his arms fit around her waist, for the way his hair parted down the side so she could ruffle it out of place; for the way he loved her in so many little ways of his own. She understood.
She doesn’t think of Roger as often as she should, anymore - she supposes, though, that her mourning had gone on long enough, all things considered. But as she sits at her friend’s bedside, watching big brown eyes blink at her, devoid of any real feeling, wide and blank, she remembers his voice in her ear, and her wrist shakes a little as she coaxes Nyota’s pliant mouth open and spoon feeds her - applesauce, of all things - and Christine feels hollow when she has to reach out, to help her close her mouth around it, when she has to encourage her to swallow.
When she leaves for a moment to retrieve Nyota’s first lessons, she returns to find the woman curled upon herself, fast asleep. She looks different, Christine realizes with a pang - innocent - and she reaches down to gently remove the gold hoops from her ears, sliding them from the holes and tucking them into her pocket, little tokens of memory; one of the first conversations they’d ever had revolved around a trip to Xanaro IV, and the earrings her father had bought her in a native marketplace that she’d kept ever since.
But when she starts to improve, when those eyes have meaning in them again, it feels like something in the universe has snapped back into place, and Christine is nothing but bright and cheerful enthusiasm as she slides disc after disc into the reader for Nyota’s perusal - and if her excitement is a bit over the top when they get through the bit about the dog and the ball, it’s all right, because Nyota is hugging her tightly, bare shoulders wrapped around her like she never wants to let go, and for an instant Christine can pretend that the trust, the love in those childlike eyes is something different than what is it, something lasting and true.
But when the small things start to come back, Christine knows she can’t hide from her own truth any longer, about the little things she never understood - the sound of humming and the sparkle of a glance and the way her lips look particularly wet when she speaks in other languages, her tongue darting out more often than when she sticks to English; the brush of her hand as she reaches to return their trays after dinner, the way a smile curls her mouth, brightens her whole face. And it’s after a week of agonizing hours, only returning to her quarters after Nyota recognizes her face again, reaches a seventh grade reading level, can recite her favorite poetry, can differentiate each dialect of Romulan; only after Nyota is herself again, all parts big and small, does she rip off her uniform with a shuddering gasp as she drowns, crumbles, and sobs into the sheets.
Roger - he’d been right all along.
____________________________________
After that, it’s exposure to a mutated strain of the Sanvora virus on Denaub XI. Christine’s heart is trilling in her throat, fast and visible and choking, keeping the bile down as she administers the seventh hypospray - hopefully the last - of an improvised treatment they’re barely managing to keep one step ahead of, tailoring the next injection based on the efficacy of the last and making the rest up as they go. She gulps at air too thin, but she never wavers, because for all the fear and doubt in her within that single moment, she is nothing if not a professional, if not trained impeccably at what she does, and it’s this very sort of crisis that she was born to face - it’s exactly her talent at hiding just how terrified she actually is, at putting aside her own anxieties and getting the job done, that makes her the best nurse on board, and she’ll be damned if she falters now, with this life at stake, this heart held in her hands. So she stands by, stony-faced and just as still, her fingers trembling against her palms, clenched tight into fists as she watches the readings fluctuate on the screen in front of her; and it’s only on the inside that she prays, begs like a child that this one last attempt will finally staunch the piercing screams that roll like blood off that skilled tongue, silk turned to venom, to terror and death as the Lieutenant trashes on the biobed before her.
Because she’s not sure there’s time left for another try.
The moments dredge on, slipping thick and slow past her fingertips, and Christine’s eyes begin to blur the monitor readings together, respiration merging with brain activity until improvements, however small, spark in her blood like bad news. She brushes her fingerprints at the pulse in Nyota’s neck, trusting nothing but the soft massage of life against her touch, and slowly she cups the line of her hand against a feverish jaw, gently fingering the temporal pulse, seeking a second opinion as she studies the subtle lines, the stress in that warm and beautiful face, and it breaks Christine’s heart a little bit to know that no matter how much love she pours into the gentle strokes against her skin, it won’t be enough to soothe Nyota’s pain.
