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"Una to La'an." La'an raised her head from the computer terminal she was occupying, her brows set into a frown as the peaceful quiet of the empty room was disturbed by Una's voice and concentration breaking volume of loud music.
She wrapped her fingers around the device, bringing her comm close to her face. "La'an here. What's happening Una?"
"You might wanna get down there." Una's message remained ambiguous, not providing her with additional details, the loud voices and banging accompanied by music getting increasingly louder in volume.
"Are Klingons causing ruckus again?" She sighed, remembering that the Klingon crew that they encountered on Cajitar IV was currently on board.
The sound of loud music was prominent as Una remained inaudible for the few seconds, her voice slightly distant as if she wasn't speaking into her comm. "Not really... just get down here. You're going to want to see this."
The transmission was cut short and La'an a stood in an empty security lab stupidly, her mouth opened but no sounds escaping from it before she remembered to pick up her jaw from the floor and walk out of the room briskly, her head held high but her shoulders carrying a certain amount of tension. Although Una didn't sound worried, there has been a note of urgency in her voice that ultimately made La'an move to investigate, if nothing else, Una's cryptic behaviour. She walked towards the mess hall that she knew was used to accommodate Klingons and other officers that were tasked to supervise, her pace remaining on the faster side but still steady enough.
She resisted the urge to groan as the music and the vibrations carried through the bulkhead even before she reached her destination, the walls practically shaking from the frequency at which sound waves were emmited, a testament to what looked to be more like a wild frat party rather than a diplomatic meeting. A brief thought whether or not it was wise to even enter the room that has now become a metaphorical lion's den crossed her mind, but curiosity was a fickle bitch and La'an sighed in exasperation, steeling herself in advance of what she was about to witness.
Nothing could have prepared her for what her eyes encountered once the doors opened.
A thick wave of smoke immediately hit her in the face, the sudden lack of oxygen accompanied by burning in her lungs made her cough and gasp as she struggled to accommodate the new environment. As soon as she stepped into the room, she was hit with an onslaught of heat, feeling as if she stepped into a pressurized airtight container, the loud music and wild lights making hairs on her body stand up on end. The air seemed to be lacking oxygen the most but it had no shortage of smoke, sweat and alcohol in it and La'an fought against the instinct to gag, making a mental note to schedule an emergency inspection seeing as the crew managed to smuggle forbidden substances on board.
A loud shriek of people around her made her turn the attention to the center of the room which has somehow turned into a makeshift stage, her eyes nearly popping out of her head when she spotted a familiar head with a set of pointy ears and a blue clad torso climbing on the table amongst the Klingons. She stuttered inchomperhensibly, her eyes shifting wildly across the room, searching for Una or any of the bridge officers, someone that could explain to her why Spock was now dancing amongst the group of several Klingons around him while they all sang along to the lyrics of the song.
Upon closer inspection of the unusual sight in front of her, her sharp eyes zeroed in on the glass in Spock's hand, the liquid in it thick and viscous, almost completely gone. La'an resisted the urge to punch herself, or Spock, as the previous incident of him consuming bloodwine flashed before her eyes, the heavy weight of an inebriated Vulcan draped halfway across of her frame as she struggled to get him back to his quarters. There was no supriessing the groan when she inevitably came to a conclusion that the drink in Spock's hand was most certanly not his first, the volume that he must have consumed so far exceeding that from the previous encounter since he seemed to be all too comfortable with making a fool of himself in front of his crewmates.
La'an was pushed, metaphorically and litteraly, out of her musings when an equally intoxicated body of one of the Ensigns slammed into her from behind, her body propelled forwards and deeper into the crowd. She breathed in as much oxygen as it was possible at the moment, finally allowing her gaze to search across the room once again, letting out a sigh of relief when she spotted a familiar set of blonde hair in a white uniform.
La'an pushed her way through the crowd, those that were still somewhat sober shying away and parting the space for her like Moses parted the Red sea, making her trip easier and faster.
"Nurse Chapel!" She yelled out over the loud music once she was close enough, the blonde nurse and, what La'an has only now come to realize, Ortegas as well as Uhura turning to the sound of her voice. La'an came to a stop next to them. "What the hell is happening?!" She ran a quick visual inspection over the three women, noting to herself that they weren't holding any drinks and they all seemed perfectly sober. Anger gripped her when she realized Ortegas was not paying attention to her, her face focused on the center of the room, a PADD held firmly between her hands as she undoubtedly recorded what was happening. "Are you recording?!"
