Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1.

The first time was the worst time. The sudden transition from vertical to horizontal, brightness to darkness, the shock of the fiery heat of a moving body against her own abruptly naked one, the sound, the scents, the way jaws clacked together, knees banged, and hands grabbed her shoulders, then her hair. Then the movement and sounds were gone, like the girl she’d arrived on top of had gone rigid.

Christine felt like she'd fallen flat on her face into another world, and her brain was fully in reboot mode. Had she slipped and hit her head? Sudden amnesia? Blindness and timeloss? A portal?

She pushed herself up onto her hands and stared down at the girl under her. In the dimness her features were shadowed, darkened, and her expression utterly strange.

T’Pring?

Delicate, long-fingered hands pressed firmly against the wide edges of her collarbone, tucked against her shoulders. Then, they shoved. The force of a Vulcan push sent her half across the room, barely landing on her feet and then losing them again, crashing into the wall, and sliding down with a heap of Vulcan robes still on their hangers on top of her.

“Get out !” The words were ragged, harsh, full-voiced, and bewildered.

Christine felt the fear, confusion, and mortification like a hippopotamus bursting through the wall, grabbed a robe and fled the room in three steps.

In the hall, she identified her location as a rurally wood-paneled Vulcan inn. A passing guest gave her a raised eyebrow and she quickly belted on the robe. Then she stared at the door she’d just exited, her heart racing. The heat, the panting, the way T’Pring’s body had moved against her—no, T'Pring hadn’t been sleeping and surprised by a body on top of her. She hadn’t been surprised by a body on top of hers at all. It had been whose body.

The door opened. T’Pring stood there, also robed, her hair loose and falling in a messy curtain around her face. She’d gathered herself, but Christine could see the knife-edge that remained in her expression, the encircling whites of her eyes, as she stared Christine down.

“Explain.”

Christine shook her head firmly. “I have no fucking idea about what just happened.” She looked down at the long blue robe she’d put on. Spock’s. “Hypothesis: some Starfleet-nonsense-quantum-entanglement-bullshit.”

“If you think that is in any way a good enough explanation for why you abruptly replaced Spock while we were having sex--”

T’Pring’s lips curled back, her face ferocious, and Christine was too jarred by hearing her say the words ‘having sex’ and thinking, abruptly, of the texture of intimate places and the liquid spot still smeared on her leg, to even hear anything else she said.

“ Well ?” T’Pring demanded after Christine didn't respond to her words.

Christine saluted, taking a wild guess at what she'd instructed her to do. “On it, Ma’am. Going to figure this out.”

Then she whirled and started marching down the hall.

“I didn't say 'figure it out'! I told you to make sure it doesn’t happen again!”

2.

It happened again.

In the interim, Christine had done as much research as she could. As hypothesized, she and Spock had indeed swapped places. Christine had ended up down on Vulcan, where Spock was expected to be enjoying his year-long honeymoon, and Spock was up on the Enterprise, squeezed into a tight Nurse’s jumpsuit, and making M’Benga jump.

Quantum entanglement was still the best theory they had.

“Could it be because of our . . . past?” Spock inquired in his deep voice with those limpid eyes, and Christine felt the curl of bitterness on her tongue. I wouldn't have left you if you hadn't reacted to my good news like I'd applied for the program intending to hurt you. You and your goddamn low self esteem, your lack of interest in my dreams, you and your childishness . Fuck you.

“If I became quantum entangled with everyone I fucked, I’d never stay in one place,” she said, and Spock looked hurt, when he was fucking married , and Christine stopped talking to him.

This time, when it happened, she went from napping in her quarters after a long and chaotic shift to sitting crosslegged on a meditation mat, in very loose robes (no bra), surrounded by graceful temple architecture and a crowd of meditating Vulcans, with a gentle bell ringing in the distance. T’Pring was beside her, on her own mat, eyes closed, meditating calmly. She was lovely, and yet Christine pressed her lips together and looked away. The Vulcan had still been only second choice.

Are you proud of that, idiot? Christine scolded herself. Proud of breaking up a relationship? Proud of exposing its flaws?

T’Pring knew she’d been second choice, and had taken the abject Spock back anyways, after Christine had dumped him for her doomed foray into Archaeological Medicine. Had that been humiliating for her?

Probably not as humiliating as having Christine swap in right while she was being fucked. Sometimes, Christine thought about how lucky it had been that she didn’t have a dick. But even without that, it was still a violation. The raw mortification that had been on T'Pring's face when the Enterprise came to collect Christine and deposit Spock had been unbearable to look at. Too many people knew her body now, when it was in its sexual incarnation, and how many more had been consulted on an experience that for her was nonconsensual touch?

“Not to distress you or anything; you can just keep meditating, but it happened again,” Christine murmured in a low voice.

