Noel DelMonde scowled at the person who slid uninvited into the chair across from the rec room table where he was eating dinner. “Ain’t you s'posed to be screwin' someone on my bed 'bout now?”
Daphne Gollub made a sour face. “He wishes.”
“God, it Tuesday already?” Del asked rhetorically.
The chemist narrowed her eyes at him. “Less than a month here, and you’re cracking that tired joke already?”
The engineer sipped his coffee. “Believe me, darlin’, I not t'ink of it as a joke.”
“Good.”
“I t'ink of it as a schedule,” he replied seriously. “So what the boy done to piss you off this time?”
Gollub shifted uncomfortably. “Actually he’s mad at me.”
“Do tell?”
“I didn’t fawn sufficiently over the mention of some sports thing he did at the Academy forever ago,” she groused, pouring herself little more than a thimbleful of coffee from his carafe then drowning it in milk.
“Oh, yeah.” The Cajun nodded sagely. “He was into that shit all right.”
“Were you?” she asked, surprised.
“Hell, no.” DelMonde replied adamantly. “The Clave done ruin college sports fo' me, cher.”
“I know,” she agreed, as if grateful to have her lack of interest affirmed.
The engineer shrugged. “I mean, if it not big enough fo' the Havens to bet on…”
“…and it’s not illegal,” Gollub added.
“…and hardly no one ever dies, then why bother gettin' excited about it, non?” the engineer finished. “But yeah, he was into that shit big. There was this one game he won… Oooeee! Darlin’ I drunk fo' free off that shit fo' a month.”
“You drank? I thought you didn’t do sports.”
“Hell, no. But that how big this big deal was,” the Cajun explained. “Ever' Russian on th' West Coast went out his way t' buy us a drink. Ever' time we go into a bar for a month, it be, 'Pasha! Vas vonderful ting you do to hit leetle puck into beeg net. Show Russian superiority to Martian bastards. Here, have drink.'”
Daffy grinned. “And you got a drink too?”
The Cajun nodded. “Yeah, they be like, 'Who is funny fellow here with strange accent? Is teammate?' an' Ol’ T-Paul'd be like, 'Nyet.' 'Is friend?' 'Hell, nyet,.' 'Likes vodka?' 'Da.' 'Dmitri, give glass to funny fellow!'”
The chemist laughed and shook her head at the image. “I didn’t think you drank vodka.”
“I not know I did neither ‘til I start t' drink fo' free,” the engineer confirmed. “I tell you, cher, drinkin' wit' Russians put my relationship wit' alcohol into perspective.”
“It did?”
“Yeah, growin' up in New Orleans, if I be drinkin' an' start to black out, I’d have to t'ink, 'Am I gonna wake up t' find one o' these motherfuckers tryin' to steal my shit?' At the Clave, I’d have to t'ink, 'Am I gonna wake up to find one o' these fuckers tryin' to fuck me?' When you drink wit' the Russians an' start to pass out, you gotta t'ink, 'Am I gonna wake up?'"
“Bracing,” the chemist commented.
“You gotta know it,” DelMonde agreed, pouring himself another cup of coffee.
Gollub eyed him sourly over the top of her coffee cup. “You seem in a good mood.”
Daphne Gollub was by no means a telepath. She only had the little twinkling of sensitivity that was not unusual among Humans. The girl worked that faint sparkle for all it was worth, though. Del rolled his eyes indulgently as she sat there focusing all her “baby telepathy” on him. Most of the treatment consisted of cataloging and evaluating all the little nonverbal cues in his stance and expression in order to ascertain his state of mind.
He found it kind of reassuring in a weird way. She habitually tried to scan him in the way he couldn’t stop himself automatically scanning other people. Other than the thousand or so times they’d had sex, he really had sort of a brother/sister feeling about her sometimes. It was in a way comforting to have someone interested enough in how he was feeling to try to brain snoop him.
Of course it could be annoying… and uncannily accurate. Daf was such a goofball it was easy to forget how dangerously sharp she could be…
“Hey!” He pointed an accusing finger at her. “You tryin' t' suss me out!”
The chemist was suddenly all aggrieved innocence. “What?”
“You tryin' to see if I all in my head, ‘bout to blow up an' pull out the damned cookin' contest.”
“Geez,” Gollub retorted huffily, “Just trying to be sociable.”
“Sociable like a fox,” the engineer countered, then made an adamant “shooing” gesture. “Go on, get up out here. This racehorse not gonna stand 'round flickin' his tail while you lay the hairy eyeball on him. Go on, scoot!”