She breathes deeply as she settles next to the bed, inviting that elusive calm to steady her as her hand trails to Nyota’s arm, lifting it from the linen carefully and seeking her wrist, relieved as the rhythm she finds there slowly evens, slowly strengthens - slowly brings the world back into focus. Eyes fluttering, lashes delicate, fragile in ways they’ve never looked before as they shiver in time with the gentle elegies of her moans, Nyota’s fingers eventually clutch back at the heel of Christine’s palm, and Christine - with a strange catch in the beating of her heart that sends her reeling for all of a moment - knows that Nyota can tell that it’s her sitting next to her, keeping vigil.
“M’grandmother,” Nyota finally slurs a bit as the antidote seeps deeper, stronger into her system, still too slow for Christine’s liking, for the way her nerves still shake on the edge of shattering; “sh’was a fan o’ the classics, down from ‘er mother, an’ ‘er mother’s mother...”
Nyota’s breath catches, and her eyes - feverishly spinning under half-masted lids - shoot open as something shifts, stretches taut and breaks within her, and Christine can’t breathe until it passes, for all she knows that this is normal, expected; that it’s going to be alright. When dry lips open, offering a teasing glimpse of moist pink as a strangled, desperate sigh passes through, Christine moves just a little closer, strains a little harder to hear a voice that’s slowly growing softer, fainter as the last of the sedatives take hold. “Sh’used to sing those songs ta me, when I was small, rocking me to sleep with stories ‘bout lost loves and, and...” a gasp, a breath, and Christine’s eyes flash to the sensors in sudden, illogical, but gripping fear; “gentle sorrows.”
And it’s a laugh that’s really just a poor excuse for a sob which escapes that weakened frame, shaking her fragile body pitifully, and Christine cannot help but reach out further, twining her grasp to hold those limp, yearning fingers against the palm of her trembling hand. “And even though I didn’t understand, never understood then, what they meant, they stuck to me, little scars of what...” the words trail off in some cocktail of melancholy and delusion and the specter of a hateful world, and the weight of it settles heavy on them both as Nyota hisses, determined between clenched teeth as Christine fumbles for something to take the edge off the pain; “of what would be...”
It’s after a stretch of silence, in which only labored breaths break the still, that the choked sounds of a diluted melody begin to waft through the ether; “Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, Madam...”
Christine can’t bring herself to move as the song registers, something she feels she’s heard before, as if in a dream, and it strikes a chord somewhere deep, unbidden - the strain of Nyota’s voice on every note, tired and drained and yet clinging, ever-hopeful, as if she needs this - as if this single tune requires her expression, and even now, she cannot turn it away. “She is sorry to be delayed, but last evening down in Lover's Lane she strayed...”
“And the moment before she died, she lifted up her lovely head and cried...” And by god, Christine feels like the ground is falling out from under her, somehow, and it’s all she can do, all she’ll ever be able to do again not to lean down, not to let the soft curls falling dejectedly, exhausted, from her upswept hair to mingle with the sweat-soaked clumps of impossible black fanned over the bedding, to press her lips to the tear tracks that mar those proud, perfect cheeks, and wash the hurt away.
“Miss Otis...” Nyota’s voice trails off, catches raw in her throat with a rasp before the sedative finally steals her away; and Christine stays, stroking back that soft raven hair where it clings to the brow, and if there are tears in her eyes, she’s far too lost to care.
Just a day after she’s discharged back to light duties, Nyota asks if Christine will join her for lunch, as they often do. With her breath caught sharp, heavy in her lungs, and her eyes welling against her will as the soul-searing notes echo through her mind and twist against her pulse, she nods and follows, and blames the watering of her eyes when she stares too long at the lieutenant on a replicator malfunction that put too many onions in her soup.
____________________________________
Christine’s just finishing her shift when the distinct click of boots echoes through medbay - and damn it all if the sharp tap of those regulation heels isn’t different with her, isn’t the quick rasp of a breath as everything goes warm and hazy. Christine closes her eyes for a single moment against the black of the stars, behind the lids of her eyes, and she clutches her datapad against the swell of her breasts, like the floorboard hiding the tell-tale heart.