She saw T’Pring’s shoulders stiffen, and then straighten as she tried to force herself back into meditation. As this was clearly a big group event, Christine settled in and gave mediating her best shot too.

When the temple ceremony let out, T’Pring gave her one flashing-eyed look, and gestured brusquely for her to follow. The path they followed wound through a lovely garden and around some ruins. It would have been a pleasant place to wander, if T’Pring hadn’t been striding like she had a mission, and scowling with every inch of her body the whole time.

“I thought I told you to not let it happen again.”

“I appreciate the confidence you have in me. But that was always going to be a long shot.”

They wound up in a beautiful private grotto, with a trickling waterfall, some desert ferns, and a view overlooking a stretch of textured mesa. “I hate this,” T’Pring snapped in her face. “This is Starfleet shenanigans, and all I wanted was to recuse Spock and myself from them.”

“You can’t just lock yourself away from the world, Vulcan ,” Christine snapped back. She didn't like people getting in her face.

T’Pring looked deadly. She took a step closer to her, unerring, like a snake. “So switching physical locations with another person is normal? I should just get used to it. Maybe I should welcome a strange visitor in my bed and my life .”

Christine looked away, hating the taste of her own feelings. She wanted to lash out at her former rival, stay arrogant and superior, but sometimes you had to admit that even your enemy had a point. She didn't like these absurd things that always seemed to happen to them much either. “No. You're right. You can get too used to Starfleet bullshit.”

Surprised at her capitulation, T’Pring gave her skeptical look. It was a frustrating truth, that even sharp, even skeptical, T’Pring still had huge eyes and a vulnerable mouth. Christine wished she could turn off her ability to see that. Anger was so much easier than empathy. But when the anger was gone, you had what you had left.

T’Pring sighed and sat on one of the rocks. Christine sat on another nearby.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“It is the Temple at Pinnak.” T’Pring gazed up at the ruin on the hill. “I thought Spock would enjoy its peace and tranquility. I like it for its history. This was the citadel where Mehak, the leader of the Yehenik clan, did his experiments on creating mind-controlled soldiers. Outside the citadel are a million graves of all those who tried to stop him and failed.”

“Oh,” Christine said, looking out at the view with a new sense of horror. “You like it for that?”

“Mehak overthrew the oppressive warlord Higuch, then he released all his controlled soldiers, and in recompence for violating their minds for violence, he threw himself over a cliff.”

Christine gaped. “Really?”

T’Pring glanced over, eyes sharp, intelligent, and excited in a way that Christine had never seen before. “I think not. I think it is a later Surakian myth. I do not know what happened to Mehak, but I desire to find out.”

Christine gaped at her, helplessly, for a good ten seconds. What sort of honeymoon activity was this? “And you think Starfleet is weird?”

3.

This time T’Pring was in some kind of negligee at least. Christine was dizzy, having come from focusing hard on a specimen and then the panic of a sudden Battle Stations alert. (Hopefully M’Benga would tidy up for her, once Spock revealed himself.) And now there was a girl in her lap, with her hands on her tits, and her mouth on her neck. To be fair, this particular position meant her arrival was not a subtle change. So Christine only had a moment to note the way T’Pring’s hands fit her breasts, and the heat and wetness of her mouth.

“You guys are horny,” she said, involuntarily.

T’Pring’s hands quickly recoiled, and Christine felt a flash of teeth before T’Pring pulled back to glare at her.

“It’s our honeymoon .” T’Pring’s eyes flicked down, and Christine wished the teeth in her neck hadn’t made her nipples hard, but so it goes. “You know it is gauche to keep interrupting the private year.”

Christine laughed, and then realized she’d laughed because she knew T’Pring was being sarcastic. How did she know T’Pring was being sarcastic?

Was it the touch telepathy? But even though Christine was bare to the waist, and T’Pring was still in her lap, they weren’t actually touching skin to skin.

 Maybe she just . . . knew her better now?

“Maybe it’s the horny thoughts that’s making him pop away,” Christine offered. “I think I read a story like that somewhere. Repression leading to involuntary teleportation.”

T’Pring made a face and slipped off her lap, then threw her a shirt. “Why would someone write a story about that?”

Christine shrugged, and pulled the shirt on over her head. She almost regretted it. T’Pring hadn’t avoided looking at her breasts, and Christine was kind of proud of them. “I mean, it makes good build up for when they finally bang.”

T’Pring huffed out a breath as she started getting back into her own clothes, which were surprisingly practical, though still beautiful—sort of expensive Vulcan hiking gear. “No, I don’t think that’s a viable hypothesis.”

“Plenty of sex I haven’t interrupted?”

T’Pring made a comme-ci, comme-ça sort of gesture, and Christine frowned. What did that mean?

“Did you ask Spock what he was thinking about when he left before?” T'Pring inquired.