The short haired woman turned her head towards her, a broad grin displaying all of her shiny white teeth on display. "You bet your ass I am!"
La'an felt frustration ebb at her. "That's your colleague Lieutenant!" She scolded, face set into a frown.
"Oh come on! How often do you think we get the chance to catch Spock drunk off his ass?!" La'an growled as Ortegas failed to lower her PADD under her stern gaze, suddenly reevaluating her verdict on whether or not the women have been drinking before she arrived.
She turned to Chapel who, much like Ortegas, had a smile on her face but La'an found small mercy in the fact that she, at least, wasn't recording. "What the hell is going on?!"
The nurse shrugged. "I have no idea! Erica called me when things started getting interesting!" La'an's eye twitched in disbelief, the feeling quickly turning to anger when Chapel and Ortegas hollered next to her, both women on either side of her ears. She instinctively tuned towards the stage, her eyes widening as she realized the crowd around her gone wild as Spock started stripping out of his blue uniform.
La'an watched in mortification as the drunk idiot slung the shirt somewhere in the opposite direction, a ridiculous smile on his face and with his hair a complete mess on top of his head as he took few more gulps of alcohol, now left in his black undershirt that clung to his body like a second skin. La'an locked her eyes with Uhura who was doing a terrible job of covering up her smile although she looked slightly more scandalous than Chapel and Ortegas that appeared to be enjoying the show.
La'an blinked in utter shock, her mind rebooting as the group of drunk imbeciles, with Spock as their captain, started jumping on the table. She flinched as the thumps echoed around the room, thankful that all of the tables were built out of a sturdy material and actually built into the floor otherwise she had a feeling all of them would be on the floor by now.
She bolted towards the stage, knocking into drunk people in the process but not giving a damn, itching to get to Spock before he started stripping out of limited clothing he had left on his body.
"La'an!" The exclamation of her name caught her attention and she turned her still shocked face in the direction that it came from, her eyes landing on two figures in gold.
La'an sighed and made her way over to Una and Pike, both of them standing slightly to the side from the bustling crowd, Una with her arms crossed under her chest and Pike, who looked slightly worse for wear, that was bouncing on his feet with a slight red tint on his cheeks. "What the hell Una?!" La'an yelled at her friend and mentor, not caring about the formalities at the moment.
Una shrugged. "I don't know! I came here to check up on the guests and to see if everything was going smoothly! And I stumbled upon this!" She gestured to the mess that La'an still had hard time comprehending and the one that was unfolding before her eyes. "Spock wasn't dancing on the table amongst the Klingons just yet so I managed to find this one," she pointed towards Pike that looked increasingly more flushed as he moved around to the rhythm of the beat, "and get him away from the bloodwine! If I hadn't, he'd be up there with Spock!"
"Why didn't you get Spock?!" La'an asked, her eyes blazing fire.
"It was too late by the time I detached the Capitain from his glass!" Una shrugged apologetically and La'an pinched the bridge of her nose between her index finger and thumb.
"We have to do something! Ortegas is regronding this!" La'an gestured wildly toward the stage, refusing to look at it as she knew Spock was up there doing embarrassing shit.
Una's eyes widened and La'an saw the moment her mentor shifted back into her professional stance. "Okay! I'll take care of Ortegas, you get Spock down from there!"
La'an simply nodded, not even thinking of protesting. She was about to take off towards the stage when an even louder commotion was heard from the crowd, the whole room vibrating like a swarm of bees as they all chanted something. La'an's face dropped and she locked eyes with a stunned Una that shot a look towards Pike who also joined in on the fun.
On makeshift stage Spock has apparently decided that it was too hot to wear anything, his hands already in the process of tugging his black shirt off which prompted the crowd to encourage him by screaming "Strip!" over and over again. Both La'an and Una shot a glare in Pike's direction, his excited face turning into one of fear as both women leveled him with the look that appeared to have sobering effect. He muttered an apology and his head slumped, eyes turned towards the ground.
"Alright, new plan!" Una yelled, her fingers wrapping around La'an's forearm. "I'll stay with the Capitain, we'll worry about Ortegas later! Go get Spock, now!"
La'an nodded and took off, once again smashing into people's back as she practically bulldozed through the crowd, shoving them away as she rushed towards the middle of the room. The chanting of the Klingons got louder as she drew closer, some of them smacking Spock on his shoulders as they noticed her approach, the Vulcan stumbling around with his black shirt in his hand. She broke through the sea of intoxicated people, her steady form contrasting the hoard of swaying people.