“Does the doctor know you’re here?” she asks idly - pointless, because it’s not as if the woman’s just walked in, or that the CMO is in his office and wouldn’t have seen her - but Christine’s voice sharp with the attempt to keep her emotions, her longings to herself, and it’s only in her peripheral vision that she even sees the soft swell of those thighs darting out like carmel under the lighting, splaying away from the candy apple of her skirt, as she searches frantically for another nurse, willing McCoy to emerge from across the way at just this moment, desperate to pawn her friend - the object of her every romantic, intimate, wanton desire, for goodness’ sake - off on anyone else, so that she might retreat to the safety of her own quarters to ride out the high of these emotions, these wants. “I’m sure he’s finished with his other patients, he should be available to see-”
“I came to see you.” And Christine isn’t blind; she isn’t deaf. She can read people, situations, and know what they mean, sense their implications and the fine threads of undertone that make them what they are. But she needn’t have bothered with any of it, because the tension between them is palpable, inescapable, and it rings through with every breath, vibrates with every heartbeat and every sparking, crackling nerve as they watch each other with eyes that know, know that this is their defining moment, the end of a conversation they’d never dared to have.
“You said I’d need a followup,” Nyota says in that clear, crisp tone that cuts through pretenses and apprehension and dives into the heart of the matter without delay; “in one week. And so, seven days later, here I am.” And there’s a smile in her, somewhere, that tells Christine she’s more unsettled than she’ll willingly convey, and it makes Christine hopeful - foolishly so - that there’s a part of her that’s trilling with the opportunity of being able to show someone that vulnerability, that hidden side of herself.
“Of course,” Christine dips her chin, letting her hair fall as a veil against the flush that spreads up her neck, leading the way to the closest bed with a warmer professionalism than is probably warranted, though with more composure than she’d expected of herself, to be honest. “It won’t take a minute,” she continues as she grabs for her tricorder; “go ahead and have a seat.”
It’s hard to move around in whatever is flowing, spreading between them; an unspoken demand, a question that requires answering, and every moment it goes ignored only feeds it, only makes it harder to bear. “Everything looks fine,” she declares, finally, as she moves the hand scanner up Nyota’s lean torso, leaning closer (unnecessarily) and streamlining the focus to neural activity. “Though I’d prefer if you stayed ship-side for another few days, just to give your immune system the extra recoop time...” She leans in to run a gentle finger over the deep rut of damaged skin that had just days before gleamed dark and dead where they’d had to pry the shock collar from her after her rescue from the Plinartian slave ship; the flesh there is still tender, still new, but the mark is all but gone against her slender neck, and Christine lingers for a moment longer than she needs to, than she should, because if she breathes in slowly, she can imagine that she’s just suspended, just hanging between instants, and in the space of a sigh she’ll be in those arms, clutched to that chest like something beloved, something dear.
She barely realizes that Nyota’s mouth is so close to her own, not until she can feel the other woman’s breath against her lips, can almost sense the soft currents in the air with every blink of her eye. And between those blinks, as her own breath abandons her, Christine sees the only things she needs in that sparkling gaze - possibility, affection, and the foundations of a thing infinitely deeper, whose whispers get lost in the present, but strengthen, take solid form the farther she reaches after it, and that promise makes her dizzy, makes her soar.
It’s more like the pull of gravity than any conscious choice, and Christine could go over the fractions of moments that lead them in to one another a million times and never be able to tell who pressed lip to lip and tongue to tongue first, who first tasted who; but in the end it really doesn’t matter, as Nyota’s hand grasps hard at her shoulder for balance, the brush of her skin soft and subtle skin against Christine’s cheek as they move slowly, breathing in time between frantic, needy presses of their lips - just two souls drowning suddenly in one another, unforeseen and yet inevitable. So simple, so subtle and strong, it doesn’t matter who first saw it coming.