Christine scrunched her face. “You might as well ask me. But there isn’t a pattern as far as I can see. I was just walking down the corridor the first time—hit me out of the blue—and the second time I was napping. Spock was . . . doing the frisky pushups and then meditating.”

“Not even much overlap,” T’Pring muttered, seeming to give up buttoning the patterned silk shirt, and letting it hang open, temptingly, at the chest.

“No.”

There was something so strange in T’Pring’s face, that Christine couldn’t help just staying silent and waiting, watching her earnestly, hoping for just one more clue.

“He didn’t like the temple,” T’Pring said finally, her hands dropping into that tightly folded position that used to just look Vulcan and now looked anxious and tired.

What? Christine started to say like an idiot, before she caught herself. She knew what T'Pring was talking about. “Oh no,” she said. “And the ruins?”

T’Pring made a face. “You’re not the first person to say my interest in them is weird. Nor the last.”

“Weird isn’t bad!” Christine exclaimed. “Weird is cool.”

T’Pring's hands dropped to her hips and she gave Christine a startled and annoyed look. Fine, Christine had been a bit of a bitch about it before, but she’d been surprised that the hot, put-together Vulcan she’d been competing with—if only in her mind—was a weird nerd like her.

“It is,” Christine reiterated, glancing away. “Sorry if I was rude about it before.”

T’Pring’s voice was deep and wry when she responded. “I’d be pleased by your celebration of the quality, but I know that means you are classing me in with you.”

Teasing again. Christine felt strange and curious, like being touched by a cool current in a warm sea, then she smiled. “Shut up. You know I’m cool. And have great tits.”

This did not hit the mark as T’Pring looked surprised, amused, and definitely not in agreement. But then, after a moment, she looked away. Her shoulders hunched forward the tiniest bit, her posture vivid in its expression. “I know I don’t have sufficient evidence,” she said. “But from what I sensed when I was touching him right before the swap, I wonder if you two switch when he feels that he would like to be somewhere else.”

4.

“I wondered that myself,” said Spock, sitting on the private biobed in sickbay after M'Benga had finished taking more scans of them both (inconclusive). “But perhaps it is more nuanced than that. I wonder—” he said, staring out the porthole at the stars, “—if it is when I long for the Enterprise.”

He’d, apparently, shown up during a boarding situation, nerve-pinched a bunch of people, grabbed a phaser and led a complete defense of the ship. There had been ooze, property damage, and mecha space turtles, but no serious injuries, thanks to Spock's quick action. Honestly, Christine was glad she’d missed it.

“Sure, fine, maybe that’s it,” Christine snapped. “But why do you drag me into your empty spot? Why do you get to be the main character of my life and of your marriage .”

Spock looked at her. He reached out to touch her hands. “I am sorry that when you returned, looking to rekindle things with me, I had already made different choices.”

Christine jerked her hands away. “I’m not!”

His eyes went hurt. She hated that hurt, hated that it hadn’t been enough for him to come back to her when she’d figured out she’d been an idiot, when she realized she wanted so badly to have his love back, that she'd forgive him for his childish reaction to her leaving, if he'd forgive her for insufficiently valuing his love. Then, suddenly, the room looked different. It was the wrong way around. She felt nauseated, and her clothes didn’t fit—because they were Spock’s clothes. In front of her, Spock looked like a real idiot in Christine’s cropped t-shirt and khaki capris, now splitting at the seams.

She gaped at him. “Were you longing just then?”

He nodded.

She had been longing too. And maybe—she swallowed—the other three times, she’d also been longing, but not for the Enterprise. She’d been longing to be loved.

5.

This time, the switch didn’t come as a surprise. She’d been waiting for it. M’Benga had gotten exasperated with her moping, and tried to give her career advice. (Yes, she knew she was stagnating on the Enterprise, but how was she supposed to move forward when she didn’t know what she wanted ? Her foray into Archaeological Medicine, spurred on by M’Benga, had been an unmitigated disaster.). And she’d been spending a lot of frustrated, pained, mixed up time thinking bitterly of how it had felt to have a beautiful girl in her lap, and wondering how it was possible that during that moment Spock had been longing for the Enterprise ?!?

So when, in the middle of processing the whole crew’s regular STD screening, her mind drifted to that longing, and she felt the disorientation take her over, she knew she was on the quantum move.

She ended up perched on an uncomfortable rock sitting beside a little Vulcan stream. (On Vulcan this would be called a river, but it was about the depth of her calf, and dried up seasonally, so she was not about to give it that honor.) T’Pring was in front of her on a long, smooth bench-like stone, legs folded, fingertips drifting in the water.

“I keep thinking that with one more small sacrifice, this will be enough,” T’Pring said, quietly, not exactly to her, but to the air, clearly exposing a deep and unhappy thought inside her head. “It will be enough to have someone who is willing to be with me. I aware of the rareness and difficulty of that. But I think, perhaps, being put up with would indeed be worse than being alone.”

