Don't Lose Your Compass, Chapter 2/20
Oct. 11th, 2009 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teaoliTitle: Don’t Lose Your Compass: Kick Up A Rumpass
Author: TeaOli
Characters/Pairings: Spock/Uhura, McCoy, Kirk, Enterprise crew, Sarek, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Lots of silliness and OOC behavior, set to songs and lyrics from My Fair Lady.
Summary: M’Umbha wants to give her daughter the wedding of her dreams. Too bad Lt. Uhura is too engaged in her latest project to pay much attention to her wedding. Spock steps up to fill her shoes.
A/N: Finally posting this on lj because![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
philotic_net (that genius girl!) drew some wonderful pics for this fic! (Which will be posted soon.)
( Chapter One )
Having ended their first 5-year mission, the crew of the Enterprise had turned their starship back towards Earth. Most of them were beyond looking forward to leaving the ship for more than a few days’ worth of shore leave at a time; few more so than the ship’s first officer who would be wedding the ship’s chief communications officer just a week after their return. If the others could have bee described as keen, well then Spock would have been more accurately called rather desperate.
Not that many seeing his usually placid face would have suspected just how much he yearned for Earth, a couple of months to spend on leave and all that those things entailed. At least not at first.
Notable exceptions were one James Tiberius Kirk and one Dr. Leonard McCoy.
Kirk had alternated between tossing out various ideas for a “stag night,” and quite earnestly inquiring whether his friend was truly prepared to “spend the rest of his life sleeping with the same woman.”
The second question had ceased to be an issue the day an uncharacteristically forthcoming (and exasperated, though not visibly so) Spock decided an answer was in order.
“I believe it was your Paul Newman who said ‘Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?’ was it not, Captain?” Spock had asked.
Not fazed in the least, Kirk had chuckled.
“Yeah, maybe. But, Spock, you don’t eat meat,” the captain had said with a wink.
Still, Newman’s philosophy had effectively shut Kirk up on that line of questioning. He didn’t quit planning the bachelor party, though.
McCoy had repeatedly offered to tell Commander Spock “all about the birds and the bees” and was still offering him treatises with names like Please Her, Please Yourself and The Complete Morons Guide to Not Spending Every Night on the Couch. (The latter, Spock thought, McCoy should have bought for himself, years ago.)
The rest of the crew hadn’t jumped on the eager-Spock bandwagon until they started noticing him walking the corridors carrying fabric swatches and card stock samples amid increasingly frequent visits to the greenhouse and botany lab Lieutenant Sulu maintained in his free time.
Though neither Jim nor Bones was really surprised, several crew members were in eavesdropping distance when the doctor nudged the captain and pointed as Spock emerged from Sulu’s greenhouse carrying a length of tangerine silk under over one arm and tiger lilies in the opposite hand.
“Good God, Jim!” exclaimed McCoy. “She couldn’t make him a man, so she’s turning him into a woman!”
________________________________________
Lt. Uhura’s mother, with Spock’s help, was able to cross more items off a very long to-do list.
After spending months’ worth of hours speaking with her daughter’s intended through sub-space transmissions, M’Umbha felt she the half-Vulcan pretty well figured out. Much like Nyota, she was sometimes able to see beyond the blank masque the rest of the world thought his face to be.
“If I know anything, and I know a lot, what that boy needs is good mothering,” she had been known to tell her husband. “His real tragedy wasn’t losing his homeworld; it was losing Amanda Grayson.”
As a xenopsychiatrist and the author of numerous pioneering studies into non-human psyches, Benjamin Uhura was inclined to agree; as a husband, father and impending father-in-law, he was equally inclined to advise his wife to butt out. Fears of either being drawn further into the plot, or of sleeping on the sofa for the foreseeable future convinced him to keep both of his inclinations to himself.
No matter how much he longed to see Commander Spock of Starfleet lying on the old-fashioned leather couch in his office, Dr. Uhura was a firm believer in the pitfalls of treating members of one’s own family.
