Note: This chapter contains a sex scene, which has been edited to abide with the guidelines of this website. As such, the rating of this story has been changed to "m" for mature.

Chapter Nine

Days on the Planet: 33

Spock ran his hand through his wet hair. The water dripped down to the dip at the base of his spine. He licked his lips, bent down once more to wash his face before padding out of the water, shivering. Grabbing at the washed piece of tattered fabric from the village he used as a towel, he patted at his hair, cleaned out his ears and began to dry his legs.

The noon sun was not as warm as he'd liked – the planet was a little too far away from his sun, fractions more than Earth he summarised, for his liking. The days were often sunny, as he assumed they were facing the sun, but it did not rise higher than 27 degrees Celsius on any given day. And the nights could dip to below freezing temperatures, which, without proper clothing and insulation, had been considerably uncomfortable to bear.

He slipped on his pants but thought better of his jumper – instead, dunking it into the river and washing some of the dirt out. The blue jumper dripping in his hands, he made his way back to the hut where Nyota was towelling her own hair dry, having twisted out of his arms in the water when something had brushed against her toe.

Nyota was never good at keeping track of dates other than the ones marked in blue on her calendar when assessments were due. But birthdays, anniversaries, holiday dates, lunches – she always fumbled over them as a teenager. In this way, her PADD was her best friend. All the uploaded and updated dates on her calendar, including her birth control injection, were easy to keep track of.

And so was the small array of dashes she'd marked on the wall every day – 33 days in total. And she knew she'd gotten her last injection twenty-three days previously. She'd been off the pill and out of a serious relationship for fifteen months now, and had only used the injection as a way of pre-emptively covering herself for a hook-up. But she'd only slept with one person in the last seven months – a young paralegal from San Francisco when she'd been drunk and gotten a good whiff of Gaila's pheromones.

The injections lasted 45 days.

She and Spock had participated in sexual intercourse twice – once yesterday afternoon and once again this morning, thus why he was bathing down the river. Uhura towelled at her own wet hair and thought.

If it really had only been around three days on the Columbia, then technically it has only been three days for the injection. Maybe her body couldn't register the shift.

But she had a suspicion it definitely could.

That meant there was a chance.

How could she have been so stupid? She'd been thinking with her groin – how good he looked out of those clothes, how talented his lips and hands and mouth were. But she'd even asked him if he'd slept with other Human women – such a taboo subject, but hadn't thought to breech the fact that perhaps her contraceptive may have worn off and she very much doubted there was a corner store down the road he could run down half-hard for a pack of condoms.

She huffed before leaning over to check on the vegetable stew. It would be bland but it would be edible.

Spock nudged his way through the doorway then, only half dressed in his pants and carrying his damp jumper in his hands.

"Hey," she said with a small hum.

"Hello."

He hung the dripping garment on the small stone-peep hole that serviced as a window and saw Nyota sitting beside the wall in which she marked off every progressing day.

"Does something trouble you, Nyota?" he asked after a moment.

She hesitated.

"No, well, yes."

"Which one is it?"

"Yes," she finally decided. "Um, I gotta tell you something."

"Should I sit down?" he asked.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Well… it's my contraception. I should have brought it up previously but… it's kinda run out.
Or maybe not. I can't tell with the time and space relativity stuff. But I got it twenty three days before we left here and we've been here for over a month and it's only supposed to last fourty-five days and-,"

"It is fine," said Spock. "You are not pregnant, Nyota."

"I'm not?" she said and then frowned. "Wait, how do you know?"

"I would begin to feel a telepathic link forming," he replied. "My family and I share a familial bond – it is the same for all Vulcans and their consequential children."

"Can you communicate through this link?" she asked then, derailing from the conversation at hand for only a moment.

"If I wish."

"Have you been talking to them?" she asked. "Did you tell your family where you are?"

Spock hesitated.

"What?" she said.

"I have not been able to feel my parents' bond since arriving on the planet," he said. "At first I believed it to be the concussion… but it's become apparent the bond we have possessed since before I was born has been severed."

Nyota was quiet for a moment.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"There is no need to apologise," he returned.

"It must be hard," she said, looking down into the fire because she couldn't look him in the eyes at that moment. Not those big brown eyes that seemed to reveal everything about his psyche though his face remained as passive as ever.

