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"A line has to be drawn somewhere," Christine Chapel said, slamming her lunch tray down onto the rec room table across from where her friend and frequent lunchmate, Lieutenant Uhura, was sitting. "There's only so much of this that a person can take."
"Tell me something I don't know." Uhura was as well versed as Chapel in this particular topic. "I've got two of them at all times. At least you just have to put up with one."
"That may be so, but I can tell you that those two don't need to be there physically to cause a problem." Chapel stabbed a fork viciously into her potato salad. "Dr. McCoy walks around with a stupid grin on his face all day, he invents reasons for them to come to sickbay, and he mopes the whole time they're on away missions."
Uhura nodded sagely. She was very familiar with the moping, the secret smiles, and the copious amounts of pining. "Yesterday, when Mr. Spock led that away team, the captain didn't speak to anyone for the entire hour. He just sat and stared at the view screen and wrote things on a PADD. Chekov got a good look at it when he walked past the captain on his way to the lift, and he says it was poetry."
"Chekov will say anything if he thinks it will make a good story," Chapel pointed out. "Last week he told me that medicine was invented in Russia. All medicine. Said he even knew the guy who was responsible."
"He's just yanking your chain, Chris."
It wouldn't have been that surprising if the captain had been writing love poems. Stranger things had happened on board the ship. "They were in sickbay again this morning," she said, watching Uhura in her periphery and waiting for a response.
"I know," Uhura said. "Mr. Spock's fault this time. He reminded the captain that the medical lab was working on an important report and that they needed to go check it out. He's as consistent and punctual as an automated message system. Every hour he'd bring it up and eventually the captain cracked under the pressure."
Chapel had been reaching for her drink. Her hand stopped in midair. She gave Uhura an incredulous stare. "We are not working on an important report right now. Things have been quiet for once."
"You mean Spock was lying? I knew it was an excuse to visit Dr. McCoy, but I thought--"
"You thought Vulcans couldn't lie?"
They both started slightly. Chapel spun to face the figure who had appeared over her shoulder. "Hikaru. Don't sneak up on us like that."
"Sorry, couldn't help but overhear what you were talking about. Did Pavel tell you what he saw earlier?"
"The poetry? Oh, I told her," Uhura said.
Sulu nodded. He set his own lunch tray beside Chapel's and took his seat. "Pavel says it was very passionately written," he announced. Chapel had to swat his hand away as he reached over to steal from her plate.
"Hands to yourself, Sulu," she snapped. "Look, I don't mean to misbelieve Chekov, but until I see these poems myself--"
"There's no way he read it," Uhura scoffed. "He barely passed the captain on his way to the lift."
"I did read it," an indignant voice proclaimed as Chekov claimed a seat across from Sulu. "Well, some of it. It was in verse."
"Let's hear it then," Uhura demanded.
Chekov stalled, he focused on his plate, he flushed a little and pulled at the collar of his uniform.
"Well?" Uhura pressed.
"Well, I'd rather not repeat it," he said finally. "There are only so many things that rhyme with Spock."
A stunned silence settled over the table. The lunch companions couldn't bring themselves to continue the conversation, each one focusing on their meal, their nails, the tabletop. It was one thing to gossip about their superior officers, it was another entirely to confront something as personal as this, even if Pavel Chekov had a penchant for storytelling.
"Heads up," Sulu hissed as the door to the rec room slid open.
"Shit," Uhura whispered. Chapel thoroughly agreed.
Here, entering the rec room, practically arm in arm, came the subjects of the conversation themselves. McCoy was bickering with Spock, and Kirk was following at a safe distance with one of those adoring and idiotic grins on his face.
"Good afternoon," McCoy huffed a grumpy acknowledgement at their table. Chapel was the only one who could muster up a response, and that only out of her loyalty to the doctor.
Spock, Kirk and McCoy took a seat at an empty table on the far end of the rec room, Spock and the doctor still engaged in their heated conversation.
While their superior officers conversed, Chapel and the others sat in silence. There was nothing to say. They couldn’t continue their earlier conversation, and Sulu’s lame attempt to start on a new topic was met with nothing but one worded answers and distracted nods. Finally, after his third attempt to turn their attention back to friendly banter, Uhura had snapped at him.
“Some of us are trying to listen,” she said. Firm but soft, so that her voice wouldn’t carry to the other table. She gave a slight nod in the direction of the objects of fascination.
“We shouldn’t,” Sulu said.
Chapel knew he was right, but she was curious. Spock and McCoy had stopped whatever they had been fighting about. She could see now that the mood had shifted. The doctor was leaning over the table slightly, his chin resting in the palm of one hand, the other hand stretched out across to--
In her attempt to get Uhura and Chekov to look--both of whom had their backs to the other table--Chapel managed to spill her drink all over Sulu. He hardly seemed to notice it however as he took in the sight with wide eyes.
Dr. McCoy’s hand rested lightly over Mr. Spock’s, their fingers brushed together in a gentle gesture that was so different from their usual attitude towards each other.
“What’s the big deal?” Chekov whispered.
“Vulcans--” Sulu started, then he thought better of it. “I’ll tell you later.”
They had been quiet, even in their excitement. They lingered a moment too long though. They were still staring at the interaction when Captain Kirk looked up and saw them. His expression of affection and contentment changed when he saw what their four pairs of eyes were fixed on. His smile hardened into a slight frown, and he muttered something to McCoy and Spock that caused them to jump apart, even as their audience turned loudly back to their meals.
“Excellent potato salad, Chris,” Uhura practically shouted.
“Isn’t it just grand, Nyota?” Chapel found herself saying. The words sounded foreign in her mouth. Something she would never have said under normal circumstances.
They finished their meal in the same manner, loudly and as though performing for their superior officers. Trying to prove that they had been innocently eating the entire time. When they finally stood to go, they hurried past the table, intending to avoid eye contact. It was one thing to be annoyed by the shenanigans of the trio, it was another thing entirely to be caught staring at them over lunch.
Captain Kirk wasn’t going to let them get away with it though. He stopped them on their way out the door. Or rather, he stopped Sulu, and the others hovered. Partly out of curiosity, partly in commiseration for whatever dressing-down Sulu was about to receive. He was the one who had told them not to stare, after all. It hardly seemed fair that he be the only one to stay and face the captain’s ire.
“Your uniform, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk said, gesturing to the wet stain that Chapel’s drink had created over Sulu’s abdomen. “I trust you will change, before you rejoin us on the bridge?”
“Yes Sir,” Sulu said. To his credit, his voice was remarkably composed, though Chapel could see his gaze drifting over to where Spock’s hands were innocently folded together on the tabletop.
“Good. And Mr. Sulu, one more thing.”
“Captain?”
“I trust your discretion. Don’t prove me wrong,” Kirk said. He gave the group of them a meaningful look. “That goes for all of you.”
They all mumbled their agreement, shuffling their feet and staring down at the floor. As they left the room, feeling rather like a bunch of scolded cadets, Chapel whispered something to Uhura -- a repetition of her earlier sentiments. “Nyota, there's only so much of this that a person can take.”
This time, all Uhura could bring herself to do was nod.