Damn, but it would have been glorious to be the first human to explore the Vulcan mind as a psychological professional, he’d thought on more than one occasion.
Lately, though, it seemed he was almost getting his wish. For reasons known only to God and Nyota, his daughter had spent the last few weeks immersed in some mysterious project that had little or nothing to do with her duties on the Enterprise. Or with her wedding, for that matter. Dozens of transmissions with her uncle, Tabansi (on her mother’s side, of course) – and the detritus of electronic equipment littering her quarters and office (according to Spock) – were the only clues about what she might be up to. She wasn’t sharing with anyone. (Except, perhaps, Tabansi.)
The unexpected result of his daughter’s distraction was increased contact with her fiancé. M’Umbha had decided that if she couldn’t plan their daughter’s dream wedding with said daughter’s input, the bridegroom was her next best choice. Surprisingly enough, Spock had agreed.
That is, the boy had agreed to try to corral Nyota into some form of participation in the planning. Since the half-Vulcan had been markedly unsuccessful in his endeavors over the past ten weeks, Benjamin sometimes got the chance to surreptitiously observe the unwitting subject of his scrutiny, while feigning interest as Spock and M’Umbha compared the merits of this flower over that.
He’d watched in awe as his wife convinced Spock that it would offensive for the young man to call her by any title other than mama, and that she in turn had the right to address him by the Swahili word for son.
He walked into his wife’s home office to find her chatting with the young officer again.
“Spock, you are so funny when you allow yourself to be,” she was saying while laughing. “I can see why you make Nyota so happy. Her baba is just the same.”
Benjamin usually recognized Spock’s attempts at humor in a purely intellectual sense, but he’d never actually been moved to laugh for the boy. Perhaps that was why his wife was mama, and he was usually Doctor Uhura.
M’Umbha tittered again. Spock’s lips turned up just the teeniest bit at the corners.
“I believe that it was other qualities that first drew your daughter to me, Mama,” he said. He deliberately ignored the brief thought that this might be construed to imply his own sister had the hots for him. M’Umbha insisted on the appellation. “However, her presence in my life has convinced me of the merits of humor.”
I’ll just bet it has, thought Benjamin.
“I’ll just bet it has,” said M’Umbha. “That girl was so headstrong, Baba and I had to laugh to keep from crying at times. Never have I met a more stubbornly focused woman.”
Other than the one you see in the mirror every morning, Benjamin thought with a smile.
“Good morning, Dr. Uhura,” Spock said in lieu of answering.
Benjamin nodded approvingly. On the few the occasions they’d been able to speak privately, the good doctor had tried to teach the younger man that sometimes it was best to hold one’s silence or to employ to strategic deflection in the face cattiness in human females. Spock was a quick study.
“Benjamin,” he corrected automatically. “What part of the wedding is my daughter ignoring this week?”
M’Umbha turned in her chair to face her husband.
“Spock and I have just been going over the possibilities for the actual ceremony,” she told him. “We’d hoped your daughter might express a preference for one tradition or another, but my mwana tells me she just buries her head in whatever it is she is building and says she’ll be happy with whatever he wants, as long as she is his wife at the end of the day.”
Privately, Benjamin was entirely satisfied with this notion, but recognized that this was not like his careful daughter in any sense.
“Well, at least she has finally chosen a dress,” he said lamely.
“No! Spock chose her colors three weeks ago and we agreed on a design only on Monday.”
Benjamin frowned now. Today was Wednesday. The Enterprise would be arriving back at Earth in two weeks and four days. They really should have had plans for the solemnization settled long ago. Obviously, it was time he did more than just pretend to be involved in this wedding.
“Tell you what,” he said to both of them, “since the bride doesn’t care, why don’t I take care of this?”
Luckily for the otherwise occupied bride, they’d already decided to hold the wedding in the family home rather than in a religious house. Benjamin had cousins spanning the religious spectrum. He could handle this.
