Returning to (Almost) Normal

By the time Pike arrived, Giotto was sitting in the waiting room, legs crossed, frowning at something on his PADD.

Chris shook his head. It had probably been too much to hope that a week of Orion TLC would turn his old friend into a new man. Still, Sam looked happier than the last time he'd seen him, and, more importantly, he didn't look like he wanted to kill anyone.

"Ready to go, Commander?"

"Yes, sir." He shut off the PADD and picked up his jacket, muttering half to himself, "I swear, no one pays attention to 'out of office' notices anymore. The last time I had this kind of backlog it was because I'd been in a coma."

"If you ask me," Chris remarked dryly, "it would've been a good idea to ignore your messages from the start."

Sam gave him a sour look. "It's not my fault some bureaucrats can't tell the difference between a strongly worded objection and a threat."

Pike sighed. He'd seen the letter. "Threat might be too strong a word, Sam, but you can't blame Fishburne for being a little nervous when you showed up in person."

"I may have been a little ...tense... when I wrote that," he admitted. "But when I spoke with him, I was perfectly calm and polite."

That was probably true, at least in the sense that Sam was one of those people who could calmly and politely scare the daylights out of someone, especially if that person was under the impression that he might suddenly decide to stop being calm and polite.

"As I understand it, you calmly described how many ways a person could die if he was left defenseless somewhere near the Neutral Zone."

"Purely to illustrate my point about the deficiencies in his 'design for minimum cost'," Giotto countered. Calmly.

"And you politely explained that hiding in his office wouldn't help if you decided to kill him."

"That was more sarcastic than polite." Giotto rolled his eyes as they excited the building. "The man should be in a padded room. I invited him to the ship to see the problem firsthand and he reacted as if he'd gotten a dinner invitation from Hannibal Lecter."

Uh-huh. Sam hadn't pulled anything this close to cutting red tape with a chainsaw since their war days, but it was hard to buy that that reaction had been unexpected. Pike lifted an eyebrow. "Was this before or after the discussion about leaving people to die in the Neutral Zone?"

Giotto's mouth went a little sideways. "It was still a leap to take that as a threat. Building security had a good laugh over Fishburne cowering behind his desk, scared to death of a single mild-mannered officer."

"Mild-mannered?" Chris snorted a breath. "Sam, calling you 'mild-mannered' is like calling your grandmother a 'sweet little old lady'."

"My grandmother is a sweet little old lady." An affronted look was marred by a small twitch at the corner of mouth. "As long as you don't cross her."

Pike flattened his lips, fighting a smile. "You realize I spent the last couple hours explaining to various bureaucrats that my Security Chief is not, in fact, a dangerous sociopath."

"Captain," Giotto feigned a wounded look, "you're going to ruin my reputation."

Chris cast a dramatic 'why me?' look heavenward, but gave in to a smile. Sam had spent a few hours in the brig - probably enjoying himself swapping stupid criminal stories with the guards - but he'd gotten his way. Fishburne had caved rather than face a counter-complaint over having a decorated 'fleet Commander detained for nothing more than (calmly and politely) visiting him in person.

Still, Giotto wasn't getting off scot-free. "Your reputation will just have to suffer, Commander. As it is, I'm going to have to suspend you for a day or two to make everyone happy."

"Good." He nodded firmly, looking unaccountably pleased with that. "Make it week."

Pike blinked, wondering for a moment if he should go back and request a DNA scan. Giotto could be strict about discipline, and strictest of all with himself, but that hadn't sounded like the man who'd backed away from drowning grief in alcohol only to drown himself in work.

"A week?"

"We had a deal, Chris," Giotto stated, calmly. "I get a week on Risa; you get to live."

Chris barked a laugh, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "It's good to have you back, Sam."

.

.

Gaila bounced through the door of her dorm room, luggage swinging from her shoulder and a smile on her face. However a cheery "I'm back!" died on her lips at the sound of her roommate swearing in several languages. And the smell. Eww. If that was coming from Nyota, it was no wonder she was cursing.

"Does this mean you're not glad to see me?"

"Gaila!" Uhura stopped mid-rant. "I'm sorry. I am happy to see you." She came over, stopping a step back from hugging-distance and looked her over as though inspecting for damage. "We heard there was some trouble at home. Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, it was nothing." That I'm allowed to talk about. "There was a fight at a holiday party and it got out of hand. Then there was legal stuff and Orion politics..." Gaila rolled her eyes, flipping a hand dismissively. "But the big news is that Ama's finally okay with me being Starfleet."

"That's great!" Nyota moved aside to let Gaila drop her bags by the dresser. "What changed her mind?"

"Well, we talked and I apologized for just running off," Gaila grinned a little, "and my pilot thought she was totally hot, so she has a much better opinion of 'fleet officers now."