Because it ends with a kiss, and that suits Christine just fine.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Chapel/Uhura
Word Count: 4,232
Summary: It starts with a broken wrist. For silviakundera at the trek_exchange Fic Exchange; Prompt ”Uhura/Nurse Chapel; first-time fic.” General spoilers for Star Trek: The Original Series; Episode Spoilers for 1.05 - The Man Trap, 1.09 - What Are Little Girls Made Of?, and 2.08 - The Changeling.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. The song “Miss Otis Regrets” belongs to the genius of Cole Porter.
Author’s Notes: For silviakundera: This was rather more difficult for me to write than it should have been, but the experimenting was generally good fun in the end - I’d never written femslash before. It’s kind of episodic and mostly really vague, and the characterizations ended up somewhere between TOS and Reboot (except in the case of the brief mention of Kirk, who is entirely Reboot) - plus, there was a lot of medical jargon that I dropped along the way, because it seemed to take away from the tone, so the techno-babble, as well as the accuracy, is now admittedly lacking - but I hope it’s enjoyable nonetheless, fluffy, pining romp that it is; just don’t try to take it too seriously ;)
Nightingale
It starts with a broken wrist.
It’s an accident of course - from sparring in the rec room, she admits with some embarrassment, but she refuses, with a thin-lipped grimace, to divulge any further details - yet given the condition of her forearm, thoroughly bruised to the elbow and sliced through with serpentine lines separating skin, she’s lucky she hadn’t managed a severed artery. Though, admittedly, Christine has always been inclined to think the worst.
So she shakes her head in Nyota’s direction, which garners a bemused sort of smile from her patient as she tends to her aches and pains, pressing a sequence of hyposprays to her neck and trying not to admire the way the muscles strain and pull against her skin, rich like coffee, or cocoa, unrefined and yet smooth, so heartbreakingly smooth and sweet, she’s sure of it. Christine knows - somewhere visceral and incomprehensible and so absolutely absurd and unfounded and entirely foolish that it can’t possibly be wrong - that Nyota Uhura can taste of nothing less.
She turns quickly to retrieve the osteo-regenerator, feeling her stomach drop as the direction of her thoughts becomes painfully clear, and she blames the blush that colors her cheeks on the warmth of the room even as she shivers, and the strange sort of smile she receives in return for her fumbling excuses only turns her a deeper shade of beet. She fixes her eyes on the instrument in her hand, careful not to meet those depthless pools fixed at her hairline, and watches, fascinated for the first time in years at her craft, as open wounds turn red, soften to white and then dissolve, her breath catching uncomfortably in the hollow of her throat as she carefully dabs away the spots of blood marring that perfect mocha skin.
The smile that stretches soft white teeth out between full lips once Nyota’s arm is as good as new reminds her where she is, nudges her to draw back and not to stare at the jut of tantalizing bone at her clavicle, the way the deep crimson of her athletic wear clings just so against the gentle curve of her chest, how the second-skin of the unitard gathers in the fold between her thighs, stretches over the perfect dip of her lower back as she walks away.
And Christine, to her utter dismay, can’t breathe right for the what’s left of beta shift.
____________________________________
Okay, so if she’s honest with herself, she knows it really starts much earlier, much more innocently and unexpectedly; one evening over dinner.
Their friendship isn’t really all the surprising, or even all that unusual - they grow close in the quick and intuitive way that women sometimes do, drawn together by a deep similarity of character while their divergent interests temper their pride, the complications rife in female interaction. And so, from the first week on the ship, they share what meals they can, taking turns setting the menu - Christine varying between nutrition and simple favorites from the days in which eating at all was an unexpected privilege, and at times even a burden upon her consuming research schedule, whereas Nyota tended to bring a more eclectic taste to their palate, appreciating regional cuisine from all over the world, and not just Terran specialties, but often even more exotic things; her first taste of plomeek soup, in fact, had been at Nyota’s urging when she’d been feeling under the weather.