“Geez…” the chemist protested sourly as she stood. “Didn’t realize it was Crap On Daffy Day…”
“Yeah, it Super Tuesday,” the Cajun called after her mercilessly. “We all breakin' up wit' you!”
“Lieutenant DelMonde!”
Military training was such that the words, “Yes, sir!” had fallen from Del’s lips before his brain had registered the identity of the ice-storm that had barreled off the turbo lift behind him.
Third watch on the Bridge did not usually receive many visitors at this point in the shift. Up until this time, none of those visitors had turned out to be the Vulcan who Ruth Valley was shacked up with.
This trend had just been broken.
“This is unacceptable.”
A stat board displaying a copy of Del’s quarterly report was placed firmly in front of his face. Every indolent pair of ditto marks or non-standard abbreviation flashed a livid red.
From his seat at the Engineering station, the Cajun looked up at the Enterprise’s First Officer. Del had always been disappointed in how at odds the exoticness of the appearance of Vulcans was with their actual personalities. In pictures, they looked like elves. In person, they were a particularly boring race of soulless accountants. Ruth’s Vulcan, however, had enough fire behind his gaze at this moment to make his upswept eyebrows and pointed ears look positively demonic.
“In addition, all twenty-six of the reports from your section used a three column format instead of the four columns that are required,” the unsmiling fiend accused in a tone appropriate for announcing a guilty verdict at the end of a war crimes tribunal for a particularly heinous offender.
Without thinking through what he was doing, Del rose and was displeased to find that staring Satan in the eye was not a great improvement over having the devil tower over him.
“What wrong wit' three columns?” he blurted out in an ill-considered reply. “We always use three columns on the Hood…”
Although there was not a great difference in height between the two of them, the Vulcan, through a trick of tilting his head back at just the right angle, was still looking down his long nose at the Cajun. “You are on the Enterprise now, Mr. DelMonde,” he replied, every word dripping icicles. “It is incumbent on you to conform to the standards and practices of this ship.”
Before Del’s brain could launch an appropriately biting and smart-assed reply of the 'Standards such as not screwin' 'round wit' your wife?' variety, the Vulcan barked, “Understood?”
This conversational strategy effectively limited the engineer’s range of responses from a plain but difficult to choke out 'Yes, sir' to a not-necessarily-as-deferential-if-one-could-pull-it-off-correctly,'Yes, Mr. Spock.' Not feeling comfortable uttering his rival’s name, Del took refuge in muttering the first option.
As he did so, the engineer noticed that instead of keeping up with his end of this conversation, at least half of his brain was sitting on the sidelines, tsk-tsking about how absolutely flatfooted this hellspawn of a first officer was managing to catch him. The only defense his vacationing cognitive powers offered was that they were absolutely numb with surprise at the unlikely spectacle of being confronted with an angry Vulcan.
Del had tried so hard and failed so many times to raise any semblance of ire in the members of that race he had encountered that he had concluded long ago that the task simply was not possible. And yet, here, inches away, was a Vulcan glaring hellfire at him for all he was worth.
True, the emotion was tightly controlled and much more muted than it would be in a Human… Actually in comparison with a Human rage, this emanation of feeling -- though jaw-droppingly fiery for a Vulcan -- was almost too muted to be positively identified as anger. However, it was there. This demon-eared thinking machine was undeniably and mightily perturbed with him.
The fiend was so irked, in fact, that Del thought the Vulcan might force him to repeat his barely audible acknowledgement. Instead this manifestation of pure bureaucratic maleficence was content to hold the silence until it became painful.
The engineer wanted to kick himself. He’d been raked over the coals often enough by the Hood’s first officer for taking too many shortcuts with his paperwork to know better. Starting Spock out with the kind of tricks it had taken him years to wear Brandt down into accepting was plain asking for exactly this sort of public spanking… which apparently the Vulcan was just spoiling to deliver.
“Your corrections will be on my desk by 09:00,” the demon pronounced, then turned heel and left as suddenly as he had appeared.
A trailing cloud of sulfur and brimstone would have been appropriate.
This, Del realized as he stood blinking at the lift doors, had been a confrontation. It had not been the sort of apocalyptic showdown that everyone had been warning him for weeks would come – which he had not believed would ever come because all the Vulcans he’d ever known didn’t get mad and wouldn’t have thought to do anything about it if they could.
Apparently Ruth’s Vulcan was different.