Nyota snorted a laugh. "You could have just sent Kirk."

"Maybe next time." Jim had real potential as a gigolo... But he'd have never made it through a mission that required refusing sex. ...Hmm... She really needed to let Jim know she was back.

"Well, as long as it worked," Nyota replied. "Who was your pilot anyway?"

"Just an older guy who had some friends on Orion - you wouldn't know him." And I'm not supposed to tell people that I do. Gaila shrugged and quickly changed the subject. "So, what's been happening here?"

"You mean, why was I cursing a blue streak when you came in?" Nyota's mouth went sideways. "Finnegan and his pals offered to help me prepare for the SERE course."

Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape - every cadet dreaded it, but Gaila couldn't think of it as just hazing anymore. Or as another hurdle to get a slot on the Enterprise, like her perfectionist, flagship-obsessed roommate. "I take it something went wrong?"

"They said the best preparation was to just get thrown into stuff," her nose wrinkled in something between anger and disgust, "so they threw me into a big, slimy garbage hold."

"Like that scene from Star Wars?" Samuel had given up and just shown them the vid to explain Bill's 'Darth Granger' joke. Gaila suppressed a snicker - Nyota totally had the hair to do Princess Leia earmuff buns.

Her roommate rolled her eyes. "Yeah. And those rasahkos krenathu sealed it from the outside and left. I'm just lucky Chekov heard me pounding and figured out the lock."

Gaila shook her head, trying to banish an image of Chekov as R2D2. This wasn't funny. "Don't worry. Finnegan's going to pay for that."

"No! Don't get into this. They're doing this kind of stuff to a lot of people and I don't want them to single you out for worse. What they did to me wasn't even that bad. And who knows? Maybe it will help prepare me." Nyota frowned, lifting a strand of ponytail and sniffing unhappily. "Although I'm beginning to think I'll never get this smell out of my hair."

Right. First things first. Plotting revenge would have to wait until the smell didn't make her want to gag. "Have you tried baking soda?"

"Yes." Nyota sighed, ticking things off on her fingers. "And vinegar and lemon juice and three different shampoos."

"That's awful." Really awful. Gaila was beginning to regret having acute Orion olfactory senses. "How about tomato juice and vodka?"

Her roommate lifted an eyebrow. "To wash with or to drink?"

"We'll wash first." Gaila grinned. "It should work. Tricia told this story..." She paused. Even if she didn't name names, Samuel probably wouldn't want that one repeated. "Anyway, it got the smell out after someone got stuck in a dumpster."

"At this point I'll try anything." Nyota grabbed her ID, ready to head out, and paused, brow scrunching down. "Who's Tricia?"

"A guy's cousin," Gaila explained swiftly, heading down the hall and toward fresh air. "We went to his grandmother's -"

"Wait a minute!" Nyota hurried to catch up. "A guy took you to meet his grandmother?"

"Sure. In fact, there was a big family dinner and I was the guest of honor." Gaila smiled proudly. She couldn't understand why Nyota looked so surprised. After all, she was smart, beautiful and 'brilliantly resourceful'. Who wouldn't want to share her with his family?

"That's..." Nyota waited until they got down the stairs and outside. "How long have you known this guy?"

She shrugged. "A couple weeks. Why?"

"Meeting someone's family usually means the relationship is pretty serious."

Serious? Well, Samuel had nearly died trying to protect her, and since Ama was so far away he'd agreed to be a sort of guardian, or at least emergency contact, which made him about as close to clan as she had in the Federation. And he had just introduced her to his clan. Gaila smiled a little. "I guess it is."

Nyota's eyes got really wide.

"What?" She was beginning to wonder if the smell had affected her friend's brain.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for you. This is just really sudden and ...unexpected."

Unexpected - trust Nyota to come up with a good word for it. "I certainly never expected it," Gaila agreed, and smiled, remembering Samuel's expression when Ama had reminded her to keep her guardian happy. "I think he was pretty surprised too."

"I'll bet." Nyota arched an eyebrow. "So, do I get to meet him?"

Probably. Especially if you get that slot on the Enterprise - which is probably another good reason not to say who he is.

"Someday." Gaila shrugged nonchalantly. "But he's not on earth much and when we said good-bye, he said I might not be able to reach him for awhile."

.

.

Pike handed Giotto a glass and settled into a chair with a drink of his own. His on-campus accommodations weren't much more than a glorified motel room, but coming here was easier than shuttling back to the ship. And, more importantly, there were no yeomen waiting with PADDs full of forms, requests and reminders. Chris had only a vague idea (and, okay, a few fantasies) about how recovering in the care of Gaila's family had gone, but something had definitely shifted and if this incident was any indication, those yeomen should be grateful Giotto would be out a while longer.

