First Sight.

Singing.

Commander Smith, who trained the Starfleet Academy Choir, had set the members the challenge of singing in an unusual place.

"Have fun with this," he encouraged them. "Sing somewhere exciting, interesting or even embarrassing! Let your voices expand to fill a large space, or sing in a cupboard, sing in a bus, sing on the beach. Go forth and sing!"

Nyota grinned as she remembered. Smithy was such a dynamic, flamboyant personality and so full of the joy of music. If the challenge had come from anyone else she might dismissed it; but a challenge from Smithy was irresistible.

But she was stumped. Where to sing? The shower was too obvious, Michaels had already sung in the middle of the quad and had the foresight to put a hat down and made a tidy profit too, and she heard about the consternation Meg'enpa had caused bursting into song in a physics lecture; you could trust Meg'enpa to push the limits.

About a week passed before Nyota remembered the stair well at in the linguistics building. In first year a power failure had forced her to use those stairs and she had noticed the unusual acoustics. She remembered the way her foot steps echoed and bounced as she clattered down the stairs. She was going to the language labs this afternoon, so she resolved as soon as she was finished her prac she would sing in the stair well. It would sound amazing. It was almost a pity that no one would hear.

##

Spock wrapped his longing for Cadet Uhura in layers of logic and crushed his need with duty and regulation. He furled tightly in on himself.

His world constricted to his office, his class room, and his quarters. In these places he could trust himself but the journey between them was fraught with danger.

Despite all his efforts he'd catch the occasional glimpse of Cadet Uhura. His responded at what felt like a cellular level. When he forced himself to turn away the desolation he felt was shocking.

The linguistics building was the most dangerous location as it carried the highest risk of an encounter. Spock always used the stairs to avoid the appalling possibility of meeting Cadet Uhura in a lift.

One afternoon, as he walked down the stairs, he heard her. He paused in mid step. Her class was over half an hour ago and he'd thought it safe to leave the building; evidently he'd misjudged. She was in the base of the stair well and she was singing. She hadn't heard him. He wondered what she was doing, she seemed to be experimenting, no "playing", with her voice. The stair well was basically a long tube of concrete and its hard surfaces reflected sound so it bounced and echoed in unexpected ways. He glanced over the railing and could see Cadet Uhura, her eyes shut and head tipped back as she sang her scales and then paused, presumably to listen to the acoustic effect. As she listened to the fading echoes she smiled. Then she started to sing; although Spock didn't know the language, it sounded like a lullaby.

Slowly Spock sat on a stair, leaned his head against the wall and let the sound envelop him. The song seemed to wrap around him and weave through him, a gentle rocking rhythm and caressing words. Once there was an unexpected sweep up to a high note, a pause, followed by a trilling decent. He thought of an infant swung high in the air by a doting parent and then whooshed down again into a firm embrace. The hairs on his arms rose and a thrill passed through him, then he was again wrapped in the warm blanket of the soothing lilting melody.

He became aware of his deep exhaustion caused by the unremitting struggle to subjugate his emotions. He allowed himself to imagine that Nyota sang just for him. He yearned to lie down in her song and rest. For the first time in he scarcely new how long, he felt a measure of contentment.