Del had heard he was only half-Vulcan. Up until this point, the engineer had not seen much evidence that this influx of Earthly genetic coding made his rival anything different from any of the other dead-fish Vulcans he’d met before. Apparently, though, somewhere inside this one was a man with a fully functional set of balls who was – as everyone had continually been warning the Cajun ever since he’d first set foot on this ship – capable of turning into a bad motherfucker who would kick your ass all the way back to his home in hell if he caught you sniffing around his woman.
Taking in a deep breath as he processed this thought, the Cajun noticed that all eyes on the bridge were on him. “Sideshow’s over, folks,” he drawled. “Applaud, boo, or jus' turn th' fuck back 'round an' mind you own damned business.”
The officer of the deck, a prick named Garrovick, frowned at him. “DelMonde…”
“I know, I know,” the engineer growled, resuming his seat. “Sit down an' shut the hell up.”
“If I were you,” the prick advised, “I wouldn’t waste a single breath between now and 09:00.”
Frowning Del calculated the amount of time it was going to take to go back and add the extra column (that his subordinates had provided data to complete, but had seemed like a useless double-check on the data they were recording in the second column) to each of the reports he was responsible for. The Cajun then subtracted the amount of time he needed to complete his regular duties. As Garrovick suggested, he wasn’t going to have a lot of time for breathing if he was going to make that 09:00 demon deadline.
Well played, Mr. Devil-Ears, part of his brain conceded. Well played.
Del snarled silently as he took out a stylus and reluctantly began to placate the screaming red marks all over his report. It did not make him feel even the tiniest fraction of a pale shadow of good to know Ruth’s demon-Vulcan was a much more formidable individual than he’d originally estimated. However that knowledge did, somewhere in the murky and perverse depths of his soul, somehow make him feel the smallest sliver of a percent less bad.
Origination: U.S.S. Enterprise
NCC 1701
Medical
Dr. Jade Han - P-3038752/MED
Terminus: Starbase 7
Engineering
Ensign Robin Thomas - T-9181622/ENG
Had I realized that there were two communiqués from you in the stack, I would have answered both at once. However, since you thought it important enough to ask twice about what I think of my new commanding officer, I suppose I should answer.
I think he is charming, professional… a good deal more reserved and even scholarly than his reputation would lead you to believe, although he is quite definitely a man of action. Well-read. A good conversationalist. Very witty. Very observant. Well-respected and unabashedly beloved by his crew. A good manager of personnel. Charming… or did I already mention that?
As a matter of fact, yes, we are coordinating closely on a project right now… And no, by “project” I don’t mean the ship’s classified scientific mission. I mean the damnable cooking contest… which proceeds apace… although somewhat noisily at the moment. Thus far, no lives – or fingers – have been lost… although tempers are beginning to fray. There was very nearly an incident of hair-pulling in my office the other day and the galley has begun to take on a peculiar odor.
I have reconsidered my idea of writing a paper on the competition and am thinking now of filming portions of it to sell to that Tellurite media outlet that specializes in producing holo-vids of exotic forms of contact sports.
On the positive side, I believe that the contest has served as a good, low-stakes setting for the captain and I to get a feel for each other’s work style. And thus far, I have been pleased to find our approaches – while not identical -- are… quite compatible.
Stop smiling.
See you on the other side, my dear!
Sulu was not the last person in the galaxy who Del was hoping to run into in the Officer’s Mess. However, as the helmsman slid into the seat opposite him, looking into his smiling face, the Cajun realized that his old friend was definitely on the list.
“I heard you got yelled at,” Sulu said in a very breezy form of sympathy.
This damnably cheerful attitude towards his all-too-recent humiliation was beginning to grate more and more on Del. Despite a complete lack of encouragement on his part, he’d thought that folks on this ship had begun to like him. Today, however, they were avoiding his table -- not because of his frown and the bubble of ferociousness he was casting about himself -- but so they could freely giggle to themselves about the incident.
“Oh, I fucked up some paperwork,” DelMonde muttered in reply, uttering the satisfactorily details-free encapsulation he’d been repeating to himself for hours now. “No big deal.”
Sulu tilted his head and smiled expectantly in his maddeningly 'I’m just going to sit here and be charming while you decide to stop lying' sort of way.
“All right, all right,” the Cajun growled. “So ol’ Spock give me th' brush back. Big deal.”
The helmsman had the gall to grin. “Put a little shoulder into it, did he?”