Pointing at Spock, he ordered, “You just make sure she shows up.”
Author: TeaOli
Characters/Pairings: Spock/Uhura, McCoy, Kirk, Enterprise crew, Sarek, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Lots of silliness and OOC behavior, set to songs and lyrics from My Fair Lady.
Summary: M’Umbha wants to give her daughter the wedding of her dreams. Too bad Lt. Uhura is too engaged in her latest project to pay much attention to her wedding. Spock steps up to fill her shoes.
A/N: Finally posting this on lj because
philotic_net (that genius girl!) drew some wonderful pics for this fic! (Which will be posted soon.)( Chapter One )
Having ended their first 5-year mission, the crew of the Enterprise had turned their starship back towards Earth. Most of them were beyond looking forward to leaving the ship for more than a few days’ worth of shore leave at a time; few more so than the ship’s first officer who would be wedding the ship’s chief communications officer just a week after their return. If the others could have bee described as keen, well then Spock would have been more accurately called rather desperate.
Not that many seeing his usually placid face would have suspected just how much he yearned for Earth, a couple of months to spend on leave and all that those things entailed. At least not at first.
Notable exceptions were one James Tiberius Kirk and one Dr. Leonard McCoy.
Kirk had alternated between tossing out various ideas for a “stag night,” and quite earnestly inquiring whether his friend was truly prepared to “spend the rest of his life sleeping with the same woman.”
The second question had ceased to be an issue the day an uncharacteristically forthcoming (and exasperated, though not visibly so) Spock decided an answer was in order.
“I believe it was your Paul Newman who said ‘Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?’ was it not, Captain?” Spock had asked.
Not fazed in the least, Kirk had chuckled.
“Yeah, maybe. But, Spock, you don’t eat meat,” the captain had said with a wink.
Still, Newman’s philosophy had effectively shut Kirk up on that line of questioning. He didn’t quit planning the bachelor party, though.
McCoy had repeatedly offered to tell Commander Spock “all about the birds and the bees” and was still offering him treatises with names like Please Her, Please Yourself and The Complete Morons Guide to Not Spending Every Night on the Couch. (The latter, Spock thought, McCoy should have bought for himself, years ago.)
The rest of the crew hadn’t jumped on the eager-Spock bandwagon until they started noticing him walking the corridors carrying fabric swatches and card stock samples amid increasingly frequent visits to the greenhouse and botany lab Lieutenant Sulu maintained in his free time.
Though neither Jim nor Bones was really surprised, several crew members were in eavesdropping distance when the doctor nudged the captain and pointed as Spock emerged from Sulu’s greenhouse carrying a length of tangerine silk under over one arm and tiger lilies in the opposite hand.
“Good God, Jim!” exclaimed McCoy. “She couldn’t make him a man, so she’s turning him into a woman!”
Lt. Uhura’s mother, with Spock’s help, was able to cross more items off a very long to-do list.
After spending months’ worth of hours speaking with her daughter’s intended through sub-space transmissions, M’Umbha felt she the half-Vulcan pretty well figured out. Much like Nyota, she was sometimes able to see beyond the blank masque the rest of the world thought his face to be.
“If I know anything, and I know a lot, what that boy needs is good mothering,” she had been known to tell her husband. “His real tragedy wasn’t losing his homeworld; it was losing Amanda Grayson.”
As a xenopsychiatrist and the author of numerous pioneering studies into non-human psyches, Benjamin Uhura was inclined to agree; as a husband, father and impending father-in-law, he was equally inclined to advise his wife to butt out. Fears of either being drawn further into the plot, or of sleeping on the sofa for the foreseeable future convinced him to keep both of his inclinations to himself.
No matter how much he longed to see Commander Spock of Starfleet lying on the old-fashioned leather couch in his office, Dr. Uhura was a firm believer in the pitfalls of treating members of one’s own family.