Christine wasn’t the only one who’d been wondering why Spock had been longing for the Enterprise with a beautiful girl in his lap, it seemed. Knowing you’d been the second choice was bad enough, but finding out you were third ? Christine grimaced at the idea that T'Pring thought finding someone who wanted to be with her was 'rare and difficult.' Was that why she’d taken him back? T’Pring deserved so much more than to be put up with.

“I’m sorry to say that it’s me again.”

T’Pring glanced back over her shoulder, offering a half smile. “Don’t worry. I noticed the shift in the air when your smaller mass replaced his larger one. Those aren’t things I’m quite ready to tell Spock.”

The unexpected warmth of that greeting, of being perceived and trusted, made Christine’s brain melt a little. Helplessly, she smiled back. “You’re so much smarter and more interesting than he deserves.”

T’Pring looked away. “Not as interesting as Starfleet.”

“Look,” Christine said, “If a girl has to compete with phaser battles, it’s just a losing game.”

Some sound came from T’Pring that Christine didn’t recognize. Then, abruptly, she did. It was a laugh. She’d made T’Pring laugh.

Cautiously, she crept down and settled on the far more comfortable bench-rock beside T’Pring. She gave her a little inviting head tilt, and let herself—for the moment—forget about quantum entanglements, past jealousies, and present indecisive pain. Instead she'd just enjoy flirting with a far-too beautiful girl who, by some impossible chance, she’d made laugh. “So, what’s special about this place?” she asked. “Promise I won’t call you weird for liking it.”

+1.

The letter came as a bit of a surprise. It was an old-fashioned formal letter on a thin scroll of Vulcan vegetable parchment, written in a flowing, familiar script that abruptly, on looking at the signature, Christine desperately wanted to be traced over her skin.

Shi'yavekh-tu hastalsu Tchapelu – Dear Dr Chapel

In the end, the solution to the quantum entanglement had been simple. If Spock stopped longing for Starfleet, they’d stop swapping places. Easiest way to do that? Rejoin Starfleet. Stopping Christine from longing to be loved was much more difficult, but the assumption was that if his longing was fulfilled, hers shouldn’t have a quantum effect anymore. Theoretically.

But after all of this, being aboard-ship alongside Spock wasn’t something Christine wanted. M’Benga took the opportunity to slide in with his career counselor advice and make her apply to a bunch of post-docs, though she wasn’t sure if she’d get any—or if any were really what she wanted yet.

But when Spock beamed aboard, gleaming and proud and speaking professionally with Jim, clearly thrilled to bits that Jim Kirk thought he had done a great job repelling boarders in the last phaser battle—in spite of having had to do the whole thing wearing one of Christine’s pollock-spatter-style tube dresses—Christine was ready to get the hell off this ship.

Due to your quantum intervention, Spock and I have failed our trial year of marriage.

The honeymoon was a trial year? Christine blinked at that, and also at the implication that the collapse of a terrible rebound reconnection relationship was entirely her fault. Yes, she’d been the trigger for Spock rebounding on T’Pring, but she had definitely not been to blame for T’Pring taking him back.

Due to this, there are many scheduled travels and events that have been arranged for two participants that are no longer able to be appropriately enjoyed.

And now she was being blamed for screwing up her reservations. Did T’Pring want a refund? Was this a financial problem? Weren’t most of these places public parks?

As I have no intention of cancelling these plans, I request your company for the plans’ fulfillment. Join me as soon as is convenient, but not through any quantum effects. The itinerary is enclosed.

Christine stared. Then, slowly, she pulled out the second page and the itinerary.

Join me .

Had she really read that right?

#

M’Benga came in when her room looked like an earthquake had hit it, and her oversized Starfleet backpack was only half full.

“What’s this leave of absence request, Christine? The post-docs won’t be decided for a few more months.”

“I know,” Christine said. She was grinning like an idiot, and felt like she’d been grinning this way for the past thirty hours. “I’m going on a backpacking tour of all the weird shit on Vulcan.” She handed him T’Pring’s itinerary. “If I get any responses, forward them to me at these spots.”

M’Benga stared at the list blankly, and then looked at her backpack, at the other letter sitting on her side table, and then at her again. Suddenly, in his gorgeous glowing way, he smiled, and wiggled his eyebrows, conveying both skepticism and amusement. “All right,” he said, his tone teasing, like he knew something—when he didn’t , though, to be completely fair, he’d been the only one Christine had been able to properly vent to after all of the quantum traveling. “I like seeing you with a plan. Have fun.” Then he rummaged in his pocket and tossed her a travel safe-X-sex kit. “Be safe.”