“Yeah, done marked his territory,” the engineer confirmed irritably. “What’s it to you?”
Sulu shrugged and took a sip from the big mug of coffee he’d brought with him. “Just wanted to see how it registered with you.”
“Registered like that big dog not like no strays comin’ ‘round his yard,” the Cajun replied bluntly, figuring that he, unlike some people who he could name, had nothing to hide in this sad affair. “So?”
Unfortunately for him, the complexities of the helmsman’s love-life were far from his mind this morning.
“Gave you the push back and leaned into it, huh?” Sulu re-iterated mercilessly.
Del frowned. Part of the problem, he knew, was this damned space desert they were traveling through. With no habitable planets or other traffic to require their attention, people were eager for a distraction. He’d already knew from disagreeable experience that memory of a minor dust-up that normally might not have outlasted the shift during which it occurred could become a favored topic of discussion for days on end.
“What you smilin' for?” he growled. “I not see why ever'body t'ink it so cute that I get yelled at.”
“No, it wouldn’t seem like that to you,” Sulu admitted readily, sipping his coffee.
This was the other factor – general interest about the incident was greatly fed by the fact that their beloved first officer had acted somewhat out of character in a manner that for some ungodly reason they all seemed to find endearing.
Del narrowed his eyes as he decided to cut straight to the most offensive part of the general reaction. “Not seem romantic to me either.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” his friend agreed pleasantly. “Not to you.”
The Cajun cast a sour glance at officers pretending not to notice him. “‘Cause apparently I the villain o' this piece…”
“I wouldn’t say that,” the helmsman protested amiably.
“Not out loud,” the engineer retorted, “But to ever'one here, I the course of true love never runnin' smooth, non?”
Sulu dismissed the concern with a shrug. “Well, from a certain perspective…”
“Ever'body happy t' see me get my ass whipped,” Del concluded bitterly.
“It’s not that at all,” his friend assured him. “It’s not you. It’s him. Spock never does things like this. It’s kind of… well, like you said, cute and romantic. The brush-back, I mean. The yelling’s not cute.”
“Tell me 'bout it,” the engineer replied.
“He does that to all of us…”
This was a more comforting explanation of the general mirth with which people were greeting the news of the incident between himself and the first officer than Del had been able to come up with on his own. Apparently the fact that Spock had used his duties as Exec as a cover to register his disapproval of the way his wife’s ex-lover was failing to fade quietly into the background was as transparent to everyone on board as it was to him. For a human man, such a reaction would have been commonplace. For a supercilious, theoretically emotionless, Vulcan know-it-all… Well, had the entire thing been happening to someone else somewhere else, Del could see a slim possibility that someone could find a tiny crumb of humor in such a situation…
“I thought as much,” he muttered – despite the fact he had thought no such thing.
“…When we’re stupid,” Sulu concluded with his most mocking grin.
Del’s hackles rose. “What?”
“A Vulcan first officer and you screw up the paperwork?” The helmsman laughed. “What the hell did you think was going to happen?”
And here was another undeniably attention-getting aspect of the clash – everyone seemed as aware as Del was of what an absolute moron he’d managed to act like.
“Oh, it was no big t'ing,” he muttered, willing his cheeks not to go red.
His friend Jer doubtlessly would not have passed up a chance to get in a little constructive ribbing to reprove the engineer for both his carelessness and his tendency towards insubordination. Secret Dr. Paget, however, would have coated his chiding in sympathy and consolation. Old Kamikaze, Del could see, was going to go straight to pitiless mockery. Not a surprise, really. There was nothing in the universe ol’ Kam liked better than fast ships, hot sex, and an opportunity to see the Cajun flustered. Del figured that if he ever chanced to happen on all three at once, the helmsman might just explode from sheer joy.
Sulu chuckled. “You just didn’t expect a Vulcan was going to do more than raise an eyebrow at you, did you?”
“Shee-it…” Del blew out a long breath, still somewhat dazed by the memory. “That motherfucker came after me wit' blood in his eyes.”
“Every new guy comes aboard…” The helmsman grinned and shook his head. “I always try to tell them, but do they listen? Noooooooooo.”
“From the second day at the Academy, I t'ink I been read the riot act by ever' Vulcan in the place plus a couple they flew in jus' fo' the purpose,” Del admitted. “But I never had one go upside my head like that.”
Old Kam savored a good 'I told you so' chuckle. “Kinda scary wasn’t it?”
