Chapter Text
“Kutomba wewe, wewe mwana wa mbwa wa kike,” Uhura muttered angrily. She had received a message from her asshole of an ex, and she was not happy about it. “Mama yako alikuwa hamster na baba yako harufu ya elderberries!”
She turned around when she heard someone laughing behind her, and to her confusion she saw the captain.
“Sir? Are you alright?”
“My god, Uhura, did you seriously just quote a movie from nearly 300 years ago? I don’t believe it.”
“I was talking in English?” she asked, horrified.
“No, no,” said Jim, catching his breath, “You were speaking Swahili, don’t worry.”
“You’re multilingual?”
“Uhura, I speak 21 languages.”
“You now what? I’m gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that.”
“You'll believe me sooner or later,” Jim said, shrugging.
“What you’re not going to try and prove it?”
“Nah, it’s more fun this way.”
“You know, you don’t have any room to judge,” Uhura said with a smirk.
“What?”
“You recognized the quote, and therefore you don’t get to judge.”
Jim laughed again, shaking his head at Uhura as she turned back to her station.
Captain,” she asked, looking back, “When did you learn Swahili?”
“Well, I don’t remember exactly, but it was definitely before I turned 13,” he replied.
She looked back down at her station, shocked. How had she known him for this long and never knew that he spoke multiple languages? For fucks sake, he was the treasurer of the Xenolinguistics Club! How had she never heard him speak in something other than English? She shook her head and refocused on her work, realizing, for the first of many times, that she’d underestimate the intelligence of Captain James Tiberius Kirk.