Christine felt the teenager-level of blush spreading up her face and hurriedly stuffed the kit into her bag. “We’re friends . I’m not just taking off to go hook up with Spock’s ex.”

“You can’t say that to me,” M’Benga contradicted cheerfully. “You tell me too much. I know what you do with your friends.”

Christine threw some balled up socks at him, and they laughed as he gave her a secretive thumbs up and departed. When the door slid shut behind him, Christine picked up the kit and shook her head, then stuck it at the bottom of her bag. When she'd called to make sure T'Pring was serious, she'd just looked . . . lonely.

Christine supposed she was too.

But of course she was bringing it. If she didn't, one hundred percent it would turn out she did need it, and she did not want to see T'Pring's withering look when she realized the doctor (PhD holder, it was not actually the same thing) wasn't prepared.

#

There were a lot of weird old fortresses on Vulcan. Some were more popular than others. Christine preferred the obscure ones, because they always had the best stories and the most interesting fungal adornments. (She'd even started hoping that she'd get the post-doc at the school with the galactic fungal genetics lab.)

But this one was too busy. It was near Shi’Khar and also rumored to be one of the places Surak had stopped on his initial journey, so there were crowds of school children and too many couples wandering the gardens. It was also vilely hot, and though she’d gotten used to the gravity and weather with only a few hits of tri-ox, today was making her question her acclimatization.

T’Pring had left her in the shade and gone to refill her canteen, which was appreciated, and Christine let her eyes shut and tried to cool down by force of will alone.

As she rested, she could hear the murmurs in Vulcan of the people passing her.

Humans, coming to our sacred spots and not even appreciating them.

What is that doing here, mommy?

Ugh, intergalactic tourists.

Christine definitely preferred the obscure fortresses.

“Are you feeling any better?” A hand pressed a cold canteen into hers, and she blinked at T’Pring, who was both checking her pulse and giving a curious passerby the ‘fuck-off’ eyes at the same time. Christine sat up and took the canteen, taking a drink, which did a lot to fix things.

“Yeah,” she said. “A little heat exhaustion plus dehydration. Not a good combo.”

T’Pring nodded and gave her a wry, apologetic look. “I’m sorry for not noticing sooner. The planned dinner with my parents tonight was distracting me.”

“If you want to cancel it because your human friend has heat exhaustion and you have to look after her, I am happy to be the excuse.”

T’Pring leaned into her side in a way they’d grown comfortable with, entirely ignoring the very startled family unit attempting to mount the steps they’d claimed, and the innocent childish question of “Are they a courting couple?” and then the parent attempting to explain that xenophilia was weird and wrong without actually saying xenophilia was weird and wrong.

“Ah, but then I’d have to explain about why my human friend has replaced Spock on this journey.”

“You-- you still haven’t?” Christine stammered. T'Pring was literally going to see her parents tonight . They’d just come back from a vacation to what Christine termed Vulcan-Risa, though T’Pring always shook her head at that description, and while they were on vacation would have been a great time to do it over tightbeam, knowing they were a good two-week trip away and therefore couldn’t throttle you before they'd had time to cool down.

T’Pring shook her head. Her fingers were flexing a little, the only part of her that revealed her anxiety about the situation. Christine took her cooling and damp hand away from the canteen and twined her fingers with T’Pring’s. A sensation like a breeze blowing from the inside made her head clear even more. T’Pring stared down at their joined hands.

“I didn’t know what I was going to tell them,” T’Pring said softly.

Another incredulous group was passing them. No, no. Humans are often inappropriately affectionate like that.

“Do you know now?”

T’Pring glanced up from their hands, and contemplated her face for a long, curious moment. Before, Christine might have gotten embarrassed by being so perceived, but she'd gotten used to the way T'Pring looked at things—intense and always, always thinking—and just looked back, into dark, implacable, limpid eyes. Then T'Pring flashed one of the intimate, mischievous smiles that Christine had never expected to see on her face and would probably never get used to. “Perhaps.”

A small yelp came from someone in the incredulous group and hurried hands moved to cover the children’s eyes, because T’Pring had reached up with her free hand to brush her fingers across her cheek, then cup it in her palm, and she moved close enough that Christine knew what she was seeking. She felt it like a fist in her gut, panic and excitement, and she also knew that T’Pring would not close that last ten percent of distance, needing the plausible deniability, needing the enthusiastic consent. So Christine surged across the last two centimeters, already breathless, to finally ( finally!?) kiss her.

T’Pring’s mouth was cool against her overheated skin; it was wet and predatory and sharp, and Christine kissed back with the unslakable thirst of someone lost in the desert for weeks. T’Pring clutched at the front of her sweaty shirt, and Christine wrapped a firm arm around her waist, and then opened her mouth to slip her tongue into the combination.