"I didn't enjoy having to bail you out, Commander." He let a stern look lapse into a half-smile. "But I'm glad to see you've recovered."

"Thank you, Captain," Giotto smiled, tipping his drink in reply. "I received excellent care."

"Excellent, eh?" Chris lifted his eyebrows inquiringly, but wasn't surprised when Sam put his feet up on the coffee table and savored his drink, purposely ignoring the invitation to talk. That aspect of his personality wasn't ever likely to change.

"You're not going to tell me anything, are you?"

Sam pursed his lips slightly. "Well, Gaila's sisters wanted to learn a throw they'd seen her use, so I walked them through that and a couple variations." He paused thoughtfully. "And we went over some situational awareness. Jol said he'd keep an eye on them, but this way they're a little better prepared to look out for themselves."

Uh-huh. A week with gorgeous Orion sisters who had petitioned to give him the kind of care no man would ever forget, and Sam had opted to teach them self-defense. The idea would be ludicrous, if not for the unsettling suspicion that it might be true. His Security Chief's recent obsession with emergency readiness had half of the crew ready to jump ship. (It was the reason Pike kept him away from cadet training; drop-out rates were high enough as it was).

Worse yet, his tone had been disturbingly paternal. Chris gave him a wry look. "I'm surprised they didn't send you home sooner."

"Navesh was happy have someone teach her family a little self-defense." Giotto tipped his head, lips curling in a small smile. "It was nice to be appreciated for a change."

"I'll bet." Chris grinned. Sam might have refused the girls. The mother - not a chance. Still, he decided not to press it. "Honestly, I thought you were going to take a couple days to visit your family."

Sam just looked at him.

"Right," he conceded, suppressing a chuckle. "I should have realized. You went through too much interrogation to put up with the family variety."

"You can say that again." Sam swallowed a portion of his drink. "I only made it through last night because Gaila did most of the talking."

Chris felt his eyebrows jump. "You brought Gaila?"

"I'd promised to take her to the restaurant." He shrugged as if that shouldn't be least bit surprising. "We had a nice meal. She was quite impressed with pesce spada alla ghiotta."

Uh-huh. Pike put his drink down. He was a starship captain, a position that required some skill at handling even the strangest revelations with equanimity, but he was finding that skill somewhat challenged. His brain kept stalling on the image of Sam walking into the family restaurant with Gaila. If she'd been in one of her barely street-legal 'casual' dresses...

"You're lucky you didn't give your grandmother a heart attack."

"Grandma's tougher than that." Sam scoffed. If he was too ornery to die, anyone who'd met his grandmother knew where he'd gotten it. "Besides, Gaila went in uniform. Grandma wanted to thank her for helping me get back on my feet."

Chris lifted a teasing eyebrow. "You mean, for 'taking care of you'?"

Sam gave him a Look.

Right. He'd undoubtedly avoided mentioning any of that to his grandmother. Besides, the official story was that he'd been injured on leave and a cadet's family had taken him in.

"Gaila's a long way from her clan and she misses having those connections," Sam explained reasonably. "I thought it might help to introduce her to mine."

That had the ring of half-truth, but it was still hard to imagine how he'd pulled it off - even in uniform, Gaila made quite an impression. On the other hand, Sam had been getting pretty tired of people asking if he'd started seeing anyone yet. After this, it would be a long time before anyone back home dared to raise the subject.

"I see. You were just helping an off-world cadet feel more at home on earth."

"I promised Navesh that I'd look after her." The tone said that was his story and he was sticking to it. With Giotto, that meant it would probably take a matter/anti-matter explosion to budge him.

Chris shook his head. He was used to that fact that his friend kept his private life very, very private. However, the last update from Dr. Jol had contained a postscript: Tell Giotto I'll take good care of his favorite nurse. Sam might not let himself be swayed by youth, beauty or even pheromones, but back before Maria there'd been a nurse or two who'd gotten inside his guard.

He gave Sam an amused smile. "I guess babysitting an Orion wasn't so bad if you volunteered for a permanent assignment."

Sam rolled his eyes. "I doubt Gaila will need much looking after." He sipped his drink, a corner of his mouth hooking upward. "In fact, it's all I could do to convince her that she's not responsible for taking care of me."

AN: Sorry this took so long. RL has really gotten in the way of writing and there was a little argument with my characters over what happened on the shuttle trip back. The compromise is that what happened on the shuttle stays on shuttle. ;)

On the first shuttle trip, Giotto was drafting an angry letter to a bureaucrat. He's not the sort of person to just let something like that go.

rasahkos krenathu - Vulcan for 'bastards who have abandoned logic' - worst insult I could find in that language

Yes, Finnegan is the upperclassman who was the bane of TOS!Kirk's Academy years. There are a lot of out takes at this point, so I may add something about how Gaila handles him.

Please review - feedback is much appreciated.