"What the hell are you doing?!" La'an screamed in Spock's direction, still too far away to be heard in a normal volume, surrounded by loud music even his Vulcan ears struggled to understand her. Her hands found home on her hips, staring up at the disheveled Vulcan who suddenly appeared to have lost all of his confidence and also the ability to talk. "Get down from there! You're making a fool out of yourself!" She took a step towards the table which proved to be a mistake as two pairs of strong arms grabbed her and lifted her like she weighed nothing, earning a sharp cry of surprise from her. She yelled profanities at the laughing Klingons that were smacking the suddenly quiet Vulcan on his naked back, their faces split into wide grins, La'an clung onto the first thing that she managed to get her hands on, which happened to be Spock's chest, struggling to hold her balance on the very edge of the table. She fought the blush that was slowly trying to creep up on her cheeks, instead focusing on her anger as the green faced Spock stared down at her, his eyes wide and mouth opened but no sound coming out of them.
La'an was just about to tell him to get down from the table and stop making a fool of himself once again since the first warning had no effect, but a hard hand once again smacked Spock on the shoulder causing him to knock into her. La'an felt the tip of her boot slide off the table, the sturdy surface disappearing under her as she was sent flying towards the floor. Her hands pulled on Spock's shoulders under the momentum, his intoxicated body and dulled reflexes not sharp enough to catch them as she effectively pulled him down with her. She closed her eyes in the anticipation of pain that was sure to come with the collision with a hard surface, her brain also accounting for the heavy weight of Spock was was undoubtedly about to fall down onto her.
There was a thud and La'an's head knocked onto something hard, loud noise ringing in her ears as her forehead smacked against it. The impact, however, didn't hurt as much as she was expecting and she opened her eyes once she heard a a pained groan coming from under her. Her blurry eyes focused on the Vulcan that has somehow managed to turn them mid flight so that he was the one on the receiving end of the impact, his arms wrapped protectively around her waist.
A shuffle from the crowd and a loud laughter from the table above her caused La'an to scramble off of Spock, his arms detangling from around her and coming up to cover his face with his palms, all of a sudden appearing very sober. La'an watched in stunned fashion as Chapel broke through the crowd that seemed all too unaware of what just happened, all of them continuing like they didn't just witness two high ranking officers topple down onto the floor. La'an snapped out of her stupor, her hands carefully cradling Spock's neck as Chapel crouched down next to his head.
"That one looked like it hurt. Are you ok?" She asked La'an while calmly working on the Vulcan that suddenly found bright lights of the room too stimulating for him. La'an estimated the fall caused him a nasty concussion at the very least but it proved to be an effective way of sobering him up.
"I am. He managed to reverse our positions somehow." She griped his wrists in her fingers, prying them away from his face so that she could look at his pupils. "You idiot." She huffed at Spock whose eyes seemed to have trouble focusing on a single point.
Chapel ran her tricorder over his head, whistling at the readings. "That's gonna be one ugly headache in the morning."
"Concussion?" La'an asked, snapping her fingers in front of Spock's face in order to make him focus.
"Yup." Chapel took out her comm and paged sickbay. "I gotta take him down with me. There's not much that I can do in these conditions."
La'an ran her eyes over the room, spotting the medical team that was working on making their way to them. She nodded at Chapel. "You take care of him. I'll take care of the rest."
Chapel nodded and helped her medical officers load the Vulcan onto the gurney before they took him away.
La'an sighed and stood up, feeling her joints protest the prolonged kneeling position, undoubtedly aggravated by the fall as well. She spotted the fall frame of Number One making her way through the crowd, her face all business this time.
It was time to break this party up.
*****
"How is he?" La'an asked Chapel as she stepped through the doors of sickbay, her boots shuffling quietly on the floor.
Chapel looked up from her PADD, small smile on her red lips. "He'll be fine. He's got a nasty concussion and he'll be hungover in the morning but no lasting damage was done." She pointed towards the biobed in the corner of the room. "He's right there if you want to see him. Although, just a head's up, I had to sedate him. He wouldn't stop moving."
La'an nodded. "Thank you nurse."
"You're welcome." Chapel walked off towards doctor's office, her mind immersed into the information on her PADD.
La'an sighed and made her way over to where Spock was resting, his eyes closed as he rested on his side, his face twisting into a slightly pained grimace every few seconds or so. She stopped few feet away from the bed, her hands laced behind her back.
"You awake?" She asked a bit quieter than she normally would, not wanting to disturb him if he was actually resting.