That night, however, Christine had received word that her mother had been hospitalized after a shuttle accident - she was stable, but the recovery wasn’t going to be particularly easy - and so she’d taken the opportunity to program the replicator with one of the few recipes that reminded her of home: the green bean casserole her grandmother used to make for every holiday, even Valentine’s Day. She savors the tang of mushroom and onion, relishing in the memories that the taste brings to the fore, but her true enjoyment in the meal is in watching Nyota chew at every forkful - the way that the crisp onion straws peek between her teeth when her mouth parts just a hair between swallows, or the way her tongue darts around each bean and twirls it in and around like the most dangerous, the most elusive sort of prey. And Christine forgets to blink after a while, wondering idly if that perfect arch of tan, where the soft pink of her gum tissue meets the darker purse of her lip, tastes like the ocean breeze. Because if it doesn’t, it should.
Coughing around a mouthful that slides down wrong, her throat feeling suddenly tight, Christine recognizes with unexpected clarity that she needs to stop this line of thought before it goes any further. Because Nyota is her friend. Possibly the best friend she’s had since before the Academy. And while her psych training rattles terminology and textbook case studies around her mind as her pulse speeds anxiously, she knows, even without her education, that friends simply aren’t meant to think that way about their friends. It never ends well. As such, she really needs to put the brakes on her runaway train of a fantasy and rein in the bubbling sense of lightness that’s growing in her, threatening to burst and send her floating from the mess hall like a damn sparrow, like a dove. She needs to stop.
And if she doesn’t, she at least knows that she should.
____________________________________
The next time, it’s a reaction to arugulous chimantensis venom, and she’s an absolute mess of emotions, if she’s honest with herself. She’s angry as anything - indignant, even - because she’d fought like hell with McCoy about that plant, told him that having the damn thing on a starship was just a disaster waiting to happen. But McCoy had deferred to the Captain on the matter, having been preoccupied with “an actual crisis, Christine, as in the type that happens and needs to be fixed, immediately, so if you could put a hold on the hypotheticals...” And Christine has the utmost respect for her Captain, she really does. She just finds herself often wishing that said Captain had a maturity level exceeding that of a twelve year old when it came to his thrice-damned curiosity. Because, upon being presented with her concerns, his eyes simply widened, and he called over her shoulder to his helmsman to ask when he could see the thing, and to consequently grouse as to why he hadn’t been shown such a novelty yet in the first place. Boys, she had decided at that point - as Sulu laughed and agreed to give the captan a private tour of his collection of carnivorous plants - would inexorably be boys, and if women greater than herself hadn’t managed to curb that tendency by now, she certainly wasn’t suited for the task.
Now, though, she regrets her ambivalence, her unwillingness to pursue the matter further; she feels nauseous at the horrible possibilities that tear through her mind like fire, each potentiality like kindling to the growing flames - what if Sulu hadn’t felt the need to keep this one plant, of all his specimens, in his quarters instead of with the rest in the botanic garden? What if his rooms weren’t so close to the turbolift? What if he’d taken the open suite just a few decks further away from medical? What if the thorn had pierced just a little deeper, if the poison had spread just a little quicker into the bloodstream, if the effects had set in just a bit sooner, before she’d made it to sick bay? If the swelling had started quicker, if it had progressed further, if her throat had closed and she’d collapsed on the way and if she’d -
“And of course Hikaru failed to mention that the damn thing had tentacles.” And it’s only as she huffs - nearly squawks, really - utterly indignant, that Christine realizes that Nyota’s been keeping a steady stream of lopsided conversation going for some time now, and she lets the soothing quality of her voice (which is perfect and pitched and akin to the sound of a baby’s first breath, it’s so innocent and pure, even in anger) put her at ease as she runs the tricorder one more time. “Because that’s endearing, isn’t it? A jellyfish that’s masquerading as a plant.” She chuckles to herself, the sound strange but welcome, light even as its hindered by the fact that her left cheek is still at least twice as large as it should be. “Last time I offer to take care of his hoard of freakish vegetation while he’s off gallivanting, that’s for sure.”
Christine laughs - though more out of hysteric desperation, and the joyous reassurance that each musical note of Nyota’s voice sends pooling warm in her chest, than any real humor - and forgets about the what ifs.