"Yes," he admitted.

"Can you get it back?" she asked. "You know, if we get back?"

"Yes. We are able to re-establish the bond on Vulcan," he replied. "Are you hungry, Nyota?"

She nodded and he reached over to the capsule, handing her a banana and an energy bar – only ten energy bars left. She ate greedily, almost crying out when her hands were empty because she was still painfully hungry, so much that her stomach ached and twisted inside her. She wondered if Spock felt the same – he was quiet, his hands also empty and folded in his lap. She wanted to suggest they eat more, but she knew she'd feel guilty afterward. She would live with this pain.

"Would you like to play chess?" she asked, reaching over to grasp at the playing board and the pieces. She set them up like she did and placed the board between them.

"You move first," she said. "You're white."

"Very well," he replied and reached to move his pawn centre-right into the middle of the board. She moved then, the same pawn that he'd reached for, so they sat side-by-side.

"What will be the first thing you do when you get back?" she asked.

He looked up from where he was thinking over his next move.

"Seek to re-establish my familial bonds," he replied.

Her teeth worked over her top lip. "You miss them, yeah, I miss my family too."

"And you?" he asked.

She smiled then and moved her knight out from behind it's pawn. "I don't know. Either take a really long bath, or have a three-course meal dessert first. Maybe both at the same time."

He looked at her quizzically.

"You will eat while bathing?"

"And drink champagne. The whole bottle if I'm allowed."

"You will likely be restricted to a low calorie diet when returning to earth as to not upset your stomach with digesting a large amount of food," he said. "It is possible to gorge yourself to death, even when you may die from the hunger."

"Still," she said. "Sometimes it is just like eating thinking about the food – have you ever been to the Andorian place near the shopping centre? It is haunting my dreams, it was so good."

He took her bishop and she laughed as it opened his defence up so she could take his rook.

"When we get back to Earth," he said. "Would you like to go out to dinner with me?"

Nyota looks up from where she was planning her next move, so studiously she wasn't even listening to Spock, just so convinced of winning this match, desired to just beat him once she had to mentally backtrack. He was asking her out?

"Like on a date?" she asked and then cringed at how stupid she sounded.

"If you are amenable."

She grinned.

"I would like to. Very much," she said. "I may just hold you to that date, you know. There are a few places I've been dying to try. Will… well, will Starfleet let us?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Because I knew a student, well, doctor really, but he's still a cadet, and he went out with Professor Maloney for a few months and he said they needed to keep it secret," she muttered, moving her pawn to the far left of the board out, leaving her rook open to be taken by his queen. Suddenly, she was in a hurry to finish the game. Spock took her queen without even blinking.

"I see," he replied.

"So you're really sure? If we do this, I mean."

"I said that I was."

And then she looked up from the board to find him looking at her, his eyes wide and smouldering like the fire beside him. And she thought that maybe if she didn't kiss him right then, she would have died. She pushed away the chess board, not heeding the clutter of the pieces falling and crawled into his arms, kissing him deeply. And she thought, as he lowered her down to the cold ground, of the time they might just do this in a bed, and on a lounge, in an apartment which was hotter than what was considered normal. And maybe when they woke up together, she'd be a little embarrassed, despite him seeing her groggy and dirty and smelly for the last 33 days now. She laughed as he kissed down her stomach, and he turned his head up.

"Nyota?" he asked. His breath was rough and deep.

"I'm just thinking," she said with a laugh.

"May I inquire as to what?"

"Ah, waking up together. In your bed. I'm thinking now we've seen each other at our worst, all dirty and smelling like the lake all the time, maybe it will be easier." She waved her hand. "We can skip all that stuff about being embarrassed and those awkward morning after routines."

"That would be unfortunate," he muttered against his hip bone. "I had anticipated lending you a toothbrush and you forgetting your comm charger, resulting in you returning to my apartment to retrieve it."

She burst out laughing then.

"I'll make sure my comm is fully charged then."

"Do not," he murmured against the underside of her breast. And then he grasped her hips and rolled Nyota so she was straddling his hips and running her hands down his chest, through the thick black hair that grew there and turned into a small line down his navel. She rocked and settled herself over him, gasping when he arched his hips just a little. She would take it from here.