She felt T’Pring’s pulse increase, felt her lips part, breathed her breath, tasted her, and was struck by the sudden electric knowledge of how great they’d be in bed together. Then, abruptly, T’Pring was pushing her back, though it took another few moments for their lips to separate.

“We are about to be summarily ejected from here,” T’Pring said, her voice breathy, her breaths rapid.

“Great,” Christine murmured into her throat. Their hostel was underground, cool, and as they were still using the honeymoon plans, had a single, excellent, sleeping nest, that she’d wanted to fuck in ever since she’d seen it. “I want you summarily injected into my veins, right now.”

T’Pring made a face at the impossible metaphor, then—too briefly—kissed her again. She gripped her hand firmly. “Come on,” she said. “I’m not in the mood to be polite and supercilious to pompous security. Let’s run instead.”

And Christine, all traces of heatstroke gone, laughed, returned the grasp of T’Pring’s hand in hers, and scrambled up, spotting the dull green security uniforms approaching, and readied herself to scamper.

#

Dinner with T’Pring’s parents should have been humiliating, and enough to send Christine running. But she was too high on orgasms and the way T’Pring had smiled when she said she Christine should come, she wanted to cause a scandal. So instead, as T’Pring’s stepmother got shriller and shriller as the situation spiraled out of her control and her father got more and more conciliatory—to everyone, including apologizing earnestly for all the missteps in Human-Vulcan relations over the last two hundred years—she kept laughing like she was drunk, exchanging her stupid grins for T’Pring’s mischievous ones, and bumping their knees together underneath the table.

"This is Dr Chapel," T'Pring had introduced her. "She and Spock were linked through some kind of quantum tunneling phenomenon and kept switching places. Trading them back became onerous, so I kept her." Then, she'd tapped her fingertips on top of Christine's on the table, and Christine had seen the appalled horror unfurl in her irreproachable socialite stepmother's eyes.

Christine had blushed to the ears, but it was mainly with delight.

As Christine remembered the longing that had sent her plunging across space and through time to quantum swap her with Spock, she couldn’t quite believe just how limited her imagination had been. She’d wanted to be loved—but even in her imagination she had pictured it as something that she had to earn, something given from above, in exchange for her being good, doing enough.

She hadn’t ever imagined something like the crinkles around T’Pring’s eyes when she looked at her, the casual teamwork where they passed something absurd back and forth between them, slowly driving her parents insane, and the way her insides felt whole when she caught T’Pring’s conspiratorial glance, without any of that strange emptiness that came from feeling passionate attraction to a person you only liked fine.

I like you more than anyone. And I love it, so much, that you like me back.

###

Chapter Text

“Why does she like that boy?” asked T’Pril, exasperated once more at the youth’s entrance, and worse, his unrepentantly human mother, who smiled and laughed the other day, for no reason at all.

“You know T’Pring has always been curious,” said her father. “He is definitely something to be curious about.”

T’Pring, of course, was curious about a lot of things, and skinny handsome boys with intriguing biology and wild, uncertain eyes were very interesting. Interesting enough that she decided she would kiss him. The human way too. With her mouth .

She liked his mother too, the way she was interested, and saw her. The way she reminded T’Pring of her real mother, who had always said, dare , and try .

It wasn’t ladylike to be curious, but it was illogical to assume you knew everything, so T’Pring did her best to manage this paradox with cool grace and sharp intellect. T’Pril took her shopping, polished her sense of fashion, and if T’Pring leaned a little more towards the ornate designs and rich cloths of the Warlord era than T’Pril thought was really acceptable, she at least knew the power and symbolism of a work of art from the right modiste.

T’Pril sighed at the drama in the Hgrcha house. “Sarek was always a wild one,” she said. “No surprise his children are the same.” But when Spock came back, bearded and broken, and missing his sister, T’Pring could not consider him anything but wounded. She sat with him while he struggled to find words, and held his hand, then let him embrace her, embraced him, and whispered that no one would ever replace his sister to him, or force him to forget her. They couldn’t.

T’Pring remembered her mother every day.

She didn’t know when things started to fall apart. Her relationship with Spock had been flowing smoothly. Their intimacy had increased. The engagement had seemed natural. But then he'd been summoned back to the Enterprise, and nothing had gone smoothly since. It would make sense to release her grip, give Spock his space to settle in, let him remember their friendship and how comfortable they were together in his own time. But she couldn't release her grip. If she let go for even a moment, she knew T’Pril would get her nails in between them and somehow drag T’Pring away from her handsome, half-human boy.

Then, suddenly, she was in a starship, helping a prisoner escape, risking everything to protect Spock, and he was kissing a human girl on the bridge of his starship, and his brother, half in her head, laughed knowingly. Vulcan is so limited. He sees that. He sees that’s all you are.