____________________________________
It was shortly after their engagement - and it seems so long ago, now, like another life entirely - when Roger told her once, as she washed dishes the old fashioned way in a sink too shallow, in the small quarters next to her lab; whispered in her ear that love was all about the small things. And Christine - she’d just laughed, her whole word light as he kissed along her jaw, and she thought she’d understood. She loved him for the way his arms fit around her waist, for the way his hair parted down the side so she could ruffle it out of place; for the way he loved her in so many little ways of his own. She understood.
She doesn’t think of Roger as often as she should, anymore - she supposes, though, that her mourning had gone on long enough, all things considered. But as she sits at her friend’s bedside, watching big brown eyes blink at her, devoid of any real feeling, wide and blank, she remembers his voice in her ear, and her wrist shakes a little as she coaxes Nyota’s pliant mouth open and spoon feeds her - applesauce, of all things - and Christine feels hollow when she has to reach out, to help her close her mouth around it, when she has to encourage her to swallow.
When she leaves for a moment to retrieve Nyota’s first lessons, she returns to find the woman curled upon herself, fast asleep. She looks different, Christine realizes with a pang - innocent - and she reaches down to gently remove the gold hoops from her ears, sliding them from the holes and tucking them into her pocket, little tokens of memory; one of the first conversations they’d ever had revolved around a trip to Xanaro IV, and the earrings her father had bought her in a native marketplace that she’d kept ever since.
But when she starts to improve, when those eyes have meaning in them again, it feels like something in the universe has snapped back into place, and Christine is nothing but bright and cheerful enthusiasm as she slides disc after disc into the reader for Nyota’s perusal - and if her excitement is a bit over the top when they get through the bit about the dog and the ball, it’s all right, because Nyota is hugging her tightly, bare shoulders wrapped around her like she never wants to let go, and for an instant Christine can pretend that the trust, the love in those childlike eyes is something different than what is it, something lasting and true.
But when the small things start to come back, Christine knows she can’t hide from her own truth any longer, about the little things she never understood - the sound of humming and the sparkle of a glance and the way her lips look particularly wet when she speaks in other languages, her tongue darting out more often than when she sticks to English; the brush of her hand as she reaches to return their trays after dinner, the way a smile curls her mouth, brightens her whole face. And it’s after a week of agonizing hours, only returning to her quarters after Nyota recognizes her face again, reaches a seventh grade reading level, can recite her favorite poetry, can differentiate each dialect of Romulan; only after Nyota is herself again, all parts big and small, does she rip off her uniform with a shuddering gasp as she drowns, crumbles, and sobs into the sheets.
Roger - he’d been right all along.
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After that, it’s exposure to a mutated strain of the Sanvora virus on Denaub XI. Christine’s heart is trilling in her throat, fast and visible and choking, keeping the bile down as she administers the seventh hypospray - hopefully the last - of an improvised treatment they’re barely managing to keep one step ahead of, tailoring the next injection based on the efficacy of the last and making the rest up as they go. She gulps at air too thin, but she never wavers, because for all the fear and doubt in her within that single moment, she is nothing if not a professional, if not trained impeccably at what she does, and it’s this very sort of crisis that she was born to face - it’s exactly her talent at hiding just how terrified she actually is, at putting aside her own anxieties and getting the job done, that makes her the best nurse on board, and she’ll be damned if she falters now, with this life at stake, this heart held in her hands. So she stands by, stony-faced and just as still, her fingers trembling against her palms, clenched tight into fists as she watches the readings fluctuate on the screen in front of her; and it’s only on the inside that she prays, begs like a child that this one last attempt will finally staunch the piercing screams that roll like blood off that skilled tongue, silk turned to venom, to terror and death as the Lieutenant trashes on the biobed before her.
Because she’s not sure there’s time left for another try.
The moments dredge on, slipping thick and slow past her fingertips, and Christine’s eyes begin to blur the monitor readings together, respiration merging with brain activity until improvements, however small, spark in her blood like bad news. She brushes her fingerprints at the pulse in Nyota’s neck, trusting nothing but the soft massage of life against her touch, and slowly she cups the line of her hand against a feverish jaw, gently fingering the temporal pulse, seeking a second opinion as she studies the subtle lines, the stress in that warm and beautiful face, and it breaks Christine’s heart a little bit to know that no matter how much love she pours into the gentle strokes against her skin, it won’t be enough to soothe Nyota’s pain.