“I was jus' surprised is all,” he growled. However, the engineer was starting to understand another piece of his new crewmates’ reaction to the incident. Watching a new guy run into the Enterprise’s resident Vulcan buzz-saw was a pattern so familiar and predictable to this crew that it had become in their minds nothing more than a form of hazing – something every upstart rookie would inevitably go through. Despite being a telepath, Del had managed to make every clueless newbie mistake in the book… and then some.
“Heard you stood up to him..” Sulu grinned. “Literally.”
No matter of willpower was going to stop the warming creeping up his cheeks now. “Mais, I…”
“…Thought you might need to run?”
“Shut up.” Del frowned fiercely as he tried to rub the red from his face.
“Then, your coup de grace,” the helmsman crowed mercilessly. “After he’s told you that you missing a column out of all the reports for your section, you say, 'What’s wrong with three?'”
“Shut th' hell up,” the Cajun repeated, putting a hand over his eyes so Kam couldn’t see him wince at his own stupidity.
Sulu fell silent until Del made eye contact again. He then leaned forward in false concern and repeated the question the Cajun had asked him on upwards of a hundred occasions. “You got you a death wish, man?”
“That devil of a motherfucker was three inches from my face, fangs drippin' blood,” the engineer asserted in his own defense. “I not know what the hell I was sayin'.”
The helmsman patted his shoulder as he rose. “That’s what I thought.”
This amused sympathy also mirrored the reaction of his peers that Del had not been letting himself decipher. Despite how initially scary he might have been able to make himself seem, the Cajun had gotten himself taken down a peg in a classic Enterprise fashion. He was now one of them. No better. No worse.
Del looked up at his old friend trying to sound gruff rather than piteous. “I s'pose there no chance in merciful Hell that you see fit not to blab to Jer 'bout this li'l incident?”
Old Kamikaze gave him his most charmingly heartless grin.
“Already sent it didn’t you?” Del concluded with a rueful sigh.
“Two hours ago,” the helmsman confirmed at he turned towards he door.
“Fuck off an' die, Kam,” the engineer called after him weakly.
“Love you too, Cajun!” his friend replied with genuine affection.
Ruth Valley entered Spock’s cabin with her arms crossed and a rather superior smile on her face.
“You yelled at Del,” she said in an oddly triumphant tone.
Spock had briefly considered the possibility that his wife might hear of his encounter with the engineer, but had dismissed this concern as unproductive since the exchange was entirely routine and of no possible interest to anyone other than himself and Mr. DelMonde. The Vulcan sighed and put his work aside. It would seem someone had taken undue interest. “If that is the manner in which the incident was relayed to you, you were misinformed.”
“After you specifically told me not to yell at Del,” Ruth observed pointedly, “you yelled at Del.”
“There were several formatting errors in his quarterly report,” he explained. “I informed him of the corrections necessary.”
His wife lifted a dubious eyebrow. “In person?”
“Yes.”
“Because you forgot that we have this little invention called the intercom?” she asked, tapping the comm unit on his desk.
Spock hesitated. “Well…”
The Antari tapped his computer screen. “Or that you could just send him a note?”
“Face to face communication seemed more efficacious under the circumstances,” he replied.
She put her hands on her hips. “More efficacious for yelling?”
“I assure you, the tone of the conversation was entirely professional,” he rebutted patiently.
She gave him another doubtful look. “Really?”
“Yes.”
His wife took up a rather impudent perch on the edge of his desk. “I heard you swooped in like the Great Bird of the Galaxy picking off a fat Aldeberan mudtoad.”
Spock blinked. “That is a completely…”
“That your eyes were giving off the Vulcan death gleam,” she continued, enumerating the overblown details on her fingers. “You were using the obey-me-or-the-sheer-force-of-my-tone-will-crush-you-to-dust voice, and even your nostrils were pon-flared…”
The Vulcan frowned. “Did this description come from Miss Gollub by chance?”
His wife shrugged. “You know anyone else who sounds that much like they just lost a three-day drinking match with a thesaurus?”
“She was not present,” he objected.
“No,” Ruth agreed readily. “But her version correlates pretty closely with the dozen or so people who were there.”
Spock sighed ruefully. In his estimation of the potential level of interest his discussion with Mr. DelMonde might generate, he had failed to accurately factor in the level of speed and intensity the current lull in shipboard activity had lent to the always-present gossip network. “So the incident has become a topic of conversation…”
“I hate to say I told you so…” Ruth paused, then corrected herself. “No, wait. I don’t, because I told you so.”