"Unfortunately." Spock muttered, angling his face into the pillow more so that his eyes were shielded from the lights of the sickbay.
"How are you feeling?" La'an asked, her lips turned into a slight smirk.
"I imagine this is the feeling one feels when he has been hit by a shuttle." He muttered into the pillow but La'an heard him just fine.
"Don't worry." She chuckled evily. "It's gonna get even worse." That pulled a pained groan out of him. "What in the world compelled you to get so drunk?"
Spock cracked one of his eyes open, his eyebrow twitching against the sudden onslaught of brightness. "I was not-" La'an simply gave him a look that conveyed her feelings about him trying to defend himself, poorly at that. He sighed and once again closed his eyes. "I do not know."
La'an just shook her head even though the strings of her heart tugged for him, he was obviously in pain and suffering. She also noticed that he was shivering, the temperature in the sickbay was always lower than on the rest of the ship and for a Vulcan, a desert bred species, wearing only pants it must have been really uncomfortable. She sighed and clicked her tongue, wondering why nurse Chapel didn't take care of it. "I'll get you a blanket. Don't go anywhere."
Spock grunted at her attempted quip at being funny, listening to the steady thump of her boots as she walked over to the closet to search for something to cover him with. As he laid with his head buried in the pillow, Spock remembered the conversation he had with one of the Klingons that lead to him drinking in the first place.
It was one of the same Klingons that he encountered at Cajitar IV, large and hairy bit weirdly assertive. He approached Spock after the negotiations were over, a large bottle of alcohol in his hand. Spock nodded politely at him and he returned the gesture.
"The Vulcan that acts nothing like a Vulcan, where is your female?" Spock frowned at him, wondering who he was talking about.
"My... female?"
"The one that can drink like a Klingon!" He proudly exclaimed and smacked Spock on the shoulder, his knees almost buckling from force.
"La'an is not my female." He explained slowly, making sure to not offend anyone as Klingons were known for their volitale behaviour.
"Then you should make her your female." The Klingon grunted, almost managing to sound displeased at the fact that Spock didn't somehow already put a claim on her. Although Spock objected the illogical need that existed in every male he has even encountered to claim someone like they were an immanent object instead of a person, he couldn't lie that the thought about having La'an for a mate didn't cross his mind more than once. She was an intelligent woman who carried herself with an air of confidence that attracted almost everything that had a pulse, including Spock. He couldn't deny the palpable shift in their interactions after the mind meld they've shared, his katra drawn towards her more and more every single day, culminating to a finish when he received a distress signal from her and was faced with a difficult choice of leaving her behind. It wasn't until his decision was already made deep within him that he realized he never actually had the intention of leaving her without the aid she desperately needed, his career and admirality falling into a second plan.
He snapped back to attention when the Klingon handed him a glass that he generously filled with bloodwine, his fingers wrapping around the cold drink as he contemplated how wise it is to indulge, knowing that the refusal could result in conflict.
Now, as he was laying on biobed with lights that burned his eyelids and a massive headache that amplified all of his senses to a nauseating degree, he came to a realization that it was probably one of his worst decisions seeing as Klingons didn't appear to have a clear line of when it was time to stop drinking.
Spock groaned as a sharp pain pierced through his skull when the light flickered above him, his stomach churning as the first signs of alcohol withdrawals symptoms started appearing, amplified by the feelings of mortification as he realized his drunken escapade will certanly be the 'talk of the town' for the next couple of weeks.
His mind flashed back to the feeling of panic that gripped him when he saw La'an falling, almost in slow motion, her hands pulling him down with the strength one wouldn't contribute to someone with such petite frame. In a surge of adrenaline he managed to reverse their roles, knowing that he would rather bear the injury from the fall than to have her seriously hurt because of a stupid stunt he pulled.
"Oh by the way," Spock cracked his eyes open once again as he spotted La'an returning, her freckled face almost glowing as she smiled at him with an air of mirth practically oozing off of her and he couldn't stop himself from smirking back at her, even though he had a feeling what she was about to say was going to make him feel even worse, "Ortegas got everything on a video."
It took a while for the information to load for him, his hazy brain processing impulses slowly, as he still smiled goofily at her. Once it did, however, his face fell almost instantly, smile disappearing from his lips as he covered his eyes with his palms. The only thing the heard above the beating of his heart was La'an's laughter as he felt the blanket being tucked around him, his field of vision welcoming the darkness that he so wished would swallow his whole being.
He would never touch the vile liquid again.