She breathes deeply as she settles next to the bed, inviting that elusive calm to steady her as her hand trails to Nyota’s arm, lifting it from the linen carefully and seeking her wrist, relieved as the rhythm she finds there slowly evens, slowly strengthens - slowly brings the world back into focus. Eyes fluttering, lashes delicate, fragile in ways they’ve never looked before as they shiver in time with the gentle elegies of her moans, Nyota’s fingers eventually clutch back at the heel of Christine’s palm, and Christine - with a strange catch in the beating of her heart that sends her reeling for all of a moment - knows that Nyota can tell that it’s her sitting next to her, keeping vigil.
“M’grandmother,” Nyota finally slurs a bit as the antidote seeps deeper, stronger into her system, still too slow for Christine’s liking, for the way her nerves still shake on the edge of shattering; “sh’was a fan o’ the classics, down from ‘er mother, an’ ‘er mother’s mother...”
Nyota’s breath catches, and her eyes - feverishly spinning under half-masted lids - shoot open as something shifts, stretches taut and breaks within her, and Christine can’t breathe until it passes, for all she knows that this is normal, expected; that it’s going to be alright. When dry lips open, offering a teasing glimpse of moist pink as a strangled, desperate sigh passes through, Christine moves just a little closer, strains a little harder to hear a voice that’s slowly growing softer, fainter as the last of the sedatives take hold. “Sh’used to sing those songs ta me, when I was small, rocking me to sleep with stories ‘bout lost loves and, and...” a gasp, a breath, and Christine’s eyes flash to the sensors in sudden, illogical, but gripping fear; “gentle sorrows.”
And it’s a laugh that’s really just a poor excuse for a sob which escapes that weakened frame, shaking her fragile body pitifully, and Christine cannot help but reach out further, twining her grasp to hold those limp, yearning fingers against the palm of her trembling hand. “And even though I didn’t understand, never understood then, what they meant, they stuck to me, little scars of what...” the words trail off in some cocktail of melancholy and delusion and the specter of a hateful world, and the weight of it settles heavy on them both as Nyota hisses, determined between clenched teeth as Christine fumbles for something to take the edge off the pain; “of what would be...”
It’s after a stretch of silence, in which only labored breaths break the still, that the choked sounds of a diluted melody begin to waft through the ether; “Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, Madam...”
Christine can’t bring herself to move as the song registers, something she feels she’s heard before, as if in a dream, and it strikes a chord somewhere deep, unbidden - the strain of Nyota’s voice on every note, tired and drained and yet clinging, ever-hopeful, as if she needs this - as if this single tune requires her expression, and even now, she cannot turn it away. “She is sorry to be delayed, but last evening down in Lover's Lane she strayed...”
“And the moment before she died, she lifted up her lovely head and cried...” And by god, Christine feels like the ground is falling out from under her, somehow, and it’s all she can do, all she’ll ever be able to do again not to lean down, not to let the soft curls falling dejectedly, exhausted, from her upswept hair to mingle with the sweat-soaked clumps of impossible black fanned over the bedding, to press her lips to the tear tracks that mar those proud, perfect cheeks, and wash the hurt away.
“Miss Otis...” Nyota’s voice trails off, catches raw in her throat with a rasp before the sedative finally steals her away; and Christine stays, stroking back that soft raven hair where it clings to the brow, and if there are tears in her eyes, she’s far too lost to care.
Just a day after she’s discharged back to light duties, Nyota asks if Christine will join her for lunch, as they often do. With her breath caught sharp, heavy in her lungs, and her eyes welling against her will as the soul-searing notes echo through her mind and twist against her pulse, she nods and follows, and blames the watering of her eyes when she stares too long at the lieutenant on a replicator malfunction that put too many onions in her soup.
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Christine’s just finishing her shift when the distinct click of boots echoes through medbay - and damn it all if the sharp tap of those regulation heels isn’t different with her, isn’t the quick rasp of a breath as everything goes warm and hazy. Christine closes her eyes for a single moment against the black of the stars, behind the lids of her eyes, and she clutches her datapad against the swell of her breasts, like the floorboard hiding the tell-tale heart.