“The Hood’s first officer stressed to me that although Mr. DelMonde is a superlative engineer as well as a resourceful and capable officer,” the Vulcan explained. “He is prone to certain degree of laxity in observance of proper form that if not firmly checked will only grow worse.”
“And that’s what you were doing?” Ruth still seemed dubious. “Firmly checking?”
“Yes,” he confirmed adamantly.
“Not bringing the logic hammer down on his head like the wrath of Surak?”
“Pardon me?”
“You didn’t shake him between your teeth like a le-matya tearing into a voodoo doll?” she asked, the note of levity in her tone becoming more pronounced.
“Certainly not.”
“You didn’t slice him open with your love lirpa?”
“This is more description from Miss Gollub isn’t it?” he speculated with a high degree of certainty.
“You didn’t piss a pool of poisoned paperwork around him to mark your territory?”
Spock held up a hand in protest. “I am unsure of what that means, but I am certain it is untrue…”
“It means,” his wife replied seriously. “That people assume that you yelled at Del because of me.”
And this was, of course, exactly the perspective she had warned him that the crew might take should he confront the engineer. “That is not accurate,” he objected stubbornly.
A fond twinkle came into his wife’s eyes. “Not at all?”
“No.”
She leaned in closer. “Not even a little?”
He crossed his arms. “Not at all.”
“Minneapolis,” she accused.
Spock sighed. He had felt certain that he was behaving in a completely logical and professional matter. However, given the strength of his feelings for his beautiful young wife… “Not in any way of which I am consciously aware,” he amended reluctantly.
“Okay.” She smiled affectionately and leaned close enough to give him a kiss on the tip of his nose. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“I can see no…” he began.
“You have to enter the cooking contest now,” she announced decisively.
He blinked. “That is a non sequitor.”
“Non-sequitor, non-schmeckwitor.” She waved a dismissive hand. “I was right. You were wrong. So now you have to enter the contest. Period.”
“I cannot follow your reasoning,” he objected.
“You don’t need to,” she replied with another dazzling smile. “You just need to file an entry form.”
“For what reason?”
Her lips formed into an expression that was an attractive cross between a frown and a pout. “Isn’t it a good enough reason that I want you to?”
“I do not wish to disappoint you,” he began.
“So don’t,” she replied, pre-empting any further potential objection.
“Ruth,” he chided gently. “For some reason you seem emotionally invested in my entering this contest…”
“And winning it,” she confirmed.
“What if I enter and lose?”
“Don’t lose,” she advised adamantly.
“Odds are currently being quoted as 75:1 that I will not win,” he pointed out.
She frowned. “Says who?”
“Miss Gollub habitually makes inaccurate assumptions about the acuity of Vulcan hearing,” he explained. “Mr. DelMonde, on the other hand, is apparently an accomplished cook…”
She gave him another displeased look. “How do you know that?”
“Many people in this crew habitually make inaccurate assumptions about the acuity of Vulcan hearing,” he replied.
“Screw Del.” She gave an annoyed flick of the wrist as if to brush the engineer from their collective thoughts. “This is not about him.”
Spock lifted an eyebrow. “Is it not?”
“Not at all,” she confirmed, making up in energy what the reply lacked in certainty.
“Not even a little?” he said, echoing her earlier words.
“No,” she replied, taking her turn at being stubborn.
“Haifa,” he chided.
“Ha!” she retorted. “Believe me it’s not the Human half that would… Never mind.”
“The Human half would not pit two males against one another in a contest to have them symbolically prove their fitness to serve as her consort?” he finished for her.
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “I’m not like that.”
“Agreed.” Spock put a gentle arm around her waist. “However, as we both know, the pull of blood and culture can be strong…”
“Strong enough to make someone go all koonut-kali-crazy and yell at an encroaching male over some paperwork?” she teased pointedly.
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “Therefore we should both resolve to more carefully examine our motivations and exercise greater restraint in our future dealings with Lieutenant DelMonde.”
She sighed, then leaned in to kiss him softly. “Agreed.”
“Very well,” he said, warmed by the undeniable bond between them. Marriage, despite the many adjustments and difficulties it posed, was indeed a most pleasant institution.
“So…” His lovely wife stroked his cheek sweetly.
“Yes?”
“You need to decide what you’re going to make for the contest right away,” she announced heedlessly, giving his cheek a firm pat, before she flitted triumphantly away. “The deadline for entering is nineteen hundred hours…”