She had never wanted to be seen as Vulcan . She was not its average nature and its chafing restrictions, nor was she its natural beauty and mysterious past. She was just, and always, T’Pring.

The girl left him. Fair enough.

He fucked differently afterwards. His hands were more grasping and less worshipful. He seemed surprised by her small frame and how easy it was to manipulate her body into a position he liked. He got tense and unhappy when she wanted to keep her thoughts to herself, and he grew frustrated when he said something he anticipated would be amusing, but she did not respond.

It was rarely actually amusing.

But sometimes he was warm and grateful for her loyalty. And she wanted him. She wanted to hold on, and be embraced by every inch of his body.

Their marriage year was intended to increase their bond, make them more intimate, more unified. All it seemed to be doing was giving them sore feet, arguments about logistics and what qualified as entertainment, and an excuse for sex. Even the sex had started to feel perfunctory. The desire was there, but the intimacy wasn’t, and she did not always miss it. Sometimes T'Pring wanted the psychic connection, but other times she wished they could keep their clothes on and just rub off against each other, without ever having to hear any of the others’ thoughts.

Then, one evening, he’d been on top of her, inside her, panting and thrusting. She’d touched his face, and she’d felt the focus of his mind shift. His thick tendril softened. She lifted up into him— please, more, I need more than that —and then, suddenly, everything changed. Spock’s mass was lighter, his hair—not his hair, too long, crunchy with hairspray, swatted her in the face, his lok was gone, and there were different legs, a suddenly lower chin striking hers, a naked body that was soft in the wrong places, slim where it should be broad, and dry where it should be wet.

No.

Who was this, on her, touching her? What was their intent? Rape? What else? She found the creature’s shoulders, and shoved it away.

“Get out!” she cried, and it was only then, that she saw the familiar face, the wide eyes, and she had the sudden realization that there had been no ill intent.

There’d been no intent at all.

Ponfo Yel-Halitra. Fucking Starfleet.

Christine Chapel was even more annoying as an acquaintance than as a mysterious enemy. She was rude and crude, pointlessly bitter and useless at solving this deeply inconvenient problem.

But maybe for Spock it wasn’t such an inconvenient problem. Maybe he was relieved to have a break from her, to return to his beloved ship, to enjoy being in space. And so he’d leave her with this girl, who looked oddly handsome draped in his robes, until her personality spoiled it.

But it turned out that Christine wasn’t unchangeable or unreasonable. She was stubborn, until she wasn’t. She was unattractive until she was thoughtful, and then she was . . . fine. T’Pring still didn’t know why Spock had found her appealing, but she was no longer offensive.

She'd called T’Pring immediately when they’d figured out it was the longing, still in Spock’s shirt, her hair a-tousle, like she knew T’Pring would want to know. Like she understood how it felt.

Maybe she did.

At the Great River, Christine looked where T’Pring told her to. She nodded when receiving information. She asked relevant questions. She smiled when things were difficult, and did her best to smooth the way. It was the first time T’Pring had truly enjoyed one of her planned outings. The right company really did make a difference.

“He’s leaving? You’re going to come back to work?” K’Tyll asked, her far too honest face so disappointed and earnest.

Going back to Ankeshtan K’til didn’t really appeal. It had Sybok, who knew too much, and Stonn, who had found her overwhelming— human-like , he’d said, in her sexual interests and ways of expressing herself regarding physical intimacy (she’d never been so insulted in her life).

“No,” she said. “I’ll finish the trip.”

“By yourself?”

“By myself.”

Or . . . maybe not.

There was something sweet about the way Christine had been so happy and excited to be invited along. She didn’t dissemble, wore her heart on her sleeve, and she seemed interested in everything, in all of T’Pring’s stories and suppositions, in the history and architecture, and even the odd plant-like growths on the fortress walls.

Sleeping in the same bed should have been a trial, but she was polite, building a pillow barrier and peeking over it to laugh and tell jokes—it’s like a sleepover—she said, as if T’Pring had any idea what that meant.

And then, despite the heat, the gravity, and her sad little human lungs, when T’Pring twisted her ankle on some slippery stone, she hoisted her up onto her back and carried her to the hotel. T’Pring protested for a good ten minutes, and then realized that she’d struck the determination that had sent this girl to the war, that had gotten her out of it, that had carried her all the way here.

You’re all right. I think I like you.

Christine fumbled through her bag to find her medkit and dislodged a few items. T’Pring, ankle propped on a heap of pillows, picked one up—a box labeled with the helpful slogan: Pass before you smash! Accurate readings and STD tests for 25+ species pairings and combinations. Christine saw what she was holding, and went bright red. T’Pring raised both eyebrows and handed it back.

“You-- you never know,” Christine stammered.

T’Pring smiled, thinking along a line she hadn’t contemplated before. “You never know.”