Damn, but it would have been glorious to be the first human to explore the Vulcan mind as a psychological professional, he’d thought on more than one occasion.
Lately, though, it seemed he was almost getting his wish. For reasons known only to God and Nyota, his daughter had spent the last few weeks immersed in some mysterious project that had little or nothing to do with her duties on the Enterprise. Or with her wedding, for that matter. Dozens of transmissions with her uncle, Tabansi (on her mother’s side, of course) – and the detritus of electronic equipment littering her quarters and office (according to Spock) – were the only clues about what she might be up to. She wasn’t sharing with anyone. (Except, perhaps, Tabansi.)
The unexpected result of his daughter’s distraction was increased contact with her fiancé. M’Umbha had decided that if she couldn’t plan their daughter’s dream wedding with said daughter’s input, the bridegroom was her next best choice. Surprisingly enough, Spock had agreed.
That is, the boy had agreed to try to corral Nyota into some form of participation in the planning. Since the half-Vulcan had been markedly unsuccessful in his endeavors over the past ten weeks, Benjamin sometimes got the chance to surreptitiously observe the unwitting subject of his scrutiny, while feigning interest as Spock and M’Umbha compared the merits of this flower over that.
He’d watched in awe as his wife convinced Spock that it would offensive for the young man to call her by any title other than mama, and that she in turn had the right to address him by the Swahili word for son.
He walked into his wife’s home office to find her chatting with the young officer again.
“Spock, you are so funny when you allow yourself to be,” she was saying while laughing. “I can see why you make Nyota so happy. Her baba is just the same.”
Benjamin usually recognized Spock’s attempts at humor in a purely intellectual sense, but he’d never actually been moved to laugh for the boy. Perhaps that was why his wife was mama, and he was usually Doctor Uhura.
M’Umbha tittered again. Spock’s lips turned up just the teeniest bit at the corners.
“I believe that it was other qualities that first drew your daughter to me, Mama,” he said. He deliberately ignored the brief thought that this might be construed to imply his own sister had the hots for him. M’Umbha insisted on the appellation. “However, her presence in my life has convinced me of the merits of humor.”
I’ll just bet it has, thought Benjamin.
“I’ll just bet it has,” said M’Umbha. “That girl was so headstrong, Baba and I had to laugh to keep from crying at times. Never have I met a more stubbornly focused woman.”
Other than the one you see in the mirror every morning, Benjamin thought with a smile.
“Good morning, Dr. Uhura,” Spock said in lieu of answering.
Benjamin nodded approvingly. On the few the occasions they’d been able to speak privately, the good doctor had tried to teach the younger man that sometimes it was best to hold one’s silence or to employ to strategic deflection in the face cattiness in human females. Spock was a quick study.
“Benjamin,” he corrected automatically. “What part of the wedding is my daughter ignoring this week?”
M’Umbha turned in her chair to face her husband.
“Spock and I have just been going over the possibilities for the actual ceremony,” she told him. “We’d hoped your daughter might express a preference for one tradition or another, but my mwana tells me she just buries her head in whatever it is she is building and says she’ll be happy with whatever he wants, as long as she is his wife at the end of the day.”
Privately, Benjamin was entirely satisfied with this notion, but recognized that this was not like his careful daughter in any sense.
“Well, at least she has finally chosen a dress,” he said lamely.
“No! Spock chose her colors three weeks ago and we agreed on a design only on Monday.”
Benjamin frowned now. Today was Wednesday. The Enterprise would be arriving back at Earth in two weeks and four days. They really should have had plans for the solemnization settled long ago. Obviously, it was time he did more than just pretend to be involved in this wedding.
“Tell you what,” he said to both of them, “since the bride doesn’t care, why don’t I take care of this?”
Luckily for the otherwise occupied bride, they’d already decided to hold the wedding in the family home rather than in a religious house. Benjamin had cousins spanning the religious spectrum. He could handle this.
Pointing at Spock, he ordered, “You just make sure she shows up.”
