Title: An Orion Roman Holiday

Summary: Cadet Gaila decides to finally go back home for a visit. What could go wrong? According to Starfleet Intel, a lot. So Capt. Pike assigns his Security Chief to go with her. What could go wrong indeed... Giotto & Gaila

Genre: Humor/Friendship/not-exactly-Romance

Rating: T

Acknowledgment: Special thanks to Artemiis Boz who beta'd this for me. She has such a good sense of Gaila's voice - go read her fics.

Disclaimer: The only bits of Star Trek I own are videos, cos-play stuff and little action figures...

Capt. Pike folded his hands and looked at the man across the desk from him. His friend wasn't prone to showing a lot in his expression, but Chris had known him long enough to see that he wasn't exactly thrilled by the prospect of this assignment. "Comments, Commander?"

Giotto lifted his eyebrows. "You want me to babysit an Orion?"

The tone was just this side of 'You can't be serious'. Pike frowned. "Not babysit, Sam – she's an adult. I want you to keep an eye on her."

Sam's eyebrows moved marginally higher.

Chris's mouth twisted. "You know what I mean."

"Do I?" Giotto's expression was impassive, but Chris could hear the smirk. It was what he got for asking this of someone who'd spent too much time as his wingman back when they were both young lieutenants.

"Yes," he insisted flatly, "you do."

"I think the situation requires clarification. Sir." Little crinkles at the corners of Giotto's eyes were the only indication that somewhere deep inside he was laughing his ass off.

Chris tightened his lips against a smile. Every now and then the Sam he'd known before Maria's death made an appearance. However he'd ended with 'Sir' and that meant that he was either going to get straight answers, find a regulation way around the assignment, or force someone to issue direct orders. Pike knew the latter was the worst possible option, since his Security Chief was likely to pay him back by following them to the letter in most deviously annoying way possible.

"Look, I need someone I can trust to accompany her."

"There are plenty of people you could trust." That Chris himself wasn't among them was left unspoken. Very loudly unspoken.

"It's not like you're going to take leave." Pike held a hand up to forestall protest and looked his old friend in the eye. "A few days at home with everyone asking about how you're holding up and you'll be back stalking the halls of the ship and driving the work crews crazy. We both know it."

Giotto crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow. "So I'm not babysitting her; she's babysitting me?"

"If you prefer to think of it that way." Chris smirked. "Personally, I call it a win-win situation."

"You would."

"Look, I'm not saying you're going to enjoy this, but she's a top-ranked Cadet. She's nothing like the women you used to have to pull off of me."

Sam snorted. "You mean that I used to have to pull you off of."

"It's not Federation space," he continued, hoping a slight blush would be mistaken for embarrassment over those memories, "and she's a brilliant enough programmer to be on some high level projects even as cadet. I'd rather send you with her now than risk having to ask you to put together a plan to retrieve her later."

Giotto scowled, but nodded. "Alright, but I swear by whatever deity you still believe in that if this turns out to be as bad as I expect, I will make your life hell when I get back. And as down payment on that, you get to explain to the family why I won't be home for leave."

Chris's eyes crinkled as he smiled back at his friend.

"Deal."

.

.

Gaila looked around the terminal, hoping the commander would be able to find her. It wasn't that she thought all humans looked alike, but medium-tall men with a mix of dark and gray hair where hardly in short supply here.

When Capt. Pike's yeoman had described Giotto as having 'olive skin', Gaila had briefly rejoiced, thinking that it meant he was part Orion. However the man in the ID picture had beige/tan skin just a little darker than the captain's, so 'olive' made no sense whatsoever (the only non-green olives Gaila had ever seen were closer to the color of her roommate's skin). Now 'salt-and-pepper' hair she could understand, but if the food references were meant to imply that there was something edible about the commander, Colt should have chosen wheat bread or graham crackers to describe his skin.

...Mmm, yummy… Gaila looked at the picture again. Dark eyes, strong jawline - not as cute as Pike, but not bad either...

"Cadet Gaila?"

Her head whipped around, bringing her face to face with the man in the picture. She mentally added 'moves really quietly' to the list of characteristics. Good to know. "Yes sir." She covered with a bright smile. "Pleased to meet you, Cmdr. Giotto."

"And you." He nodded curtly and turned, pointing. "Our ship's this way."

Her smile faded in shock. Human men always smiled back. Always. Even the ones who were gay. Even the ones with wives (even when those wives were standing right next to them scowling). Pike had said that his friend was all business but this was ridiculous! She barely remembered to grab her bag before hurrying after him.

Gaila chewed on the problem as she followed. In the interest of knowing a little about who she'd be traveling with, she'd taken a peek at his personnel file (it wasn't technically hacking - anyone in the personnel office could look at it and she'd told the nice lieutenant, who had definitely smiled back at her, that she'd meet him at his office so he could take her to dinner). The pertinent information in Giotto's file indicated that he was (a) heterosexual and (b) single. He'd lead an interspecies combat unit and he was Pike's friend, so xenophobia was out. How could he possibly not smile back?

By the time they entered the small ship, she was worked up enough to ask. "Is there something wrong, Commander?"

He tossed his bag into storage and immediately began the preflight checks. "Not that I'm aware of, Cadet."

