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La’an slips out of the ranch house and into the cool night air, taking what feels like her first full breath since she beamed down to Montana. If there’s one thing she’s learned about Starfleet captains in her career, it’s that they all have quirks. Captain Pike’s are dinner parties and horses.
The fact that he managed to combine those things into one ship-wide celebration is impressive; the fact that he managed to get them all back to Earth for it, even more so. Not that everyone showed up tonight. That would have been overwhelming, not to mention impractical. But more than half of the 200-person crew turned out for the biennial Enterprise Cookout, and Pike’s ranch house can only comfortably fit forty or fifty people. Even with all the windows and doors open and crewmembers milling about beneath the fairy lights outside, that much noise—well. La’an is feeling overwhelmed.
Hence, the sneaking out, the long walk out into the fields beneath the moonlight, the slow and steady lungfuls of early autumn air. She’s forgotten what seasons felt like. She’s forgotten the simple pleasures of birds and crickets, of nighttime breezes wending through her hair. La’an is not a planet-dwelling kind of person, but every once in a while, it’s good to take things in.
She doesn’t exactly aim for the horses. On Pike’s ranch—which he shares with several neighbors, given that he’s away for large swathes of the year—the horses are the main feature. It’s hard to turn anywhere and not see them. So when she ends up at a fence with several horses crowding up to greet her, she tells herself it’s just part of being here. And if they smell the carrots in her sweatshirt pocket, well. That’s no one’s business but her own.
She climbs the fence and drops lightly to the other side, sidling up to the closest of the trio. He’s black or dark brown—hard to see, even in the moonlight—and friendly. He steps toward her easily, whuffling at the smell of food. “Tango, right?” she murmurs, holding out a piece of carrot. He lips it up and crunches heartily, bobbing his head and stamping his hoof. La’an only listens with half an ear whenever Pike gets sentimental about horses, but it’s hard to forget Tango. He’s the favorite. She gives him a second piece of carrot, then pats his neck and moves on to the others, whose names she doesn’t know.
One is gray, bright and silvered in the moonlight, and the other’s coat sports some sort of pattern. Pinto, maybe. They accept both her carrots and her company, and the longer she pets them, the more she can feel herself relax.
She doesn’t realize that she’s talking to them until she senses someone at the fence, at which point she becomes acutely aware of the soft, crooning tenor of her voice. It’s far from the most embarrassing thing she could be caught doing, but—depending on who is behind her—there could be consequences. Ortegas would love nothing more than to call her a horse girl in front of everyone the second they got back to the house. Especially because she declined to go on the pre-dinner trail ride.
La’an steels herself and turns.
“You know,” Nyota says, grinning so broadly she can hear it in her voice, “of all the people I expected to find out here, you didn’t even make my list.”
“Thank you,” La’an says stiffly. And then, wincing, “Don’t tell Ortegas?”
“Don’t worry,” Nyota stage whispers, “your secret’s safe with me.” She climbs over the fence and drops down beside her, reaching into her own pockets and pulling out a handful of apple slices. “Just as long as you don’t tell Captain Pike I’m indulging Tango’s sweet tooth.”
La’an bites back a smile and leans against the fence. The mare she befriended sniffs around her pockets for a few more seconds before turning her attention to Nyota when it becomes clear La’an is out of carrots.
“Beautiful weather tonight,” Nyota says after a while.
La’an shrugs deeper into her hoodie and tilts her face up to the sky. The moon is so bright tonight, just shy of full, the sky around it spangled with enough stars to make her dizzy. She stares at them for a long time.
“They look different from the ground, don’t they?” Nyota says softly, also looking up.
“Yeah,” La’an smiles. “Yeah, they do.”
“Makes me miss Kenya.”
She glances over at her profile. “Still not sold on Starfleet?”
Nyota laughs. “No. But—I’m coming around to it.” There’s a pause, during which the only sounds are the crickets and the far-off sounds of laughter spilling from the ranch house windows. The horses have long since relieved Nyota of every last slice of apple, and only Tango remains nearby. Eventually, he loses interest in the clump of grass he was sniffing and walks over, crowding Nyota’s space. “Hey!” she laughs, pushing him away when he tries to bite her jacket. He snorts and steps over to La’an.
“You big baby,” she says, combing the forelock out of his eyes. “That’s what you are. A big bloody infant. I bet the captain tucks you in each night when he’s home on shore leave, doesn’t he? And he definitely lets you chew on jackets,” she says, liberating hers from his inquisitive teeth.
This sends Nyota into a fit of giggles, which in turn makes La’an smile and Tango whinny and toss his head.
“Brat,” she murmurs, cupping his big fuzzy head. And then—because it’s dark, because Nyota is already laughing, because she wants to and she can—La’an kisses his velvety nose.
“So,” Nyota says once she’s gotten herself back under control, “did you grow up around horses?”
La’an tenses, then forces herself to relax. “No,” she says, “I, uh, grew up in space. The Academy was the first time I spent more than a few weeks on the ground.”
“Oh,” Nyota says, and La’an can sense her figuring it out, assembling all the bits of information that have surely been swirling around since their encounter with the Gorn. “I wouldn’t have guessed. You just seem really comfortable around them.”
La’an shrugs. “Una used to take me riding when she visited. It was kind of our thing.” She tilts her head and considers. “I guess she got it from Pike.”
Nyota reaches out her hand and strokes Tango’s nose. “That’s cool,” she says after a while. “I didn’t know y’all went back that far.”
La’an doesn’t know why she finds that so relieving. Maybe it’s the assurance that some things are still hers. Hers and Una’s.
And now Nyota’s. Maybe.
She leans back against the fence and folds her arms, then nudges Nyota with her shoulder. “Thanks for not making fun of me.”
A soft snort. “Thanks for not chasing me off with your knife.”
“My knife?”
“Yeah, the one you keep in your boot. Wait. Unless Erica is hazing me again.”
La’an definitely keeps a knife in her boot, and she definitely hasn’t told anyone about it, though she supposes it’s enough of a cliche to justify the rumor. “I think I’m going to have to have a talk with Lieutenant Ortegas,” she says with mock solemnity.
Nyota moans. “Nooo, please, don’t tell her I said that. She’ll come up with something even more embarrassing and I’ll swallow it whole because I never know how to tell when she’s playing a prank.”
“I’ll teach you,” La’an says on impulse. “It’s easy. She has a tell.”
La’an can feel Nyota’s eyes on her in the dark, can tell she’s grinning, eyes dancing, and—it’s nice. She doesn’t have a more specific word for what’s going on here. It’s just... nice.
“Okay,” Nyota says, and something loosens in La’an’s chest. “All right.”