“Does the doctor know you’re here?” she asks idly - pointless, because it’s not as if the woman’s just walked in, or that the CMO is in his office and wouldn’t have seen her - but Christine’s voice sharp with the attempt to keep her emotions, her longings to herself, and it’s only in her peripheral vision that she even sees the soft swell of those thighs darting out like carmel under the lighting, splaying away from the candy apple of her skirt, as she searches frantically for another nurse, willing McCoy to emerge from across the way at just this moment, desperate to pawn her friend - the object of her every romantic, intimate, wanton desire, for goodness’ sake - off on anyone else, so that she might retreat to the safety of her own quarters to ride out the high of these emotions, these wants. “I’m sure he’s finished with his other patients, he should be available to see-”
“I came to see you.” And Christine isn’t blind; she isn’t deaf. She can read people, situations, and know what they mean, sense their implications and the fine threads of undertone that make them what they are. But she needn’t have bothered with any of it, because the tension between them is palpable, inescapable, and it rings through with every breath, vibrates with every heartbeat and every sparking, crackling nerve as they watch each other with eyes that know, know that this is their defining moment, the end of a conversation they’d never dared to have.
“You said I’d need a followup,” Nyota says in that clear, crisp tone that cuts through pretenses and apprehension and dives into the heart of the matter without delay; “in one week. And so, seven days later, here I am.” And there’s a smile in her, somewhere, that tells Christine she’s more unsettled than she’ll willingly convey, and it makes Christine hopeful - foolishly so - that there’s a part of her that’s trilling with the opportunity of being able to show someone that vulnerability, that hidden side of herself.
“Of course,” Christine dips her chin, letting her hair fall as a veil against the flush that spreads up her neck, leading the way to the closest bed with a warmer professionalism than is probably warranted, though with more composure than she’d expected of herself, to be honest. “It won’t take a minute,” she continues as she grabs for her tricorder; “go ahead and have a seat.”
It’s hard to move around in whatever is flowing, spreading between them; an unspoken demand, a question that requires answering, and every moment it goes ignored only feeds it, only makes it harder to bear. “Everything looks fine,” she declares, finally, as she moves the hand scanner up Nyota’s lean torso, leaning closer (unnecessarily) and streamlining the focus to neural activity. “Though I’d prefer if you stayed ship-side for another few days, just to give your immune system the extra recoop time...” She leans in to run a gentle finger over the deep rut of damaged skin that had just days before gleamed dark and dead where they’d had to pry the shock collar from her after her rescue from the Plinartian slave ship; the flesh there is still tender, still new, but the mark is all but gone against her slender neck, and Christine lingers for a moment longer than she needs to, than she should, because if she breathes in slowly, she can imagine that she’s just suspended, just hanging between instants, and in the space of a sigh she’ll be in those arms, clutched to that chest like something beloved, something dear.
She barely realizes that Nyota’s mouth is so close to her own, not until she can feel the other woman’s breath against her lips, can almost sense the soft currents in the air with every blink of her eye. And between those blinks, as her own breath abandons her, Christine sees the only things she needs in that sparkling gaze - possibility, affection, and the foundations of a thing infinitely deeper, whose whispers get lost in the present, but strengthen, take solid form the farther she reaches after it, and that promise makes her dizzy, makes her soar.
It’s more like the pull of gravity than any conscious choice, and Christine could go over the fractions of moments that lead them in to one another a million times and never be able to tell who pressed lip to lip and tongue to tongue first, who first tasted who; but in the end it really doesn’t matter, as Nyota’s hand grasps hard at her shoulder for balance, the brush of her skin soft and subtle skin against Christine’s cheek as they move slowly, breathing in time between frantic, needy presses of their lips - just two souls drowning suddenly in one another, unforeseen and yet inevitable. So simple, so subtle and strong, it doesn’t matter who first saw it coming.
Because it ends with a kiss, and that suits Christine just fine.