His eyes never left the helm display. Gaila's hand twisted the strap of her satchel. She was starting to feel insulted. "It's just -"

"Relax." Giotto looked up and pointed out the forward window. "You see that man in coveralls? He's not just a mechanic. He checked this ship stem to stern as soon as she came in and he's been keeping an eye out to make sure that no one else touched her until we got here."

Ozdat! - he thought she was worried that something was wrong with the ship. ...Wait, he had obviously been worried that someone might do something to the ship.

Now a corner of commander's mouth turned upward. "Just a precaution. Have a seat," he indicated the co-pilot's chair, "and help me finish the flight checks. There's an open launch window in twelve minutes. If we're quick, we should be able to take it."

"Aye sir." Gaila sat and activated her read-outs, feeling relieved. Even though she hadn't taken quals and wasn't technically qualified to co-pilot, Mr. All-Business had just waved regulations to let her take the position. Plus, that had almost been a smile.

Ha! He did like her. Gaila smiled to herself. They had a long way to go before reaching Orion space. Plenty of time to work on the smiling thing.

.

.

Giotto glanced at the chronometer. Only 3 hours into the flight and he was already wishing that he'd packed a bottle of something considerably stronger than Dr. Puri's supplements. Another 34 hours trapped with a bubbly, talkative extrovert and he was going to stun himself with his own phaser.

It hadn't taken much to see that Gaila was agitated when she'd come aboard, and recognizing that she had reason to be nervous about this journey, particularly when her traveling companion was a total stranger, Giotto had initially tried to be tolerant of her attempts to make conversation. He was not what might be called a 'people person' and particularly disliked personal questions, but he had tried to respond politely to her queries (Yes, he had known Chris Pike a long time. Yes, they'd met during the Border Wars. No, he didn't like to talk about it. Yes, it was a long time ago - he still didn't like to talk about it).

To be polite and to shift the conversation to a different topic, he'd asked Gaila about her history and she'd told him about stowing away on her cousin's ship to get off Orion and make a life on her own terms in the Federation. That part had been moderately pleasant. Sam was not much for engaging in conversation, but he was very good at listening. While he could have done without some of the more detailed descriptions of what she'd discovered about human sexual proclivities, he'd been in Starfleet for close to three decades so very little shocked him. However at some point she'd decided to try to draw him out again. This time, unfortunately, by making 'small talk'. It was not, to put it mildly, Sam's favorite form of conversation.

"...so I've been trying to learn about earth cultures. There are so many different ethnic groups - at least ten times more than on Orion - but let me guess," she grinned at him. "'Giotto' is French, right?"

"Italian."

"Italian..." Her brows furrowed momentarily and then she brightened. " Ooh, like pizza and lasagna!"

Giotto resisted an urge to roll his eyes. "Among other things."

"Oh I know. There's art and opera. It seems like such a sensual culture." She put her elbows on the console, rested her chin in both palms and beamed at him. "Tell me about Italy."

The worst part was that if she hadn't been getting on his last nerve for close to an hour now, she'd look appealing like that. "Sorry, I've never spent more than a few days there."

Her eager expression switched to puzzled. "I don't understand."

"I grew up in an ethnically Italian neighborhood in North America," he explained. "I toured a couple Italian cities once when I had some time after a meeting at the Hague, but that was almost twenty years ago."

Gaila deflated a little, allowing a whole two beats of actual silence. Then she perked up, smiling again. "Do you have a girlfriend, Commander?"

Huh? Not only had that been completely out of left field, but his wife had been killed in action less than a year ago and that question could too easily lead to topics that were simply not open for discussion.

"I don't discuss my personal life, Cadet." He gave her an look that should have been as easy to read as an actual 'No Trespassing' sign.

Her lips quirked to a sly smile. "Does that mean yes or no?"

"It means I don't share that information with people who have no need to know."

A red eyebrow arched playfully. "What if I needed to know?"

Good grief, this kid was not trying to flirt with him. "Trust me, you don't."

"Are you sure?" She leaned in, smile widening just a little.

"Yes." Sam quickly looked away, thinking hard about how he would be sending Chris a 20-page battle readiness report to be filled out in triplicate.

A sad little huff came from Gaila's direction. "Men always like me, Commander. Why don't you?"

Giotto suppressed a sigh. "I don't dislike you, Cadet. I'm just not open to you making that sort of suggestion, so -"

"That's so strange," she interrupted.

He felt his eyebrows climb.

"I mean," she continued in rush of words, "we're off duty and I'm not in your line of command anyway and after Capt. Pike told me who was going to be coming with me I overheard a couple people outside the office saying that they wouldn't be too jealous because you really needed to get laid."

Sam looked upward, struggling between conflicting impulses to either laugh out loud or beat his head against the helm. Reminding himself that she'd only been at the Academy a short time and was relatively new to human culture in general, he looked back at her with his best approximation of a patient expression. "Cadet, as you continue in Starfleet, you will find that that is an opinion subordinates frequently hold when it comes to COs who expect a lot from them. Please do not take it to mean that you personally are under any obligation to act on their opinions."

AN: That memories involving Gaila might give Pike reason to blush about is in 'Adventures in Recruiting'.

I did a short piece on Gaila and Giotto meeting a few years after this because Gaila just jumped in and took over the tale I'd meant to write. She seems to want more fics too because the characters keep feeding me backstory. So here it is, with some help from my wonderful beta.

Like it? Hate it? Please r&r