After that, Christine behaved as normal, but T'Pring saw everything a little differently. She watched for the color in Christine's cheeks, the way she jumped at an unexpected touch, the way she politely kept her eyes averted. T’Pring recalled being carried on her flimsy human shoulders and played out the possibilities like scenes in her imagination. Was this a reasonable idea? Logical? No. 

Did it please her? 

Ideas were not reality. Thoughts were not reality. Even if the idea offered pleasure, she was ignoring all of the problems and discomforts that would come with the reality of it.

What would her parents say?

Then, perhaps a week into this cycling— you'd enjoy it, you'd hate it, you'd enjoy it, you'd hate it— she looked up, and saw Christine’s pallid, sweaty, unhappy face. She was wan with nausea, and her limbs were shaking. “Sit down!” T'Pring pulled her into the shade. “Do you have more tri-ox? Enough water?”

She did not have enough water.

As T'Pring moved through the crowds, she heard the comments, snide and careless, not even noticing that Christine was in distress, only noticing that she was a human and therefore didn’t belong. Everything that was human didn’t belong, even if it wasn’t human at all. It was just a word that meant ‘not like us, not something we approve of.’

How revolting it was to think that they imagined T'Pring was someone they approved of. Would it be painful to be otherwise? Or was it, perhaps, a gift?

When Christine looked like she was feeling better, T'Pring found herself nearly overwhelmed by relief. Her gentle touch, the kiss between their fingers as they sat quietly, ignoring the shock and horror from the passing families, only added to the unpleasantly intense emotion. Yet, despite how at sea she felt, T’Pring did not unlock her hand from Christine’s. It was good for those youths to see affection between unexpected people. It was Surak’s teaching to challenge your disgust.

When she looked at Christine’s face, she did not feel disgust.

Here was the paradox: It was logical to choose the easier path, but ease was not the path to personal development. Confronting discomfort was a path to understanding it, and understanding was always the highest goal. Thus it was both supremely logical to choose the easier path and the harder one.

But what if the path held both ease and unease together? Sometimes there was a charming girl who made T’Pring feel that she was not so difficult to love. If that girl was a pariah, if T'Pring was forbidden to touch her, there was a lesson in that. But was this the ease and unease she should pursue, or was it a dangerous, lying ease, and a right and valid unease? Do you think, T'Pril's voice said in her head, that a tradition became a tradition for no logical reason?

But then . . . Dare , she heard in her mother’s voice , try . There is always something to learn when you do not accept ‘ordinary’ as ‘the only way.’

Then her mouth captured Christine’s and she felt Christine wrap her up and draw her in, and yes, there was sometimes ease and unease in one choice, one moment, but the ease was in the right place, between them. The unease, well, the world could handle itself. A little discomfort was good for it.

“So, this is the girl you’ve chosen?” her father asked, as they took a quiet turn around the garden behind the restaurant.

T’Pring gave a slight shrug, but she nodded. “She suits.”

Her father nodded. His eyes seemed knowing, unexpectedly. “Yes. She draws you toward adventure, doesn’t she?”

T’Pring glanced up at him, a little more bemused than anticipated. “I called it ‘discomfort’ but perhaps ‘adventure’ works as well.”

Her father nodded. “She reminds me of your mother. But, of course, so do you.”

That was a thought to sit with. T’Pring thought of neither herself nor Christine as anything like her mother, but of course, Sevet had known her best. He knew a thousand secrets.

“Were you happy with her?”

“Oh yes,” her father said, smiling gently. “It did involve discomfort, but I cannot say I regret a moment of it. It is worth being with someone who will take you to the difficult places, but will carry you if you fall.”

T’Pring smiled, recalling the way Christine had hauled her onto her back, and set off, fierce and unrelenting, in her need to make sure she was all right. “Christine has done that, quite literally.”

“Good. She looks a little flimsy, I am glad she is not.”

“Your stepmom hates me,” Christine said, as they slid back into the nest, which now smelled like sex and the kasa-flavored lube from the X-sex kit.

“Good,” T’Pring said. “My father likes you though. That was how I’d hoped the opinions would fall.”

“He does?” Christine seemed pleased.

“He does.”

The evening had seen them grow oddly tentative, going back to bed together in the place where that afternoon they'd crossed all boundaries and had sex. There was a newness between them, a sense of freshness that came paired with uncertainty. But Christine’s pleasure at Sevet’s approval softened her body. Their hands tangled, and then they shifted together, Christine settled into the position known by humans as the ‘big spoon.’ “Is this all right?” she asked in a murmur.

T’Pring considered the position. “No,” she said, and turned them around. She liked this better, being on top, with her arms wrapping Christine up, and pressing her nose into the back of Christine’s neck. “How is this?”

Christine made a small helpless noise. “I like it,” she said.

“Good,” T’Pring said, and snuggled in a little more firmly. “I like it too.”